Charter Schools are a fine example of how constant hammering by the
Ruling Classes Media, can confuse citizens into voting against their
own best interest, and in favor of the raping and plundering of
publicly held institutions.
First, create a story about our failing public schools. Then create a
solution. The solution turns out to be a system that puts tax dollars
into private pockets. In addition we have been suckered into
believing that students must study hard and pass tests set up to
measure how well they can ingest propaganda and regurgitate it.
Mindless memorization with no test to measure how well our children
are dissecting the information placed before them, and drawing their
own conclusions. Creative thinking is being down graded and phased
out of the curriculum. Soon, if we don't dig in and resist, we'll be
paying to turn out little human robots. Actually, I should say, we
and our children will be paying for the privilege of becoming little
robots.
We have already been carjar82@gmail.com,
Bob and Gloria Lehnart <
pointwilson1@msn.com>,
carjar82 <
carjar82@gmail.com>,
catjar82 <
catjar82@gmail.com>,
earl
pickering <
deepsix@olympus.net>,
Gene and Lois Holly
<feholly@olypen.com>,
Gunther Dohse <
gunther@olympus.net>,
jo candler
<clairjo@cablespeed.com>,
John Ammeter <
jammeter@cablespeed.com>,
"Ken
Hanson (AA7CX)" <
ken_aa7cx@olypen.com>,
Leesa Monroe
<LMonroe@jeffersontransit.com>
, Lois and Gene Holly
<leholly@olypen.com>,
Nancy Kelly-Patnod <
gizmo@olypen.com>,
nancy
villagran <
nanscape@mindspring.com>,
Richard Dinger
<rrdinger@olypen.com>,
richard hausmann <
rghausmann63@yahoo.com>,
Sue
Ammeter <
sue.ammeter@cablespeed.com>
dummied down to the place where we are unable to see through the
Charter School Scam.
Sorry kids. You're being screwed by the Ruling Class along with the
support of your parents.
Carl Jarvis
On 2/23/15, joe harcz Comcast <joeharcz@comcast.net> wrote:
> Stop Michigan's reckless charter school authorizers Michigan taxpayers
> funnel more than $1 billion a year to some 380 charter schools exempt from
> much of
>
> the regulations and oversight that constrain the state's traditional public
> schools. State lawmakers responsible for this arrangement defend it by
> asserting
>
> that students benefit when they have more educational options, that charter
> schools offer students in many low-income neighborhoods a better education
>
> than the one available at their local public school, and that competition
> for students and the state funding that follows them gives all schools an
> incentive
>
> to improve. But a new analysis by one of the nation's most respected
> educational foundations challenges each of these premises. While recognizing
> that
>
> Michigan's best charter schools are delivering on their promise to provide
> an education as good or better than the one offered by traditional public
> schools,
>
> the report card released Thursday by the Education Trust-Midwest provides
> persuasive evidence that the authorizers and operators who serve the
> majority
>
> of Michigan's charter school students are falling short of that standard.
> Education Trust's analysis also reveals that a handful of colleges and
> school
>
> districts responsible for a disproportionate share of the state's
> worst-performing charter schools are continuing to authorize new charters at
> a frantic
>
> pace. Since 2011, when Gov. Rick Snyder signed legislation giving such
> institutions unchecked authority to open or expand an unlimited number of
> charter
>
> schools, more than 80 charter schools have opened for business in Michigan,
> including many sponsored by the state's worst-performing authorizers and
> run
>
> by operators with similarly poor track records. Among those contributing to
> this unprecedented expansion are Eastern Michigan University (12 charter
> schools)
>
> and Northern Michigan University (10 charters), both of which earned failing
> grades in Education Trust's exhaustively documented authorizer report card.
>
> It all adds up to an urgent, unambiguous imperative for the governor and
> legislators who designed this Wild West marketplace: Lansing needs to impose
> an
>
> immediate moratorium on chronically failing charter authorizers and insist
> that they meet tougher accountability standards before they are allowed to
> authorize
>
> new charter schools or expand existing ones. The 'good or better' test Other
> studies, including a major investigative project undertaken last year by
> the
>
> Free Press , have criticized the performance and financial practices of the
> state's charter schools and called for greater transparency and government
>
> oversight. But the Education Trust-Midwest analysis is unique ? and uniquely
> disturbing, in several respects. Amber Arellano, the group's executive
> director,
>
> says her organization's more than two-year study is the first to examine the
> track records of the colleges, public school districts and intermediate
> school
>
> districts authorized to approve new charter schools, monitor their
> performance and renew contracts with charter operators. Ten of the 16
> authorizers evaluated
>
> earned grades of A or B by consistently approving or renewing charter
> schools that demonstrated progress in improving student achievement. But the
> six
>
> authorizers who earned A's accounted for just 13 charter schools, while the
> six at the bottom of the grading scale (1 C, 3 D's and 2 F's) were
> responsible
>
> for authorizing 153 schools. The bottom line is that the most prolific
> authorizers are too often failing to assure that the charters they bring to
> life
>
> are providing students with an option as good or better than the public
> schools from whom they divert taxpayer money. And in Michigan, that record
> of failure
>
> can be be lucrative: Authorizers typically take 3% of the annual state
> funding provided to every charter school they approve, whether or not those
> schools
>
> serve students effective. Rigorous methodology Education Trust-Midwest used
> the same public state accountability data available to charter operators
> and
>
> authorizers to compare both student achievement and year-to-year improvement
> in math and reading. To be fair to charters, the report excluded from its
>
> analysis schools with less than three years of data or that have converted
> from traditional public schools to charters in the last three years, as
> well
>
> as those that serve specialized populations, such as strict discipline
> academies established as an alternative to incarceration. Individual charter
> schools
>
> were deemed to have met the charter movement's "as good as or better"
> promise if their students scored in the 50th percentile or above in the
> state's top-to-bottom
>
> ranking of all Michigan schools. Charter schools whose performance fell
> below the statewide average could also pass the "as good or better" test by
> demonstrating
>
> year-to-year improvement equal to or better than the average school in
> Michigan and in the public school district where most of its students
> reside. Thus,
>
> charter schools that draw the largest proportion of their students from
> Detroit were compared with public schools in Detroit, even if the charter is
> located
>
> outside the city's boundaries. The college or school district responsible
> for authorizing the charter was judged to have fallen short of the
> Education
>
> Trust's minimum quality standard only if it failed to meet the "as good or
> better" test for three consecutive years. "This gives us confidence that
> when
>
> we say a school is not serving its students well, it's really true," the
> report says. Just 16 of the state's 40 charter authorizers had amassed
> enough
>
> data to be included in the ETM study. But the 16 serve 96% of the students
> attending Michigan charters. Ad hominem attacks Prominent champions of
> Michigan's
>
> charter movement have hastened to dismiss the Education Trust study , mostly
> on the grounds that its authors were motivated by an animus to the charter
>
> movement. But the evidence provides scant support for this ad hominem
> critique. Arellano maintains that the Education Trust, which derives nearly
> all of
>
> its funding from nonpartisan groups like the Skillman Foundation, is
> emphatically "agnostic" on the issue of school governance. Its authorizer
> report card
>
> goes out of its way to celebrate the successes of responsible authorizers
> such as Washtenaw Community College and Grand Valley State University, and
> readily
>
> acknowledges the important role such authorizers have played in making
> higher quality choices available to students served by poorly performing
> traditional
>
> schools. But no one (except, perhaps, the authorizing institutions
> themselves) benefits when authorizers enable operators with poor performance
> records
>
> to replicate their formulas for academic failure. That's why Lansing must
> move expeditiously to put the brakes on the most irresponsible authorizers.
> Michigan
>
> School Superintendent Mike Flanagan, who has some authority to suspend
> authorizers for deficient oversight of charter schools in their portfolios,
> has
>
> already put 11 authorizers on notice that they are at risk of suspension.
> But Flanagan's list does not include some of the authorizers ETM singled
> out
>
> as poor performers, and neither Flanagan no anyone else has sufficient
> authority to make sure the $1 billion taxpayers provide to support charters
> is being
>
> spent wisely. Snyder and Republican legislative leaders have both identified
> charter accountability as a top priority for 2015. While they pursue a
> comprehensive
>
> solution, they should take immediate action to stem the damage Michigan's
> most irresponsible authorizers are doing right now. Grading charter
> authorizers
>
> Education Trust Midwest assessed and graded Michigan's charter school
> authorizers for more than two years. Its scorecard looked at a number of
> factors
>
> in assigning a grade, including: ? Did an authorizer give a new contract to
> an operator (between fall 2011 and 2014) that had more than half or more of
>
> its other schools not meeting a minimum quality standard? ? What percentage
> of an authorizer's current schools either performed at or above the 50th
> percentile
>
> or met the average statewide and local district improvement standard for
> three years in a row? ? What percentage of an authorizer's schools were in
> the
>
> state's bottom 5% of all schools for two years and didn't show at or above
> state-average improvement in the second year and are still open? ? Did an
> authorizer's
>
> schools meet or beat the improvement of the traditional public school where
> the majority of students come from? The group then assigned scores to that
>
> data and grades according to the overall score. Charter authorizers without
> schools open for at least three years were not included. The study also did
>
> not include strict discipline academies or schools in a transition mode in
> the overall grades for each authorizer. Based on this criteria, Ed Trust's
> report
>
> covers 16 of Michigan's 40 auth ? orizers, including 96% of the students in
> Michigan's charter schools. Grade: A Washtenaw Community College Schools
> measured:
>
> 1 Total schools: 1 Washtenaw ISD Schools measured: 1 Total schools: 1 Grand
> Rapids Public Schools Schools measured: 1 Total schools: 1 Wayne RESA
> Schools
>
> measured: 2* Total schools: 7 Hillsdale ISD Schools measured: 2 Total
> schools: 2 Macomb ISD Schools measured: 1 Total schools: 1 Grade: B Lake
> Superior
>
> State University Schools measured: 7* Total schools: 30 Ferris State
> University Schools measured: 16* Total schools: 30 Grand Valley State
> University Schools
>
> measured: 36* Total schools: 63 Bay Mills Community College Schools
> measured: 33* Total schools: 48 Grade: C Central Michigan University Schools
> measured:
>
> 50* Total schools: 73 Grade: D Oakland University Schools measured: 8* Total
> schools: 10 Detroit Public Schools Schools measured: 4* Total schools: 14
>
> Saginaw Valley State University Schools measured: 20* Total schools: 34
> Grade: F Eastern Michigan University Schools measured: 9* Total schools: 12
> Northern
>
> Michigan University Schools measured: 7* Total schools: 10 *In many cases,
> the number of schools measured do not match the number of schools in the
> authorizer's
>
> portfolio. This is because the only schools measured were those that had
> three years of academic data. Take action Tell Gov. Rick Snyder and your
> legislators
>
> to impose an immediate moratorium on failing charter authorizers. Urge your
> elected officials to implement tougher accountability standards for
> authorizers
>
> before they are allowed to open new charter schools or expand existing ones.
> ? Call Snyder at 517-373-3400; send a message at http:// bit .ly/1CUkfmL ;
>
> tweet him at @OneToughNerd; or post to his Facebook page: www .facebook .com
> /GovernorRickSnyder ? Use this link to find contact information for your
> state
>
> representative: http:// bit .ly /findmirep ? Use this link to find contact
> information for your state senator: http:// bit .ly/ findmisenator
>
>
>
Tuesday, February 24, 2015
Monday, February 23, 2015
California senator says "Welfare queen" law must go
As long as the fox is in charge of the hen house, the hens haven't a chance.
First we need to get rid of the liars. Who are they? Well, take a
look around. Who has decided that limiting the welfare assistance to
citizens will reduce the birth rate, but have no thought regarding
limiting the amount of money a citizen is allowed to stick away in
off-shore banks.
The rules are made by and for the Ruling Class.
For me, I pledge allegiance to the Working Class, and to the potential
We represent. One People, One World. Standing for dignity and respect
and love for all.
Carl Jarvis On 2/22/15, Charles Krugman <ckrugman@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> California senator says 'welfare queen' law must go
>
> By Christopher Cadelago -
> ccadelago@sacbee.com
>
> 02/22/2015 4:00 AM
> | Updated:
>
>
> Sen. Holly Mitchell, D-Los Angeles, talks to then-Senate President Pro Tem
> Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, and Sen. Kevin de Leon, D- Los Angeles,
> during a Legislative informational hearing on gun laws on Jan. 29, 2013.
>
>
>
> Sen. Holly Mitchell, D-Los Angeles, talks to then-Senate President Pro Tem
> Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, and Sen. Kevin de Leon, D- Los Angeles,
> during a Legislative informational hearing on gun laws on Jan. 29, 2013.
> Hector Amezcua / hamezcua@sacbee.com
>
>
>
>
> The law passed two decades ago, with Democrats in charge of the Legislature:
> In California, a family that conceives and births an additional child while
> on welfare is barred from getting an increase in its grant.
>
> Today, with Democrats still in the majority, the measure's base of support
> is eroding. Advocates for the poor are mounting their strongest effort yet
> to repeal the so-called "maximum family grant" rule, a big-ticket spending
> item that could bleed into state budget talks.
>
> Sen. Holly Mitchell of Los Angeles, in her third attempt at abolishing the
> law, says it was based on the pejorative concept of the "welfare queen," a
> woman who has babies while on welfare to collect more cash assistance.
> Instead of discouraging welfare recipients from having children, she said,
> it helped the state achieve the "dubious honor" of having the nation's
> highest child poverty rate.
>
> She points to a UC Berkeley brief on the topic that found such family caps
> don't alter reproductive behavior.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> "It is a classist, sexist, anti-democratic, anti-child, anti-family policy
> whose premise did not come to fruition," said Mitchell, the author of Senate
> Bill 23. "It did not accomplish what it set out to accomplish. So it's
> appropriate to take it off the books."
>
> Others believe reinstating grant payments, totaling about $130 per child
> each month, will not lift aid recipients out of poverty.
>
> Mary L.G. Theroux, senior vice president of The Independent Institute, a
> nonprofit research organization based in Oakland, said she doesn't dispute
> that the law did not prevent births.
>
> "The opportunity cost of them having another kid is not going to stop them
> from doing it," she said.
>
> But she said financial constraints give growing families incentives to get
> help from charities, relatives or find higher-paying jobs.
>
>
>
>
> "What these programs are doing is completely handicapping people from
> learning how to take care of their families and how to help their children
> have a better life than they do," she said.
>
> In many ways, the debate today mirrors the one held on the Assembly floor in
> 1994, when then-Republican Assembly Leader Jim Brulte urged his colleagues
> to pass a bill he described as the first step in a comprehensive
> welfare-reform package.
>
> "When someone is on welfare for 20, 25 years, that is a serious problem," he
> recalled in an interview. "And part of that was incented by a system where,
> frankly, some people could make more money not working than they could
> working."
>
> In debate over the bill, Democratic Assemblyman John Burton disagreed,
> calling it a cheap shot at the poor masked as a push for self-sufficiency.
> He was on the losing end of the vote.
>
> Efforts to change the system continued.
>
>
>
>
> President Bill Clinton signed welfare reform into law in 1996, and Gov. Pete
> Wilson and lawmakers compromised on a state program called CalWORKs the next
> year. It stiffened work requirements and set time limits, sanctions, grant
> levels and eligibility requirements. Maximum family grants took effect in
> 1997.
>
> In recent years, the growing number of families living in poverty has
> generated new discussion. Anti-poverty advocates have been joined by a range
> of others who question the way the law seeks to regulate birth control use.
>
> It specifies that families must use certain forms of birth control - IUD,
> Norplant or sterilization - and must prove contraceptive failure to receive
> aid. It allows exceptions for children born as a result of rape or incest if
> reported to a health, social services or law enforcement official. The rule
> specifies that children born into families where any member drew government
> cash aid 10 months before a child's birth are ineligible.
>
> California Latinas for Reproductive Justice and others object to the
> government "using the threat of deeper poverty" if recipients don't use
> contraception.
>
> The current Assembly speaker, Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, said reversing the
> policy is critically important to families, telling a recent women's policy
> summit in Sacramento that the criteria are "invasive (and) insulting."
>
> Linda Wanner, associate director of government relations at the California
> Catholic Conference, said her group favors annulment, but for other
> reasons.
>
> "With this bill, we have the opportunity to remove burdensome county
> processes, reduce the number of children living in poverty, and, more
> importantly, eliminate the incentive to terminate a pregnancy," she said.
>
> Some 24 states put in place family caps over the past two decades, according
> to the UC Berkeley Law Center on Reproductive Rights and Justice. Dr. Elena
> Gutiérrez, who authored the study in 2013, found that caps remained in 15
> other states.
>
> Targeting the rule in California has proved difficult. Former Assemblywoman
> Sally Lieber, D-Mountain View, proposed a plan to phase it out and was
> stymied by the recession and budget crisis in 2007. Former Assemblywoman
> Mariko Yamada, D-Davis, later unsuccessfully sought to exempt disabled
> children. Mitchell introduced bills that stalled in both houses and returned
> last year with a successful resolution to repeal it as soon as
> "legislatively possible."
>
> Lieber questioned whether revocation was being adequately prioritized by
> majority Democrats. "Now that the money is there, we need to see if the
> political will is there," she said.
>
> Indeed, much of the debate will hinge on funding. An analysis prepared last
> spring estimates that overturning the rule would cost about $205 million in
> the first year. Some 131,400 children are affected by the grant rule.
>
> Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León, D-Los Angeles, has said he supports
> repeal, but he chaired the committee in which the bill previously was
> shelved. Last week, he unveiled a plan to reverse deep cuts to subsidized
> child care, another social services item that competes for scare resources.
>
> Senate Republican Leader Bob Huff, R-Diamond Bar, said helping families in
> poverty is an important role for officials in government as well as people
> outside. The issue is whether repealing the maximum grant is the best use of
> money.
>
> "Putting $200 million into an effective job training program or providing
> child care for working mothers would be a better use of resources," Huff
> said. He pointed to a long list of other needs, including services for the
> developmentally disabled and foster children.
>
> Vivian Thorp, 48, of Oakland said she could have used the extra help.
>
> After losing her job at Walmart to an injury, she and her family lived in an
> abandoned building when the house they were living in was foreclosed on. She
> had a job, but money was tight.
>
> When her second daughter was born, Thorp was told that the maximum grant
> rule would prevent her from getting additional cash assistance. She
> successfully appealed, arguing that she was not clearly notified of the
> law's provisions.
>
> By the time her third child arrived, Thorp said, she stole diapers for two
> years and stuffed food in her bag when she ran out of money at the end of
> the month. She remembers visiting a department store and swapping her
> daughter's beat-up shoes with new ones. She said she was depressed and
> suicidal.
>
> "I went from Walmart to welfare to Wellbutrin," she said.
>
> Thorp, now a legal advocate for the homeless and others down on their luck,
> said she earns a "working class" living. She's been off welfare since 2011.
> The grant money she lost out on would have helped speed up her transition,
> Thorp said.
>
> "To actually deprive a child of having the ability to wear clean diapers
> should be a crime, especially when a parent like myself was in a
> welfare-to-work activity and doing everything right - playing by the rules,"
> she said.
>
> With the cannonade for repeal growing louder, Brulte, now the chairman of
> the state Republican Party, said his belief in the bill hasn't changed. He
> brought up the measure at a recent dinner with former Democratic Assembly
> Speaker Willie Brown, where they addressed freshman members of the
> Legislature.
>
> "I told them it was important to do what you believe is right and stay true
> to" themselves. "Principles don't change," Brulte said.
>
> But, he added in his comments to the lawmakers, "Don't think what you do
> will last forever."
>
>
> Call Christopher Cadelago, Bee Capitol Bureau, (916) 326-5538. Follow him on
> Twitter @ccadelago.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article10966202.html
First we need to get rid of the liars. Who are they? Well, take a
look around. Who has decided that limiting the welfare assistance to
citizens will reduce the birth rate, but have no thought regarding
limiting the amount of money a citizen is allowed to stick away in
off-shore banks.
The rules are made by and for the Ruling Class.
For me, I pledge allegiance to the Working Class, and to the potential
We represent. One People, One World. Standing for dignity and respect
and love for all.
Carl Jarvis On 2/22/15, Charles Krugman <ckrugman@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> California senator says 'welfare queen' law must go
>
> By Christopher Cadelago -
> ccadelago@sacbee.com
>
> 02/22/2015 4:00 AM
> | Updated:
>
>
> Sen. Holly Mitchell, D-Los Angeles, talks to then-Senate President Pro Tem
> Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, and Sen. Kevin de Leon, D- Los Angeles,
> during a Legislative informational hearing on gun laws on Jan. 29, 2013.
>
>
>
> Sen. Holly Mitchell, D-Los Angeles, talks to then-Senate President Pro Tem
> Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, and Sen. Kevin de Leon, D- Los Angeles,
> during a Legislative informational hearing on gun laws on Jan. 29, 2013.
> Hector Amezcua / hamezcua@sacbee.com
>
>
>
>
> The law passed two decades ago, with Democrats in charge of the Legislature:
> In California, a family that conceives and births an additional child while
> on welfare is barred from getting an increase in its grant.
>
> Today, with Democrats still in the majority, the measure's base of support
> is eroding. Advocates for the poor are mounting their strongest effort yet
> to repeal the so-called "maximum family grant" rule, a big-ticket spending
> item that could bleed into state budget talks.
>
> Sen. Holly Mitchell of Los Angeles, in her third attempt at abolishing the
> law, says it was based on the pejorative concept of the "welfare queen," a
> woman who has babies while on welfare to collect more cash assistance.
> Instead of discouraging welfare recipients from having children, she said,
> it helped the state achieve the "dubious honor" of having the nation's
> highest child poverty rate.
>
> She points to a UC Berkeley brief on the topic that found such family caps
> don't alter reproductive behavior.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> "It is a classist, sexist, anti-democratic, anti-child, anti-family policy
> whose premise did not come to fruition," said Mitchell, the author of Senate
> Bill 23. "It did not accomplish what it set out to accomplish. So it's
> appropriate to take it off the books."
>
> Others believe reinstating grant payments, totaling about $130 per child
> each month, will not lift aid recipients out of poverty.
>
> Mary L.G. Theroux, senior vice president of The Independent Institute, a
> nonprofit research organization based in Oakland, said she doesn't dispute
> that the law did not prevent births.
>
> "The opportunity cost of them having another kid is not going to stop them
> from doing it," she said.
>
> But she said financial constraints give growing families incentives to get
> help from charities, relatives or find higher-paying jobs.
>
>
>
>
> "What these programs are doing is completely handicapping people from
> learning how to take care of their families and how to help their children
> have a better life than they do," she said.
>
> In many ways, the debate today mirrors the one held on the Assembly floor in
> 1994, when then-Republican Assembly Leader Jim Brulte urged his colleagues
> to pass a bill he described as the first step in a comprehensive
> welfare-reform package.
>
> "When someone is on welfare for 20, 25 years, that is a serious problem," he
> recalled in an interview. "And part of that was incented by a system where,
> frankly, some people could make more money not working than they could
> working."
>
> In debate over the bill, Democratic Assemblyman John Burton disagreed,
> calling it a cheap shot at the poor masked as a push for self-sufficiency.
> He was on the losing end of the vote.
>
> Efforts to change the system continued.
>
>
>
>
> President Bill Clinton signed welfare reform into law in 1996, and Gov. Pete
> Wilson and lawmakers compromised on a state program called CalWORKs the next
> year. It stiffened work requirements and set time limits, sanctions, grant
> levels and eligibility requirements. Maximum family grants took effect in
> 1997.
>
> In recent years, the growing number of families living in poverty has
> generated new discussion. Anti-poverty advocates have been joined by a range
> of others who question the way the law seeks to regulate birth control use.
>
> It specifies that families must use certain forms of birth control - IUD,
> Norplant or sterilization - and must prove contraceptive failure to receive
> aid. It allows exceptions for children born as a result of rape or incest if
> reported to a health, social services or law enforcement official. The rule
> specifies that children born into families where any member drew government
> cash aid 10 months before a child's birth are ineligible.
>
> California Latinas for Reproductive Justice and others object to the
> government "using the threat of deeper poverty" if recipients don't use
> contraception.
>
> The current Assembly speaker, Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, said reversing the
> policy is critically important to families, telling a recent women's policy
> summit in Sacramento that the criteria are "invasive (and) insulting."
>
> Linda Wanner, associate director of government relations at the California
> Catholic Conference, said her group favors annulment, but for other
> reasons.
>
> "With this bill, we have the opportunity to remove burdensome county
> processes, reduce the number of children living in poverty, and, more
> importantly, eliminate the incentive to terminate a pregnancy," she said.
>
> Some 24 states put in place family caps over the past two decades, according
> to the UC Berkeley Law Center on Reproductive Rights and Justice. Dr. Elena
> Gutiérrez, who authored the study in 2013, found that caps remained in 15
> other states.
>
> Targeting the rule in California has proved difficult. Former Assemblywoman
> Sally Lieber, D-Mountain View, proposed a plan to phase it out and was
> stymied by the recession and budget crisis in 2007. Former Assemblywoman
> Mariko Yamada, D-Davis, later unsuccessfully sought to exempt disabled
> children. Mitchell introduced bills that stalled in both houses and returned
> last year with a successful resolution to repeal it as soon as
> "legislatively possible."
>
> Lieber questioned whether revocation was being adequately prioritized by
> majority Democrats. "Now that the money is there, we need to see if the
> political will is there," she said.
>
> Indeed, much of the debate will hinge on funding. An analysis prepared last
> spring estimates that overturning the rule would cost about $205 million in
> the first year. Some 131,400 children are affected by the grant rule.
>
> Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León, D-Los Angeles, has said he supports
> repeal, but he chaired the committee in which the bill previously was
> shelved. Last week, he unveiled a plan to reverse deep cuts to subsidized
> child care, another social services item that competes for scare resources.
>
> Senate Republican Leader Bob Huff, R-Diamond Bar, said helping families in
> poverty is an important role for officials in government as well as people
> outside. The issue is whether repealing the maximum grant is the best use of
> money.
>
> "Putting $200 million into an effective job training program or providing
> child care for working mothers would be a better use of resources," Huff
> said. He pointed to a long list of other needs, including services for the
> developmentally disabled and foster children.
>
> Vivian Thorp, 48, of Oakland said she could have used the extra help.
>
> After losing her job at Walmart to an injury, she and her family lived in an
> abandoned building when the house they were living in was foreclosed on. She
> had a job, but money was tight.
>
> When her second daughter was born, Thorp was told that the maximum grant
> rule would prevent her from getting additional cash assistance. She
> successfully appealed, arguing that she was not clearly notified of the
> law's provisions.
>
> By the time her third child arrived, Thorp said, she stole diapers for two
> years and stuffed food in her bag when she ran out of money at the end of
> the month. She remembers visiting a department store and swapping her
> daughter's beat-up shoes with new ones. She said she was depressed and
> suicidal.
>
> "I went from Walmart to welfare to Wellbutrin," she said.
>
> Thorp, now a legal advocate for the homeless and others down on their luck,
> said she earns a "working class" living. She's been off welfare since 2011.
> The grant money she lost out on would have helped speed up her transition,
> Thorp said.
>
> "To actually deprive a child of having the ability to wear clean diapers
> should be a crime, especially when a parent like myself was in a
> welfare-to-work activity and doing everything right - playing by the rules,"
> she said.
>
> With the cannonade for repeal growing louder, Brulte, now the chairman of
> the state Republican Party, said his belief in the bill hasn't changed. He
> brought up the measure at a recent dinner with former Democratic Assembly
> Speaker Willie Brown, where they addressed freshman members of the
> Legislature.
>
> "I told them it was important to do what you believe is right and stay true
> to" themselves. "Principles don't change," Brulte said.
>
> But, he added in his comments to the lawmakers, "Don't think what you do
> will last forever."
>
>
> Call Christopher Cadelago, Bee Capitol Bureau, (916) 326-5538. Follow him on
> Twitter @ccadelago.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article10966202.html
Saturday, February 21, 2015
Are adjunct professors the new fast food workers?
This morning, February 21, 2015, a report on NPR that Wisconsin
legislature is prepared to pass a "Right to Work" bill. Governor
Scott Wallace has consented to sign it if it comes across his desk.
How long will it take for Working Class Wisconsans to realize that
they have been bamboozled by the Brothers Koch? Wisconsin should be
held up as the Poster Child for the outcome of "Divide and Conquer",
tactics of the Ruling Class.
This article focuses on the exploitation of adjunct professors, but in
fact, their working conditions are fast becoming the Norm for many
Working Class Americans. I've talked in the past about my own
contractual agreement with the University of Washington. adjunct
professors are dealt with as are all Working Class people. But it has
taken the adjunct professors and many other white collar workers a
long time to understand that the Ruling Class sees them as no better
than the garbage collector or the hotel maid. And what makes it even
more difficult in the case of the adjunct professors to deal with is
the fact that tenured professors also fear their jobs. Remember, the
Ruling Class is skilled at playing one against the other. "You have
yours, so if you want to keep it, you'll make certain those on the
outside never get in".
Contracting is a form of enslavement. Your group is isolated and
threatened and bullied. Most contracts are totally slanted toward the
needs of the employer. Either you accept their terms and sign on the
dotted line, or someone else will step up and take the job. Another
problem with contract labor is that professional standards begin to be
ignored, both by the contractor as well as the employer. One of the
benefits of contracting is that it saves the employer money. Control
is usually through the job description and penalties for compliance
failure, thus saving added supervisors.
We are rushing backward in time. Back in the 1920's, my uncle Bill,
desperate for a job and possessing low morals, would see a
construction site, hunt up the construction boss and point out some
fellow hard at work. "What do you pay him?" he would ask. When the
boss told him, he would assure the boss that he could work twice as
hard at a lower wage. Very often the boss would put him to the job
and fire the other fellow. And Bill was a worker. But he never
stayed long past the first couple of paychecks. I often wonder how
many families went without dinner or were put out by the Landlord
because Bill had taken the bread winner's job.
But as I keep hammering, we Working Class folk have been programmed
for many years to turn on one another. We have been taught to believe
that if we have more education, earn more money and support the
"right" candidates, we believe we are better than other Working Class
folk. But the Ruling Class sees no difference between a white collar
and a blue collar. Capitalism is a system of exploitation.
Carl Jarvis
On 2/21/15, joe harcz Comcast <joeharcz@comcast.net> wrote:
> And they are still trying to unionizez Chuck.
>
> U of M has become an elite snobby, farm, sad to say.
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Charles Krugman" <ckrugman@sbcglobal.net>
> To: "Blind Democracy Discussion List" <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
> Sent: Monday, February 16, 2015 11:40 PM
> Subject: Re: Are adjunct professors the new fast food workers?
>
>
>> This was an issue when I was at Michigan in the seventies. The graduate
>> teaching assistants were trying to organize and went out on strike at one
>>
>> point for a few days and I know of several nontenured professors that
>> didn't get their tenure because the University used the excuse that they
>> didn't publish enough research to prove they warranted it.
>> Chuck
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Miriam Vieni
>> Sent: Monday, February 16, 2015 7:39 PM
>> To: 'Charles Krugman' ; 'Blind Democracy Discussion List'
>> Subject: RE: Are adjunct professors the new fast food workers?
>>
>> I've seen articles like this for several years now. The universities pay
>> high salaries to administrators and they charge high tuition. It's
>> incredible.
>>
>> Miriam
>>
>> ________________________________
>>
>> From: Blind-Democracy [mailto:blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org] On
>> Behalf Of Charles Krugman
>> Sent: Monday, February 16, 2015 10:18 PM
>> To: Blind Democracy
>> Subject: Are adjunct professors the new fast food workers?
>>
>>
>>
>> Are Adjunct Professors the New Fast-Food Workers?
>>
>> By Ana Beatriz Cholo
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Adjunct Professors Patti Donze is a California State University,
>> Dominguez
>> Hills sociology lecturer doing everything right to become a tenured
>> college
>> professor. She has advanced degrees from well-respected universities and
>> is
>> teaching a full load of five classes this semester. But her net income is
>> $2,500 a month, just barely enough to buy food and pay rent on a studio
>> apartment in Culver City.
>>
>> She has $50,000 in school loan debt - not an extreme amount considering
>> the
>> Juris Doctorate and Ph.D. that she has under her belt, but she said it's
>> not
>> feasible to pay even the minimum monthly payment and is researching loan
>> forgiveness programs.
>>
>> Besides fast-food workers, there is another face of low-wage workers
>> across
>> the country. For many universities and colleges, both public and private,
>> it's their most embarrassing secret - paying educated professionals
>> minimum
>> wage salaries with no benefits. Adjuncts are paid much less than tenured
>> and
>> full-time faculty and typically do not have union representation.
>>
>> For many adjuncts, banding together to speak up is one approach to
>> winning
>> better pay, benefits and some job security, such as longer and more
>> stable
>> contracts. These are the aims of academic unions and the New Faculty
>> Majority, an advocacy organization committed to bringing about income
>> equality for all college faculty in areas where unions are weak.
>>
>> Adrianna Kezar, a professor at the University of Southern California's
>> Rossier School of Education and co-director of the Delphi Project on the
>> Changing Faculty and Student Success, is an expert on change and
>> leadership
>> in higher education. She believes the unionization movement has been the
>> big
>> catalyst for the recent focus on unfair working conditions for these
>> highly
>> qualified educators.
>>
>> "Fifty percent of the faculty in our country make what somebody at
>> McDonald's makes," she said, adding that more and more adjuncts are going
>>
>> on
>> public assistance and needing food stamps to survive.
>>
>> Last year in California, Local 1021 of the Service Employees
>> International
>> Union (SEIU) began an intense campaign to organize adjunct faculty
>> members
>> in the Bay Area and Los Angeles, part of a national Adjunct Action
>> campaign
>> that is taking place in American cities.
>>
>> Recently unionized schools in the Bay Area include St. Mary's College,
>> Dominican University, Mills College, San Francisco Art Institute and the
>> California College of the Arts are all in various stages of unionizing.
>> In
>> the Los Angeles region, Whittier College, Laguna College of Art + Design
>> and
>> Otis College of Art and Design have voted to unionize, with the faculty
>> at
>> the California Institute of the Arts voting on the matter in March.
>>
>> Chris Johnson has been a part of the adjunct faculty at Dominican
>> University
>> in San Rafael since 2009. She teaches English there, specifically
>> developmental and business writing, and holds two master's degrees - one
>> in
>> journalism and the other in library science. Like other adjuncts across
>> the
>> nation, she finds out only a couple of weeks ahead of time whether she
>> will
>> be teaching any classes during the upcoming semester. She must leave her
>> schedule open and simply cross her fingers.
>>
>> "We earn $4,305 to teach one class at Dominican," she said in an
>> interview.
>> "That is considered high for the nation but we are in the Bay Area, which
>>
>> is
>> considered one of the most expensive places in the world. The secretaries
>> make more than we do. We have no benefits, no health care, but now that
>> we
>> have a union that is going to change."
>>
>> A study released last year by the Institute for Policy Studies noted that
>> colleges with millionaire presidents are the same ones whose students are
>> more indebted and where adjuncts are more heavily relied upon.
>>
>> Cal State adjunct faculty are represented by California Faculty
>> Association
>> (another SEIU local), which represents more than 23,000 employees ranging
>> from professors and lecturers, to counselors and coaches.
>>
>> The CFA president, Lillian Taiz, said there are members who have been
>> teaching for 30 years but are still considered temporary workers.
>>
>> Taiz said there is no difference between lecturers and tenure track
>> professors, and remembers when all educators had a good shot at getting a
>> tenure track job and enjoying a middle-class life.
>>
>> "Universities across the country," she said, "instead of investing in
>> long-term faculty who will build and grow the curriculum and students,
>> are
>> hiring temporary workers. It's not any different than [in] corporate
>> America. The disinvestment in education made universities turn to this
>> haphazard temporary workforce."
>>
>> Taiz added that the only way for things to get better is if adjuncts come
>> together and demand it.
>>
>> "The connection to the fast-food workers is very similar," said Taiz.
>> "Corporations are not going to pay them $15 an hour out of the goodness
>> of
>> their hearts. It's no different for faculty."
>>
>> Last year, a tentative agreement was reached between the faculty union
>> and
>> Cal State Los Angeles that slightly improved wages for holders of
>> doctorates. Donze said that translated into a $300 per month salary
>> increase
>> - a nice raise but nothing life-changing.
>>
>> She wishes adjunct faculty could be given the same benefits as
>> tenure-track
>> faculty. Her hope is to land such a job in the future, but those types of
>> positions are few in number.
>>
>>
>>
>> "I am teaching a class and I'm getting paid a third of what a tenured
>> professor would get to teach the same exact class."
>>
>> "I am teaching a class and I'm getting paid a third of what a tenured
>> professor would get to teach the same exact class," Donze said. "I was a
>> merit scholar at my law school. I look good on paper, but here I am
>> getting
>> paid less than $20,000 a year. I mean, it was minimum wage on my W-2s. I
>> had
>> no idea that I would graduate with a Ph.D. and be making as little as I
>> do.
>> Starbucks would probably pay more."
>>
>> In a way, Donze is lucky because she has the advantage of teaching all of
>> her classes in one location and, because she works for the Cal State
>> system,
>> health insurance. She's also lucky because she is teaching a full load,
>> but
>> that is always contingent on her department. In 2012, she was bringing
>> home
>> $1,300 per month.
>>
>> "All of my income went towards rent. I didn't have money for food," she
>> said.
>>
>> Despite the financial challenges, Donze said she loves her job.
>>
>> "Basically I want to do exactly what I'm doing," she said. "I have my
>> dream
>> job. I want to teach the people who are going to go out and make the
>> changes
>> that we want to see. They want to make a world that is more equal and
>> just.
>> Students tell me that I have changed their lives."
>>
>> Congressman George Miller (D-CA) highlighted the issue of adjunct pay
>> last
>> year, prior to his retirement, via a reportfrom the House Education and
>> the
>> Workforce Committee. The study, titled, "The Just-In-Time Professor," may
>> pave the way for more interest from state legislatures into how
>> state-funded
>> universities are spending their money, which would help fuel the
>> movement,
>> according to Kezar.
>>
>> As for what is fair pay for adjunct professors, that number depends on
>> the
>> institution, Kezar said. A new union contract at Tufts University, a
>> relatively wealthy institution, will pay all part-time faculty $7,300 per
>> course by September 2016 and those with eight or more years of service
>> will
>> get $8,760 a class. And work done outside of the classroom mentoring
>> students, grading, advising, etc. will also be compensated - something
>> that
>> many adjuncts currently end up doing for students without pay.
>>
>> Although Kezar considers that a reasonable salary, it is not realistic
>> for
>> all institutions, especially those that are not research-based or are
>> state-funded. For instance, a good ballpark salary range for adjuncts in
>> the
>> Cal State system might be in the $5,000 to $6,000 range.
>>
>> ana-beatriz-choloExamining priorities is key, said Kezar, who admitted
>> she
>> would be open to taking a pay cut herself in order to help equalize the
>> pay
>> system for adjuncts.
>>
>> "What's important is student learning and things that don't align with
>> that
>> should not get priority," she said. "We need an across-the-board
>> examination
>> of budgets."
>>
>> Ana Beatriz Cholo
>> Capital & Main
>>
>> Patti Donze photo by Ana Beatriz Cholo
>>
>> http://www.laprogressive.com/adjunct-professors/?utm_source=Progressive%20Ca
>> ucus&utm_campaign=969771ae70-LAP_News_17April12&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_
>> 22a738cce7-969771ae70-268138817
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Blind-Democracy mailing list
>> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
>> https://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>> _______________________________________________
>> Blind-Democracy mailing list
>> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
>> https://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blind-Democracy mailing list
> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
> https://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>
legislature is prepared to pass a "Right to Work" bill. Governor
Scott Wallace has consented to sign it if it comes across his desk.
How long will it take for Working Class Wisconsans to realize that
they have been bamboozled by the Brothers Koch? Wisconsin should be
held up as the Poster Child for the outcome of "Divide and Conquer",
tactics of the Ruling Class.
This article focuses on the exploitation of adjunct professors, but in
fact, their working conditions are fast becoming the Norm for many
Working Class Americans. I've talked in the past about my own
contractual agreement with the University of Washington. adjunct
professors are dealt with as are all Working Class people. But it has
taken the adjunct professors and many other white collar workers a
long time to understand that the Ruling Class sees them as no better
than the garbage collector or the hotel maid. And what makes it even
more difficult in the case of the adjunct professors to deal with is
the fact that tenured professors also fear their jobs. Remember, the
Ruling Class is skilled at playing one against the other. "You have
yours, so if you want to keep it, you'll make certain those on the
outside never get in".
Contracting is a form of enslavement. Your group is isolated and
threatened and bullied. Most contracts are totally slanted toward the
needs of the employer. Either you accept their terms and sign on the
dotted line, or someone else will step up and take the job. Another
problem with contract labor is that professional standards begin to be
ignored, both by the contractor as well as the employer. One of the
benefits of contracting is that it saves the employer money. Control
is usually through the job description and penalties for compliance
failure, thus saving added supervisors.
We are rushing backward in time. Back in the 1920's, my uncle Bill,
desperate for a job and possessing low morals, would see a
construction site, hunt up the construction boss and point out some
fellow hard at work. "What do you pay him?" he would ask. When the
boss told him, he would assure the boss that he could work twice as
hard at a lower wage. Very often the boss would put him to the job
and fire the other fellow. And Bill was a worker. But he never
stayed long past the first couple of paychecks. I often wonder how
many families went without dinner or were put out by the Landlord
because Bill had taken the bread winner's job.
But as I keep hammering, we Working Class folk have been programmed
for many years to turn on one another. We have been taught to believe
that if we have more education, earn more money and support the
"right" candidates, we believe we are better than other Working Class
folk. But the Ruling Class sees no difference between a white collar
and a blue collar. Capitalism is a system of exploitation.
Carl Jarvis
On 2/21/15, joe harcz Comcast <joeharcz@comcast.net> wrote:
> And they are still trying to unionizez Chuck.
>
> U of M has become an elite snobby, farm, sad to say.
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Charles Krugman" <ckrugman@sbcglobal.net>
> To: "Blind Democracy Discussion List" <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
> Sent: Monday, February 16, 2015 11:40 PM
> Subject: Re: Are adjunct professors the new fast food workers?
>
>
>> This was an issue when I was at Michigan in the seventies. The graduate
>> teaching assistants were trying to organize and went out on strike at one
>>
>> point for a few days and I know of several nontenured professors that
>> didn't get their tenure because the University used the excuse that they
>> didn't publish enough research to prove they warranted it.
>> Chuck
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Miriam Vieni
>> Sent: Monday, February 16, 2015 7:39 PM
>> To: 'Charles Krugman' ; 'Blind Democracy Discussion List'
>> Subject: RE: Are adjunct professors the new fast food workers?
>>
>> I've seen articles like this for several years now. The universities pay
>> high salaries to administrators and they charge high tuition. It's
>> incredible.
>>
>> Miriam
>>
>> ________________________________
>>
>> From: Blind-Democracy [mailto:blind-democracy-bounces@octothorp.org] On
>> Behalf Of Charles Krugman
>> Sent: Monday, February 16, 2015 10:18 PM
>> To: Blind Democracy
>> Subject: Are adjunct professors the new fast food workers?
>>
>>
>>
>> Are Adjunct Professors the New Fast-Food Workers?
>>
>> By Ana Beatriz Cholo
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Adjunct Professors Patti Donze is a California State University,
>> Dominguez
>> Hills sociology lecturer doing everything right to become a tenured
>> college
>> professor. She has advanced degrees from well-respected universities and
>> is
>> teaching a full load of five classes this semester. But her net income is
>> $2,500 a month, just barely enough to buy food and pay rent on a studio
>> apartment in Culver City.
>>
>> She has $50,000 in school loan debt - not an extreme amount considering
>> the
>> Juris Doctorate and Ph.D. that she has under her belt, but she said it's
>> not
>> feasible to pay even the minimum monthly payment and is researching loan
>> forgiveness programs.
>>
>> Besides fast-food workers, there is another face of low-wage workers
>> across
>> the country. For many universities and colleges, both public and private,
>> it's their most embarrassing secret - paying educated professionals
>> minimum
>> wage salaries with no benefits. Adjuncts are paid much less than tenured
>> and
>> full-time faculty and typically do not have union representation.
>>
>> For many adjuncts, banding together to speak up is one approach to
>> winning
>> better pay, benefits and some job security, such as longer and more
>> stable
>> contracts. These are the aims of academic unions and the New Faculty
>> Majority, an advocacy organization committed to bringing about income
>> equality for all college faculty in areas where unions are weak.
>>
>> Adrianna Kezar, a professor at the University of Southern California's
>> Rossier School of Education and co-director of the Delphi Project on the
>> Changing Faculty and Student Success, is an expert on change and
>> leadership
>> in higher education. She believes the unionization movement has been the
>> big
>> catalyst for the recent focus on unfair working conditions for these
>> highly
>> qualified educators.
>>
>> "Fifty percent of the faculty in our country make what somebody at
>> McDonald's makes," she said, adding that more and more adjuncts are going
>>
>> on
>> public assistance and needing food stamps to survive.
>>
>> Last year in California, Local 1021 of the Service Employees
>> International
>> Union (SEIU) began an intense campaign to organize adjunct faculty
>> members
>> in the Bay Area and Los Angeles, part of a national Adjunct Action
>> campaign
>> that is taking place in American cities.
>>
>> Recently unionized schools in the Bay Area include St. Mary's College,
>> Dominican University, Mills College, San Francisco Art Institute and the
>> California College of the Arts are all in various stages of unionizing.
>> In
>> the Los Angeles region, Whittier College, Laguna College of Art + Design
>> and
>> Otis College of Art and Design have voted to unionize, with the faculty
>> at
>> the California Institute of the Arts voting on the matter in March.
>>
>> Chris Johnson has been a part of the adjunct faculty at Dominican
>> University
>> in San Rafael since 2009. She teaches English there, specifically
>> developmental and business writing, and holds two master's degrees - one
>> in
>> journalism and the other in library science. Like other adjuncts across
>> the
>> nation, she finds out only a couple of weeks ahead of time whether she
>> will
>> be teaching any classes during the upcoming semester. She must leave her
>> schedule open and simply cross her fingers.
>>
>> "We earn $4,305 to teach one class at Dominican," she said in an
>> interview.
>> "That is considered high for the nation but we are in the Bay Area, which
>>
>> is
>> considered one of the most expensive places in the world. The secretaries
>> make more than we do. We have no benefits, no health care, but now that
>> we
>> have a union that is going to change."
>>
>> A study released last year by the Institute for Policy Studies noted that
>> colleges with millionaire presidents are the same ones whose students are
>> more indebted and where adjuncts are more heavily relied upon.
>>
>> Cal State adjunct faculty are represented by California Faculty
>> Association
>> (another SEIU local), which represents more than 23,000 employees ranging
>> from professors and lecturers, to counselors and coaches.
>>
>> The CFA president, Lillian Taiz, said there are members who have been
>> teaching for 30 years but are still considered temporary workers.
>>
>> Taiz said there is no difference between lecturers and tenure track
>> professors, and remembers when all educators had a good shot at getting a
>> tenure track job and enjoying a middle-class life.
>>
>> "Universities across the country," she said, "instead of investing in
>> long-term faculty who will build and grow the curriculum and students,
>> are
>> hiring temporary workers. It's not any different than [in] corporate
>> America. The disinvestment in education made universities turn to this
>> haphazard temporary workforce."
>>
>> Taiz added that the only way for things to get better is if adjuncts come
>> together and demand it.
>>
>> "The connection to the fast-food workers is very similar," said Taiz.
>> "Corporations are not going to pay them $15 an hour out of the goodness
>> of
>> their hearts. It's no different for faculty."
>>
>> Last year, a tentative agreement was reached between the faculty union
>> and
>> Cal State Los Angeles that slightly improved wages for holders of
>> doctorates. Donze said that translated into a $300 per month salary
>> increase
>> - a nice raise but nothing life-changing.
>>
>> She wishes adjunct faculty could be given the same benefits as
>> tenure-track
>> faculty. Her hope is to land such a job in the future, but those types of
>> positions are few in number.
>>
>>
>>
>> "I am teaching a class and I'm getting paid a third of what a tenured
>> professor would get to teach the same exact class."
>>
>> "I am teaching a class and I'm getting paid a third of what a tenured
>> professor would get to teach the same exact class," Donze said. "I was a
>> merit scholar at my law school. I look good on paper, but here I am
>> getting
>> paid less than $20,000 a year. I mean, it was minimum wage on my W-2s. I
>> had
>> no idea that I would graduate with a Ph.D. and be making as little as I
>> do.
>> Starbucks would probably pay more."
>>
>> In a way, Donze is lucky because she has the advantage of teaching all of
>> her classes in one location and, because she works for the Cal State
>> system,
>> health insurance. She's also lucky because she is teaching a full load,
>> but
>> that is always contingent on her department. In 2012, she was bringing
>> home
>> $1,300 per month.
>>
>> "All of my income went towards rent. I didn't have money for food," she
>> said.
>>
>> Despite the financial challenges, Donze said she loves her job.
>>
>> "Basically I want to do exactly what I'm doing," she said. "I have my
>> dream
>> job. I want to teach the people who are going to go out and make the
>> changes
>> that we want to see. They want to make a world that is more equal and
>> just.
>> Students tell me that I have changed their lives."
>>
>> Congressman George Miller (D-CA) highlighted the issue of adjunct pay
>> last
>> year, prior to his retirement, via a reportfrom the House Education and
>> the
>> Workforce Committee. The study, titled, "The Just-In-Time Professor," may
>> pave the way for more interest from state legislatures into how
>> state-funded
>> universities are spending their money, which would help fuel the
>> movement,
>> according to Kezar.
>>
>> As for what is fair pay for adjunct professors, that number depends on
>> the
>> institution, Kezar said. A new union contract at Tufts University, a
>> relatively wealthy institution, will pay all part-time faculty $7,300 per
>> course by September 2016 and those with eight or more years of service
>> will
>> get $8,760 a class. And work done outside of the classroom mentoring
>> students, grading, advising, etc. will also be compensated - something
>> that
>> many adjuncts currently end up doing for students without pay.
>>
>> Although Kezar considers that a reasonable salary, it is not realistic
>> for
>> all institutions, especially those that are not research-based or are
>> state-funded. For instance, a good ballpark salary range for adjuncts in
>> the
>> Cal State system might be in the $5,000 to $6,000 range.
>>
>> ana-beatriz-choloExamining priorities is key, said Kezar, who admitted
>> she
>> would be open to taking a pay cut herself in order to help equalize the
>> pay
>> system for adjuncts.
>>
>> "What's important is student learning and things that don't align with
>> that
>> should not get priority," she said. "We need an across-the-board
>> examination
>> of budgets."
>>
>> Ana Beatriz Cholo
>> Capital & Main
>>
>> Patti Donze photo by Ana Beatriz Cholo
>>
>> http://www.laprogressive.com/adjunct-professors/?utm_source=Progressive%20Ca
>> ucus&utm_campaign=969771ae70-LAP_News_17April12&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_
>> 22a738cce7-969771ae70-268138817
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Blind-Democracy mailing list
>> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
>> https://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>> _______________________________________________
>> Blind-Democracy mailing list
>> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
>> https://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blind-Democracy mailing list
> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
> https://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>
Friday, February 20, 2015
same old, same old
For those who believe that Americas politics are owned by the Ruling
Class, and no matter how far back you go, it's the same old, same old.
Follow the link and go to the original Democracy Now broadcast back on
February 19, 1996. Just change the names and places and it could be
today's news.
www.democracynow.org.
Carl Jarvis
Democracy Now! Celebrates 19 Years on Air
Today is the 19th anniversary of the first radio broadcast of
Democracy Now! from the studios of WPFW in Washington, D.C. Now we
broadcast on more than
1,300 TV and radio stations across the world and reach millions of
viewers and listeners through our website.
Feb 19, 2015
list end
Class, and no matter how far back you go, it's the same old, same old.
Follow the link and go to the original Democracy Now broadcast back on
February 19, 1996. Just change the names and places and it could be
today's news.
www.democracynow.org.
Carl Jarvis
Democracy Now! Celebrates 19 Years on Air
Today is the 19th anniversary of the first radio broadcast of
Democracy Now! from the studios of WPFW in Washington, D.C. Now we
broadcast on more than
1,300 TV and radio stations across the world and reach millions of
viewers and listeners through our website.
Feb 19, 2015
list end
Thursday, February 19, 2015
Telling the Truth About Religious Violence: or is it Human violence?
Miriam has this one right. Why is it that we never look within
ourselves when it comes to hate crimes and violence? My beef with
religion is not that it causes war and rape and plunder. That comes
by brutish, mindless human behavior. No, my objection to religion is
that it assumes absolutes. God, whoever God is, is Perfect.
Therefore, His words are absolute Truth. We talk about "The Word of
God", and yet we agree that words are fickle and can be vague and have
shades of meaning. Or opposite meanings. And of course there is that
pesky little problem that religious folk overlook. God, all Gods,
speak through the mouths of men....mostly men, since men seem to have
been "created" first, and are most often the head of the house, tribe,
nation and Church.
Once men have spoken the "Word of God", they must then decide whether
or not to follow that Word. Naturally anyone who chooses not to
follow the Word, or claims a different Word, must be taught the error
of their ways. The leading religions all practice "converting" other
people. Not content to follow the Word, they want to, "Share" it with
the entire world. Once again it is the use of words that cause men to
turn against men. True, the invention of Religion does provide a safe
haven for tyrants and fanatics to operate within. But these Lunatics
would find another cover if we outlawed religions. Remember, they
live under rocks and come out to bay at the moon after dark.
We used to call them Lunatics, but words change and today we call them
such names as, Mister Speaker of the House.
Carl Jarvis
On 2/18/15, ted chittenden <tchittenden@cox.net> wrote:
> Carl:
> I think both you and your mother are right. Quoting from Rod Stewart's 1977
> controversial chart entry, "The Killing of Georgie":
>
> "Never wait or hesitate.
> Get in kid before it's too late.
> You may never get another chance.
>
> Cause youth's a mask but it don't last.
> Live it long and live it fast."
> --
> Ted Chittenden
>
> Every story has at least two sides if not more.
> ---- Carl Jarvis <carjar82@gmail.com> wrote:
> The truth is that we humans can't face the truth. We play, "Let's
> Pretend", as we skip down the Yellow Brick Road toward the Emerald
> City. We can't face the truth. The Truth is that despite our amazing
> scientific advances, we can't begin to understand our Universe.
> Rather than admit it, we invent Fairy Tales to provide answers to the
> troubling unknown. Especially the unsettling truth about our
> mortality.
> To me, one of the strangest human activities is the amount of energy
> and time some people spend on practicing to believe that they will
> have life everlasting, when they are sitting about wasting the one
> life they have for certain. My mother used to say, "Whatever else
> folks choose to believe, I know that I have this one trip through
> life, for sure. So I'd better make the most out of it".
>
> Carl Jarvis
>
>
> On 2/14/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
>> Telling the Truth About Religious Violence
>> Saturday, 14 February 2015 13:12 By Donald Kaul, OtherWords | Op-Ed
>> President Barack Obama committed the ultimate political blunder the other
>> day. He blurted out the truth.
>> Speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast, he warned his Christian
>> brethren
>> against "getting up on our high horse" when condemning the violence of
>> Muslim terrorists.
>> "During the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds
>> in
>> the name of Christ," he said. "In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow
>> all
>> too often was justified in the name of Christ."
>> Naturally, all hell broke loose.
>> The Rupert Murdoch army launched into full attack, supported by Rush
>> Limbaugh air strikes. Rabid Fox News commentators, foaming at the mouth,
>> fought each other for control of the mics to condemn the president's
>> remarks
>> as "un-American" and, even worse, liberal. He was derided as irreligious,
>> weak, and not a real American.
>> It was to be expected.
>> People will forgive a politician for telling lies. Sweet deceptions,
>> after
>> all, are what politics are all about. But let him speak the truth just
>> once,
>> even inadvertently, and he becomes the object of scorn, ridicule, and
>> contempt.
>> Remember the case of George Romney?
>> Running for president in 1967, he confessed that he had been
>> "brainwashed"
>> by Pentagon propaganda into believing that the Vietnam War was winnable.
>> And
>> he had been, of course, as had most of the American public at the time.
>> But as soon as Romney uttered this truthful statement, his presidential
>> hopes vanished in a blink - never to be seen again.
>> I'd like to note that this lesson wasn't lost on George's son. As nearly
>> as
>> can be determined, Mitt Romney never told the truth once during his 2012
>> campaign. He lost anyway, proving that it takes more than a lack of
>> honesty
>> to fool the American people.
>> But back to Obama. What he was trying to say, at an inter-faith event,
>> was
>> that we shouldn't hold all Muslims responsible for the acts of a relative
>> few. Christianity also has a skeleton or two in its historical closet.
>> The Christian right, which includes most of the Republicans in Congress,
>> pounced.
>> The Crusades were a righteous response to Islamic aggression, they said.
>> The
>> Inquisition? Highly overrated as an atrocity. And Jim Crow? That was "a
>> thousand years ago," said Limbaugh.
>> To which one can only say, "Oh come on."
>> The truth is, you can act as though terrorist violence against the West
>> is
>> unprovoked. But it's not. It's the bitter fruit of the past 100 years of
>> subjugation of the Arab and Muslim peoples by Western powers, thirsty for
>> the oil beneath the Middle East.
>> For a century the United States and its allies systematically subverted
>> any
>> suggestion of democracy in the region in favor of vicious thugs we could
>> control through bribery.
>> And when a popularly elected politician would surface every once in a
>> while,
>> we'd get rid of him and install our own puppet. Think of the popularly
>> elected Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran, whom the CIA overthrew in 1953,
>> replacing him with the brutal and corrupt Shah.
>> That's the genesis of the mess we're dealing with now. Not Islam, not
>> pure
>> evil, but 100 years of Western domination.
>> In any case, it's more than a little hypocritical for the Christian right
>> to
>> be up in arms over the perversion of Christianity.
>> This is a group, after all, whose representatives in Congress have sought
>> to
>> take health insurance from the poorest workers among us. They've tried to
>> deport young Americans because their parents brought them here without
>> papers many years ago. They've supported the use of torture and fought to
>> cut off unemployment insurance to the long-term unemployed.
>> Any of that remind you of Christianity?
>> This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may
>> not
>> be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.
>> DONALD KAUL
>> Donald Kaul lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
>> ________________________________________
>> Show Comments
>> Hide Comments
>> <a href="http://truthout.disqus.com/?url=ref">View the discussion
>> thread.</a>
>> Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
>> Telling the Truth About Religious Violence
>> Saturday, 14 February 2015 13:12 By Donald Kaul, OtherWords | Op-Ed
>> . font size Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink
>> reference not valid.Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error!
>> Hyperlink
>> reference not valid.
>> . President Barack Obama committed the ultimate political blunder the
>> other day. He blurted out the truth.
>> . Speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast, he warned his Christian
>> brethren against "getting up on our high horse" when condemning the
>> violence
>> of Muslim terrorists.
>> "During the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds
>> in
>> the name of Christ," he said. "In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow
>> all
>> too often was justified in the name of Christ."
>> Naturally, all hell broke loose.
>> The Rupert Murdoch army launched into full attack, supported by Rush
>> Limbaugh air strikes. Rabid Fox News commentators, foaming at the mouth,
>> fought each other for control of the mics to condemn the president's
>> remarks
>> as "un-American" and, even worse, liberal. He was derided as irreligious,
>> weak, and not a real American.
>> It was to be expected.
>> People will forgive a politician for telling lies. Sweet deceptions,
>> after
>> all, are what politics are all about. But let him speak the truth just
>> once,
>> even inadvertently, and he becomes the object of scorn, ridicule, and
>> contempt.
>> Remember the case of George Romney?
>> Running for president in 1967, he confessed that he had been
>> "brainwashed"
>> by Pentagon propaganda into believing that the Vietnam War was winnable.
>> And
>> he had been, of course, as had most of the American public at the time.
>> But as soon as Romney uttered this truthful statement, his presidential
>> hopes vanished in a blink - never to be seen again.
>> I'd like to note that this lesson wasn't lost on George's son. As nearly
>> as
>> can be determined, Mitt Romney never told the truth once during his 2012
>> campaign. He lost anyway, proving that it takes more than a lack of
>> honesty
>> to fool the American people.
>> But back to Obama. What he was trying to say, at an inter-faith event,
>> was
>> that we shouldn't hold all Muslims responsible for the acts of a relative
>> few. Christianity also has a skeleton or two in its historical closet.
>> The Christian right, which includes most of the Republicans in Congress,
>> pounced.
>> The Crusades were a righteous response to Islamic aggression, they said.
>> The
>> Inquisition? Highly overrated as an atrocity. And Jim Crow? That was "a
>> thousand years ago," said Limbaugh.
>> To which one can only say, "Oh come on."
>> The truth is, you can act as though terrorist violence against the West
>> is
>> unprovoked. But it's not. It's the bitter fruit of the past 100 years of
>> subjugation of the Arab and Muslim peoples by Western powers, thirsty for
>> the oil beneath the Middle East.
>> For a century the United States and its allies systematically subverted
>> any
>> suggestion of democracy in the region in favor of vicious thugs we could
>> control through bribery.
>> And when a popularly elected politician would surface every once in a
>> while,
>> we'd get rid of him and install our own puppet. Think of the popularly
>> elected Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran, whom the CIA overthrew in 1953,
>> replacing him with the brutal and corrupt Shah.
>> That's the genesis of the mess we're dealing with now. Not Islam, not
>> pure
>> evil, but 100 years of Western domination.
>> In any case, it's more than a little hypocritical for the Christian right
>> to
>> be up in arms over the perversion of Christianity.
>> This is a group, after all, whose representatives in Congress have sought
>> to
>> take health insurance from the poorest workers among us. They've tried to
>> deport young Americans because their parents brought them here without
>> papers many years ago. They've supported the use of torture and fought to
>> cut off unemployment insurance to the long-term unemployed.
>> Any of that remind you of Christianity?
>> This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may
>> not
>> be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.
>> Donald Kaul
>> Donald Kaul lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
>>
>> Show Comments
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Blind-Democracy mailing list
>> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
>> https://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>>
> _______________________________________________
> Blind-Democracy mailing list
> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
> https://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blind-Democracy mailing list
> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
> https://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>
ourselves when it comes to hate crimes and violence? My beef with
religion is not that it causes war and rape and plunder. That comes
by brutish, mindless human behavior. No, my objection to religion is
that it assumes absolutes. God, whoever God is, is Perfect.
Therefore, His words are absolute Truth. We talk about "The Word of
God", and yet we agree that words are fickle and can be vague and have
shades of meaning. Or opposite meanings. And of course there is that
pesky little problem that religious folk overlook. God, all Gods,
speak through the mouths of men....mostly men, since men seem to have
been "created" first, and are most often the head of the house, tribe,
nation and Church.
Once men have spoken the "Word of God", they must then decide whether
or not to follow that Word. Naturally anyone who chooses not to
follow the Word, or claims a different Word, must be taught the error
of their ways. The leading religions all practice "converting" other
people. Not content to follow the Word, they want to, "Share" it with
the entire world. Once again it is the use of words that cause men to
turn against men. True, the invention of Religion does provide a safe
haven for tyrants and fanatics to operate within. But these Lunatics
would find another cover if we outlawed religions. Remember, they
live under rocks and come out to bay at the moon after dark.
We used to call them Lunatics, but words change and today we call them
such names as, Mister Speaker of the House.
Carl Jarvis
On 2/18/15, ted chittenden <tchittenden@cox.net> wrote:
> Carl:
> I think both you and your mother are right. Quoting from Rod Stewart's 1977
> controversial chart entry, "The Killing of Georgie":
>
> "Never wait or hesitate.
> Get in kid before it's too late.
> You may never get another chance.
>
> Cause youth's a mask but it don't last.
> Live it long and live it fast."
> --
> Ted Chittenden
>
> Every story has at least two sides if not more.
> ---- Carl Jarvis <carjar82@gmail.com> wrote:
> The truth is that we humans can't face the truth. We play, "Let's
> Pretend", as we skip down the Yellow Brick Road toward the Emerald
> City. We can't face the truth. The Truth is that despite our amazing
> scientific advances, we can't begin to understand our Universe.
> Rather than admit it, we invent Fairy Tales to provide answers to the
> troubling unknown. Especially the unsettling truth about our
> mortality.
> To me, one of the strangest human activities is the amount of energy
> and time some people spend on practicing to believe that they will
> have life everlasting, when they are sitting about wasting the one
> life they have for certain. My mother used to say, "Whatever else
> folks choose to believe, I know that I have this one trip through
> life, for sure. So I'd better make the most out of it".
>
> Carl Jarvis
>
>
> On 2/14/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
>> Telling the Truth About Religious Violence
>> Saturday, 14 February 2015 13:12 By Donald Kaul, OtherWords | Op-Ed
>> President Barack Obama committed the ultimate political blunder the other
>> day. He blurted out the truth.
>> Speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast, he warned his Christian
>> brethren
>> against "getting up on our high horse" when condemning the violence of
>> Muslim terrorists.
>> "During the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds
>> in
>> the name of Christ," he said. "In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow
>> all
>> too often was justified in the name of Christ."
>> Naturally, all hell broke loose.
>> The Rupert Murdoch army launched into full attack, supported by Rush
>> Limbaugh air strikes. Rabid Fox News commentators, foaming at the mouth,
>> fought each other for control of the mics to condemn the president's
>> remarks
>> as "un-American" and, even worse, liberal. He was derided as irreligious,
>> weak, and not a real American.
>> It was to be expected.
>> People will forgive a politician for telling lies. Sweet deceptions,
>> after
>> all, are what politics are all about. But let him speak the truth just
>> once,
>> even inadvertently, and he becomes the object of scorn, ridicule, and
>> contempt.
>> Remember the case of George Romney?
>> Running for president in 1967, he confessed that he had been
>> "brainwashed"
>> by Pentagon propaganda into believing that the Vietnam War was winnable.
>> And
>> he had been, of course, as had most of the American public at the time.
>> But as soon as Romney uttered this truthful statement, his presidential
>> hopes vanished in a blink - never to be seen again.
>> I'd like to note that this lesson wasn't lost on George's son. As nearly
>> as
>> can be determined, Mitt Romney never told the truth once during his 2012
>> campaign. He lost anyway, proving that it takes more than a lack of
>> honesty
>> to fool the American people.
>> But back to Obama. What he was trying to say, at an inter-faith event,
>> was
>> that we shouldn't hold all Muslims responsible for the acts of a relative
>> few. Christianity also has a skeleton or two in its historical closet.
>> The Christian right, which includes most of the Republicans in Congress,
>> pounced.
>> The Crusades were a righteous response to Islamic aggression, they said.
>> The
>> Inquisition? Highly overrated as an atrocity. And Jim Crow? That was "a
>> thousand years ago," said Limbaugh.
>> To which one can only say, "Oh come on."
>> The truth is, you can act as though terrorist violence against the West
>> is
>> unprovoked. But it's not. It's the bitter fruit of the past 100 years of
>> subjugation of the Arab and Muslim peoples by Western powers, thirsty for
>> the oil beneath the Middle East.
>> For a century the United States and its allies systematically subverted
>> any
>> suggestion of democracy in the region in favor of vicious thugs we could
>> control through bribery.
>> And when a popularly elected politician would surface every once in a
>> while,
>> we'd get rid of him and install our own puppet. Think of the popularly
>> elected Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran, whom the CIA overthrew in 1953,
>> replacing him with the brutal and corrupt Shah.
>> That's the genesis of the mess we're dealing with now. Not Islam, not
>> pure
>> evil, but 100 years of Western domination.
>> In any case, it's more than a little hypocritical for the Christian right
>> to
>> be up in arms over the perversion of Christianity.
>> This is a group, after all, whose representatives in Congress have sought
>> to
>> take health insurance from the poorest workers among us. They've tried to
>> deport young Americans because their parents brought them here without
>> papers many years ago. They've supported the use of torture and fought to
>> cut off unemployment insurance to the long-term unemployed.
>> Any of that remind you of Christianity?
>> This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may
>> not
>> be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.
>> DONALD KAUL
>> Donald Kaul lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
>> ________________________________________
>> Show Comments
>> Hide Comments
>> <a href="http://truthout.disqus.com/?url=ref">View the discussion
>> thread.</a>
>> Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
>> Telling the Truth About Religious Violence
>> Saturday, 14 February 2015 13:12 By Donald Kaul, OtherWords | Op-Ed
>> . font size Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink
>> reference not valid.Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error!
>> Hyperlink
>> reference not valid.
>> . President Barack Obama committed the ultimate political blunder the
>> other day. He blurted out the truth.
>> . Speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast, he warned his Christian
>> brethren against "getting up on our high horse" when condemning the
>> violence
>> of Muslim terrorists.
>> "During the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds
>> in
>> the name of Christ," he said. "In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow
>> all
>> too often was justified in the name of Christ."
>> Naturally, all hell broke loose.
>> The Rupert Murdoch army launched into full attack, supported by Rush
>> Limbaugh air strikes. Rabid Fox News commentators, foaming at the mouth,
>> fought each other for control of the mics to condemn the president's
>> remarks
>> as "un-American" and, even worse, liberal. He was derided as irreligious,
>> weak, and not a real American.
>> It was to be expected.
>> People will forgive a politician for telling lies. Sweet deceptions,
>> after
>> all, are what politics are all about. But let him speak the truth just
>> once,
>> even inadvertently, and he becomes the object of scorn, ridicule, and
>> contempt.
>> Remember the case of George Romney?
>> Running for president in 1967, he confessed that he had been
>> "brainwashed"
>> by Pentagon propaganda into believing that the Vietnam War was winnable.
>> And
>> he had been, of course, as had most of the American public at the time.
>> But as soon as Romney uttered this truthful statement, his presidential
>> hopes vanished in a blink - never to be seen again.
>> I'd like to note that this lesson wasn't lost on George's son. As nearly
>> as
>> can be determined, Mitt Romney never told the truth once during his 2012
>> campaign. He lost anyway, proving that it takes more than a lack of
>> honesty
>> to fool the American people.
>> But back to Obama. What he was trying to say, at an inter-faith event,
>> was
>> that we shouldn't hold all Muslims responsible for the acts of a relative
>> few. Christianity also has a skeleton or two in its historical closet.
>> The Christian right, which includes most of the Republicans in Congress,
>> pounced.
>> The Crusades were a righteous response to Islamic aggression, they said.
>> The
>> Inquisition? Highly overrated as an atrocity. And Jim Crow? That was "a
>> thousand years ago," said Limbaugh.
>> To which one can only say, "Oh come on."
>> The truth is, you can act as though terrorist violence against the West
>> is
>> unprovoked. But it's not. It's the bitter fruit of the past 100 years of
>> subjugation of the Arab and Muslim peoples by Western powers, thirsty for
>> the oil beneath the Middle East.
>> For a century the United States and its allies systematically subverted
>> any
>> suggestion of democracy in the region in favor of vicious thugs we could
>> control through bribery.
>> And when a popularly elected politician would surface every once in a
>> while,
>> we'd get rid of him and install our own puppet. Think of the popularly
>> elected Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran, whom the CIA overthrew in 1953,
>> replacing him with the brutal and corrupt Shah.
>> That's the genesis of the mess we're dealing with now. Not Islam, not
>> pure
>> evil, but 100 years of Western domination.
>> In any case, it's more than a little hypocritical for the Christian right
>> to
>> be up in arms over the perversion of Christianity.
>> This is a group, after all, whose representatives in Congress have sought
>> to
>> take health insurance from the poorest workers among us. They've tried to
>> deport young Americans because their parents brought them here without
>> papers many years ago. They've supported the use of torture and fought to
>> cut off unemployment insurance to the long-term unemployed.
>> Any of that remind you of Christianity?
>> This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may
>> not
>> be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.
>> Donald Kaul
>> Donald Kaul lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
>>
>> Show Comments
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Blind-Democracy mailing list
>> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
>> https://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>>
> _______________________________________________
> Blind-Democracy mailing list
> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
> https://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blind-Democracy mailing list
> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
> https://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>
Wednesday, February 18, 2015
President Gollum's 'Precious' Secrets
How many examples must we trot out in order to prove beyond doubt that
President Barak Obama is a good and faithful servant? Most assuredly
the Empire is getting its money's worth.
And mark my words, if Obama stays the course and continues his present
policies, once out of office he will be em braced by the very men who
now posture and curse him. It's all part of the sham. Bill Clinton
received some of the same attacks while he was in office. So how did
that turn out for Uncle Bill?
We like to believe that some of our leaders are above it, but the fact
of the matter is, it's all smoke and mirrors. The Empire will do what
all Empires have done. Expand. And if it must lie, cheat and steal
from its own people? So be it. I have abject admiration for folks
like Bernie Sanders, who somehow manage to stand tall and side step
the wrath of the Empire.
Carl Jarvis
On 2/17/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
>
> Parry writes: "Obama's presidency has been one of the most opaque and
> deceptive in modern history."
>
> A scene from 'The Lord of the Rings' film. (photo: New Line Cinema/AP)
>
>
> President Gollum's 'Precious' Secrets
> By Robert Parry, Consortium News
> 17 February 15
>
> Exclusive: Despite promises of "openness," President Obama has treated
> information that could inform American democracy like Tolkien's character
> Gollum coveted his "precious" ring. Obama is keeping for himself analyses
> that could change how the public sees the crises in Syria and Ukraine,
> writes Robert Parry.
> President Barack Obama promised a "transparent" administration, reviving
> democracy by letting Americans see into the inner workings of their
> government as much as possible, an implicit criticism of the excessive
> secrecy of his predecessor, George W. Bush. But instead Obama's presidency
> has been one of the most opaque and deceptive in modern history.
> Not only has Obama continued to wrap the carry-over anti-terrorism wars in
> maximum secrecy but he has taken unprecedented steps to shut down leaks by
> prosecuting whistleblowers who talk to the press. And, he has left standing
> his administration's misleading rushes to judgment on key issues after U.S.
> intelligence analysts have refined or reversed the first impressions.
> Whether on the Syrian sarin attack in 2013 or pivotal incidents in the
> Ukraine crisis - who was behind the sniper attacks in Kiev last Feb. 20 and
> who shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 last July 17 - Obama has withheld
> evidence developed by U.S. government analysts rather than undercut the
> propaganda value of the initial accusations.
> In the sarin incident, Secretary of State John Kerry and others rushed to
> blame President Bashar al-Assad's government - bringing the U.S. military
> to
> the brink of war - and similarly the State Department exploited the two
> most
> iconic events of the Ukraine crisis by blaming then-President Viktor
> Yanukovych for the sniper killings and Russia and ethnic Russian rebels for
> shooting down MH-17 killing all 298 people onboard.
> After the State Department had squeezed out the propaganda value of those
> accusations, U.S. intelligence analysts came to more detailed conclusions
> with their findings conflicting with the hasty finger-pointing after the
> events. But instead of refining or correcting the record, the Obama
> administration typically went silent, leaving the initial impressions in
> place even when the President knew better.
> In the context of Ukraine, I asked one senior administration official about
> this behavior and he responded that Russia held most of the advantages
> there
> by nature of proximity and history but that one advantage the United States
> wielded was "information warfare" - and it made no sense to surrender that
> edge by withdrawing accusations that had put Russian President Vladimir
> Putin on the defensive.
> Thus, in this Orwellian world that seems to have swallowed America's major
> institutions, what mattered most was how "information" - including false or
> misleading propaganda - could be deployed for geopolitical purposes even if
> it also involved deceiving the U.S. public. Or, one might say, especially
> if
> it deceived the U.S. public.
> 'Perception Management'
> This attitude toward manipulating rather than informing the American people
> has a long and grim history. For instance, President Lyndon Johnson won
> congressional support for his disastrous Vietnam War escalation by citing
> the Tonkin Gulf incident, a false claim about North Vietnamese aggression
> which has since been debunked but still is used historically by the Defense
> Department to justify the millions killed in that conflict.
> After the U.S. defeat in Vietnam, President Ronald Reagan set up
> inter-agency task forces devoted to the concept of "perception management,"
> essentially how to get the American people to "kick the Vietnam Syndrome"
> and get back into line behind U.S. military interventions abroad, a
> CIA-inspired campaign that proved stunningly successful. [See
> Consortiumnews.com's "The Victory of 'Perception Management.'"]
> Last decade, the American people got their perceptions managed once more
> regarding Iraq's non-existent WMD, leading to another catastrophic war
> which
> continues to spread chaos and death across the Middle East to this day. One
> might think that with that bloody history, President Obama would want to
> fulfill his promises of "transparency."
> According to a memorandum instructing Executive Branch department heads,
> Obama wrote: "My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented
> level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public
> trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and
> collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote
> efficiency
> and effectiveness in Government."
> Instead, Obama has clamped down more than ever on openness and
> transparency,
> including the prosecution of more government whistleblowers than all the
> previous presidents combined and sitting on U.S. intelligence reports that
> would change how Americans understand major international crises.
> By and large, Obama has continued the excessive secrecy of President George
> W. Bush, including withholding from the American people 28 pages of the
> 2002
> congressional investigation into the 9/11 attack that relate to Saudi
> financing for al-Qaeda terrorists.
> Obama also has refused to give the U.S. public access to the updated
> intelligence analyses of more current crises, including the near American
> military entry into the Syrian civil war in 2013 and the potential nuclear
> showdown with Russia over Ukraine in 2014. So, even when American lives are
> being put at risk by rushes to judgment, Obama doesn't believe that the
> people have a right to know the facts.
> The Pathology of Secrecy
> I spoke with one person who has known Obama since he was a senator from
> Illinois who suggested the President is fearful that if he does release
> these secrets and some negative consequences result that he'll be blamed.
> In
> order words, Obama in practice is too scared to live up to his commitment
> about "transparency."
> Another less generous explanation is that Obama is at heart an elitist who
> likes to surround himself with secrets but doesn't want to share them with
> common citizens who are best treated like the proverbial mushrooms kept in
> the dark and fertilized.
> Or put differently, Obama is like the character Gollum in J.R.R. Tolkien's
> The Lord of the Rings series who is entranced by the power of the One Ring
> and obsessively pursues it, what he calls "my Precious." In that analogy,
> Obama can't part with his precious secrets despite his promises to the
> American people about government openness.
> Surely, Obama does get warnings against letting the public in on what the
> U.S. government knows about pivotal events. Government bureaucrats can
> always find reasons to keep information secret. But presidents have the
> ultimate say in what is kept secret and what is released.
> And, except for a flurry of disclosures immediately after taking office,
> including Bush's legal memos justifying torture, Obama has done less about
> opening up the federal government's archives than many recent presidents.
> For instance, President Bill Clinton declassified Cold War-era files on
> U.S.
> participation in Guatemala's decades of brutal repression.
> Obama has shown less enthusiasm for giving Americans back their history.
> More importantly, however, Obama has withheld crucial information about
> current crises, such as the Syrian sarin attack and events that drove the
> Ukrainian civil war. [See Consortiumnews.com's "The Collapsing Syria-Sarin
> Case" and "The Danger of an MH-17 Cold Case."]
> In both areas, his administration rushed to judgment based on fragmentary
> information and - as more detailed data became available challenging the
> earlier claims - Obama clamped down on what the American people were
> allowed
> to hear.
> Much like the Tonkin Gulf case, war hawks in the U.S. government found the
> misimpressions useful, so they didn't want to correct the record. All the
> better to get an edge on foreign "adversaries" and manage the perceptions
> of
> the American people.
> And, for whatever his reasons, President Obama couldn't let go of his
> "Precious."
> Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not
> valid.
>
> A scene from 'The Lord of the Rings' film. (photo: New Line Cinema/AP)
> https://consortiumnews.com/2015/02/16/president-gollums-precious-secrets/htt
> ps://consortiumnews.com/2015/02/16/president-gollums-precious-secrets/
> President Gollum's 'Precious' Secrets
> By Robert Parry, Consortium News
> 17 February 15
> Exclusive: Despite promises of "openness," President Obama has treated
> information that could inform American democracy like Tolkien's character
> Gollum coveted his "precious" ring. Obama is keeping for himself analyses
> that could change how the public sees the crises in Syria and Ukraine,
> writes Robert Parry.
> resident Barack Obama promised a "transparent" administration, reviving
> democracy by letting Americans see into the inner workings of their
> government as much as possible, an implicit criticism of the excessive
> secrecy of his predecessor, George W. Bush. But instead Obama's presidency
> has been one of the most opaque and deceptive in modern history.
> Not only has Obama continued to wrap the carry-over anti-terrorism wars in
> maximum secrecy but he has taken unprecedented steps to shut down leaks by
> prosecuting whistleblowers who talk to the press. And, he has left standing
> his administration's misleading rushes to judgment on key issues after U.S.
> intelligence analysts have refined or reversed the first impressions.
> Whether on the Syrian sarin attack in 2013 or pivotal incidents in the
> Ukraine crisis - who was behind the sniper attacks in Kiev last Feb. 20 and
> who shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 last July 17 - Obama has withheld
> evidence developed by U.S. government analysts rather than undercut the
> propaganda value of the initial accusations.
> In the sarin incident, Secretary of State John Kerry and others rushed to
> blame President Bashar al-Assad's government - bringing the U.S. military
> to
> the brink of war - and similarly the State Department exploited the two
> most
> iconic events of the Ukraine crisis by blaming then-President Viktor
> Yanukovych for the sniper killings and Russia and ethnic Russian rebels for
> shooting down MH-17 killing all 298 people onboard.
> After the State Department had squeezed out the propaganda value of those
> accusations, U.S. intelligence analysts came to more detailed conclusions
> with their findings conflicting with the hasty finger-pointing after the
> events. But instead of refining or correcting the record, the Obama
> administration typically went silent, leaving the initial impressions in
> place even when the President knew better.
> In the context of Ukraine, I asked one senior administration official about
> this behavior and he responded that Russia held most of the advantages
> there
> by nature of proximity and history but that one advantage the United States
> wielded was "information warfare" - and it made no sense to surrender that
> edge by withdrawing accusations that had put Russian President Vladimir
> Putin on the defensive.
> Thus, in this Orwellian world that seems to have swallowed America's major
> institutions, what mattered most was how "information" - including false or
> misleading propaganda - could be deployed for geopolitical purposes even if
> it also involved deceiving the U.S. public. Or, one might say, especially
> if
> it deceived the U.S. public.
> 'Perception Management'
> This attitude toward manipulating rather than informing the American people
> has a long and grim history. For instance, President Lyndon Johnson won
> congressional support for his disastrous Vietnam War escalation by citing
> the Tonkin Gulf incident, a false claim about North Vietnamese aggression
> which has since been debunked but still is used historically by the Defense
> Department to justify the millions killed in that conflict.
> After the U.S. defeat in Vietnam, President Ronald Reagan set up
> inter-agency task forces devoted to the concept of "perception management,"
> essentially how to get the American people to "kick the Vietnam Syndrome"
> and get back into line behind U.S. military interventions abroad, a
> CIA-inspired campaign that proved stunningly successful. [See
> Consortiumnews.com's "The Victory of 'Perception Management.'"]
> Last decade, the American people got their perceptions managed once more
> regarding Iraq's non-existent WMD, leading to another catastrophic war
> which
> continues to spread chaos and death across the Middle East to this day. One
> might think that with that bloody history, President Obama would want to
> fulfill his promises of "transparency."
> According to a memorandum instructing Executive Branch department heads,
> Obama wrote: "My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented
> level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public
> trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and
> collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote
> efficiency
> and effectiveness in Government."
> Instead, Obama has clamped down more than ever on openness and
> transparency,
> including the prosecution of more government whistleblowers than all the
> previous presidents combined and sitting on U.S. intelligence reports that
> would change how Americans understand major international crises.
> By and large, Obama has continued the excessive secrecy of President George
> W. Bush, including withholding from the American people 28 pages of the
> 2002
> congressional investigation into the 9/11 attack that relate to Saudi
> financing for al-Qaeda terrorists.
> Obama also has refused to give the U.S. public access to the updated
> intelligence analyses of more current crises, including the near American
> military entry into the Syrian civil war in 2013 and the potential nuclear
> showdown with Russia over Ukraine in 2014. So, even when American lives are
> being put at risk by rushes to judgment, Obama doesn't believe that the
> people have a right to know the facts.
> The Pathology of Secrecy
> I spoke with one person who has known Obama since he was a senator from
> Illinois who suggested the President is fearful that if he does release
> these secrets and some negative consequences result that he'll be blamed.
> In
> order words, Obama in practice is too scared to live up to his commitment
> about "transparency."
> Another less generous explanation is that Obama is at heart an elitist who
> likes to surround himself with secrets but doesn't want to share them with
> common citizens who are best treated like the proverbial mushrooms kept in
> the dark and fertilized.
> Or put differently, Obama is like the character Gollum in J.R.R. Tolkien's
> The Lord of the Rings series who is entranced by the power of the One Ring
> and obsessively pursues it, what he calls "my Precious." In that analogy,
> Obama can't part with his precious secrets despite his promises to the
> American people about government openness.
> Surely, Obama does get warnings against letting the public in on what the
> U.S. government knows about pivotal events. Government bureaucrats can
> always find reasons to keep information secret. But presidents have the
> ultimate say in what is kept secret and what is released.
> And, except for a flurry of disclosures immediately after taking office,
> including Bush's legal memos justifying torture, Obama has done less about
> opening up the federal government's archives than many recent presidents.
> For instance, President Bill Clinton declassified Cold War-era files on
> U.S.
> participation in Guatemala's decades of brutal repression.
> Obama has shown less enthusiasm for giving Americans back their history.
> More importantly, however, Obama has withheld crucial information about
> current crises, such as the Syrian sarin attack and events that drove the
> Ukrainian civil war. [See Consortiumnews.com's "The Collapsing Syria-Sarin
> Case" and "The Danger of an MH-17 Cold Case."]
> In both areas, his administration rushed to judgment based on fragmentary
> information and - as more detailed data became available challenging the
> earlier claims - Obama clamped down on what the American people were
> allowed
> to hear.
> Much like the Tonkin Gulf case, war hawks in the U.S. government found the
> misimpressions useful, so they didn't want to correct the record. All the
> better to get an edge on foreign "adversaries" and manage the perceptions
> of
> the American people.
> And, for whatever his reasons, President Obama couldn't let go of his
> "Precious."
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blind-Democracy mailing list
> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
> https://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>
President Barak Obama is a good and faithful servant? Most assuredly
the Empire is getting its money's worth.
And mark my words, if Obama stays the course and continues his present
policies, once out of office he will be em braced by the very men who
now posture and curse him. It's all part of the sham. Bill Clinton
received some of the same attacks while he was in office. So how did
that turn out for Uncle Bill?
We like to believe that some of our leaders are above it, but the fact
of the matter is, it's all smoke and mirrors. The Empire will do what
all Empires have done. Expand. And if it must lie, cheat and steal
from its own people? So be it. I have abject admiration for folks
like Bernie Sanders, who somehow manage to stand tall and side step
the wrath of the Empire.
Carl Jarvis
On 2/17/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
>
> Parry writes: "Obama's presidency has been one of the most opaque and
> deceptive in modern history."
>
> A scene from 'The Lord of the Rings' film. (photo: New Line Cinema/AP)
>
>
> President Gollum's 'Precious' Secrets
> By Robert Parry, Consortium News
> 17 February 15
>
> Exclusive: Despite promises of "openness," President Obama has treated
> information that could inform American democracy like Tolkien's character
> Gollum coveted his "precious" ring. Obama is keeping for himself analyses
> that could change how the public sees the crises in Syria and Ukraine,
> writes Robert Parry.
> President Barack Obama promised a "transparent" administration, reviving
> democracy by letting Americans see into the inner workings of their
> government as much as possible, an implicit criticism of the excessive
> secrecy of his predecessor, George W. Bush. But instead Obama's presidency
> has been one of the most opaque and deceptive in modern history.
> Not only has Obama continued to wrap the carry-over anti-terrorism wars in
> maximum secrecy but he has taken unprecedented steps to shut down leaks by
> prosecuting whistleblowers who talk to the press. And, he has left standing
> his administration's misleading rushes to judgment on key issues after U.S.
> intelligence analysts have refined or reversed the first impressions.
> Whether on the Syrian sarin attack in 2013 or pivotal incidents in the
> Ukraine crisis - who was behind the sniper attacks in Kiev last Feb. 20 and
> who shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 last July 17 - Obama has withheld
> evidence developed by U.S. government analysts rather than undercut the
> propaganda value of the initial accusations.
> In the sarin incident, Secretary of State John Kerry and others rushed to
> blame President Bashar al-Assad's government - bringing the U.S. military
> to
> the brink of war - and similarly the State Department exploited the two
> most
> iconic events of the Ukraine crisis by blaming then-President Viktor
> Yanukovych for the sniper killings and Russia and ethnic Russian rebels for
> shooting down MH-17 killing all 298 people onboard.
> After the State Department had squeezed out the propaganda value of those
> accusations, U.S. intelligence analysts came to more detailed conclusions
> with their findings conflicting with the hasty finger-pointing after the
> events. But instead of refining or correcting the record, the Obama
> administration typically went silent, leaving the initial impressions in
> place even when the President knew better.
> In the context of Ukraine, I asked one senior administration official about
> this behavior and he responded that Russia held most of the advantages
> there
> by nature of proximity and history but that one advantage the United States
> wielded was "information warfare" - and it made no sense to surrender that
> edge by withdrawing accusations that had put Russian President Vladimir
> Putin on the defensive.
> Thus, in this Orwellian world that seems to have swallowed America's major
> institutions, what mattered most was how "information" - including false or
> misleading propaganda - could be deployed for geopolitical purposes even if
> it also involved deceiving the U.S. public. Or, one might say, especially
> if
> it deceived the U.S. public.
> 'Perception Management'
> This attitude toward manipulating rather than informing the American people
> has a long and grim history. For instance, President Lyndon Johnson won
> congressional support for his disastrous Vietnam War escalation by citing
> the Tonkin Gulf incident, a false claim about North Vietnamese aggression
> which has since been debunked but still is used historically by the Defense
> Department to justify the millions killed in that conflict.
> After the U.S. defeat in Vietnam, President Ronald Reagan set up
> inter-agency task forces devoted to the concept of "perception management,"
> essentially how to get the American people to "kick the Vietnam Syndrome"
> and get back into line behind U.S. military interventions abroad, a
> CIA-inspired campaign that proved stunningly successful. [See
> Consortiumnews.com's "The Victory of 'Perception Management.'"]
> Last decade, the American people got their perceptions managed once more
> regarding Iraq's non-existent WMD, leading to another catastrophic war
> which
> continues to spread chaos and death across the Middle East to this day. One
> might think that with that bloody history, President Obama would want to
> fulfill his promises of "transparency."
> According to a memorandum instructing Executive Branch department heads,
> Obama wrote: "My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented
> level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public
> trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and
> collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote
> efficiency
> and effectiveness in Government."
> Instead, Obama has clamped down more than ever on openness and
> transparency,
> including the prosecution of more government whistleblowers than all the
> previous presidents combined and sitting on U.S. intelligence reports that
> would change how Americans understand major international crises.
> By and large, Obama has continued the excessive secrecy of President George
> W. Bush, including withholding from the American people 28 pages of the
> 2002
> congressional investigation into the 9/11 attack that relate to Saudi
> financing for al-Qaeda terrorists.
> Obama also has refused to give the U.S. public access to the updated
> intelligence analyses of more current crises, including the near American
> military entry into the Syrian civil war in 2013 and the potential nuclear
> showdown with Russia over Ukraine in 2014. So, even when American lives are
> being put at risk by rushes to judgment, Obama doesn't believe that the
> people have a right to know the facts.
> The Pathology of Secrecy
> I spoke with one person who has known Obama since he was a senator from
> Illinois who suggested the President is fearful that if he does release
> these secrets and some negative consequences result that he'll be blamed.
> In
> order words, Obama in practice is too scared to live up to his commitment
> about "transparency."
> Another less generous explanation is that Obama is at heart an elitist who
> likes to surround himself with secrets but doesn't want to share them with
> common citizens who are best treated like the proverbial mushrooms kept in
> the dark and fertilized.
> Or put differently, Obama is like the character Gollum in J.R.R. Tolkien's
> The Lord of the Rings series who is entranced by the power of the One Ring
> and obsessively pursues it, what he calls "my Precious." In that analogy,
> Obama can't part with his precious secrets despite his promises to the
> American people about government openness.
> Surely, Obama does get warnings against letting the public in on what the
> U.S. government knows about pivotal events. Government bureaucrats can
> always find reasons to keep information secret. But presidents have the
> ultimate say in what is kept secret and what is released.
> And, except for a flurry of disclosures immediately after taking office,
> including Bush's legal memos justifying torture, Obama has done less about
> opening up the federal government's archives than many recent presidents.
> For instance, President Bill Clinton declassified Cold War-era files on
> U.S.
> participation in Guatemala's decades of brutal repression.
> Obama has shown less enthusiasm for giving Americans back their history.
> More importantly, however, Obama has withheld crucial information about
> current crises, such as the Syrian sarin attack and events that drove the
> Ukrainian civil war. [See Consortiumnews.com's "The Collapsing Syria-Sarin
> Case" and "The Danger of an MH-17 Cold Case."]
> In both areas, his administration rushed to judgment based on fragmentary
> information and - as more detailed data became available challenging the
> earlier claims - Obama clamped down on what the American people were
> allowed
> to hear.
> Much like the Tonkin Gulf case, war hawks in the U.S. government found the
> misimpressions useful, so they didn't want to correct the record. All the
> better to get an edge on foreign "adversaries" and manage the perceptions
> of
> the American people.
> And, for whatever his reasons, President Obama couldn't let go of his
> "Precious."
> Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not
> valid.
>
> A scene from 'The Lord of the Rings' film. (photo: New Line Cinema/AP)
> https://consortiumnews.com/2015/02/16/president-gollums-precious-secrets/htt
> ps://consortiumnews.com/2015/02/16/president-gollums-precious-secrets/
> President Gollum's 'Precious' Secrets
> By Robert Parry, Consortium News
> 17 February 15
> Exclusive: Despite promises of "openness," President Obama has treated
> information that could inform American democracy like Tolkien's character
> Gollum coveted his "precious" ring. Obama is keeping for himself analyses
> that could change how the public sees the crises in Syria and Ukraine,
> writes Robert Parry.
> resident Barack Obama promised a "transparent" administration, reviving
> democracy by letting Americans see into the inner workings of their
> government as much as possible, an implicit criticism of the excessive
> secrecy of his predecessor, George W. Bush. But instead Obama's presidency
> has been one of the most opaque and deceptive in modern history.
> Not only has Obama continued to wrap the carry-over anti-terrorism wars in
> maximum secrecy but he has taken unprecedented steps to shut down leaks by
> prosecuting whistleblowers who talk to the press. And, he has left standing
> his administration's misleading rushes to judgment on key issues after U.S.
> intelligence analysts have refined or reversed the first impressions.
> Whether on the Syrian sarin attack in 2013 or pivotal incidents in the
> Ukraine crisis - who was behind the sniper attacks in Kiev last Feb. 20 and
> who shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 last July 17 - Obama has withheld
> evidence developed by U.S. government analysts rather than undercut the
> propaganda value of the initial accusations.
> In the sarin incident, Secretary of State John Kerry and others rushed to
> blame President Bashar al-Assad's government - bringing the U.S. military
> to
> the brink of war - and similarly the State Department exploited the two
> most
> iconic events of the Ukraine crisis by blaming then-President Viktor
> Yanukovych for the sniper killings and Russia and ethnic Russian rebels for
> shooting down MH-17 killing all 298 people onboard.
> After the State Department had squeezed out the propaganda value of those
> accusations, U.S. intelligence analysts came to more detailed conclusions
> with their findings conflicting with the hasty finger-pointing after the
> events. But instead of refining or correcting the record, the Obama
> administration typically went silent, leaving the initial impressions in
> place even when the President knew better.
> In the context of Ukraine, I asked one senior administration official about
> this behavior and he responded that Russia held most of the advantages
> there
> by nature of proximity and history but that one advantage the United States
> wielded was "information warfare" - and it made no sense to surrender that
> edge by withdrawing accusations that had put Russian President Vladimir
> Putin on the defensive.
> Thus, in this Orwellian world that seems to have swallowed America's major
> institutions, what mattered most was how "information" - including false or
> misleading propaganda - could be deployed for geopolitical purposes even if
> it also involved deceiving the U.S. public. Or, one might say, especially
> if
> it deceived the U.S. public.
> 'Perception Management'
> This attitude toward manipulating rather than informing the American people
> has a long and grim history. For instance, President Lyndon Johnson won
> congressional support for his disastrous Vietnam War escalation by citing
> the Tonkin Gulf incident, a false claim about North Vietnamese aggression
> which has since been debunked but still is used historically by the Defense
> Department to justify the millions killed in that conflict.
> After the U.S. defeat in Vietnam, President Ronald Reagan set up
> inter-agency task forces devoted to the concept of "perception management,"
> essentially how to get the American people to "kick the Vietnam Syndrome"
> and get back into line behind U.S. military interventions abroad, a
> CIA-inspired campaign that proved stunningly successful. [See
> Consortiumnews.com's "The Victory of 'Perception Management.'"]
> Last decade, the American people got their perceptions managed once more
> regarding Iraq's non-existent WMD, leading to another catastrophic war
> which
> continues to spread chaos and death across the Middle East to this day. One
> might think that with that bloody history, President Obama would want to
> fulfill his promises of "transparency."
> According to a memorandum instructing Executive Branch department heads,
> Obama wrote: "My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented
> level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public
> trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and
> collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote
> efficiency
> and effectiveness in Government."
> Instead, Obama has clamped down more than ever on openness and
> transparency,
> including the prosecution of more government whistleblowers than all the
> previous presidents combined and sitting on U.S. intelligence reports that
> would change how Americans understand major international crises.
> By and large, Obama has continued the excessive secrecy of President George
> W. Bush, including withholding from the American people 28 pages of the
> 2002
> congressional investigation into the 9/11 attack that relate to Saudi
> financing for al-Qaeda terrorists.
> Obama also has refused to give the U.S. public access to the updated
> intelligence analyses of more current crises, including the near American
> military entry into the Syrian civil war in 2013 and the potential nuclear
> showdown with Russia over Ukraine in 2014. So, even when American lives are
> being put at risk by rushes to judgment, Obama doesn't believe that the
> people have a right to know the facts.
> The Pathology of Secrecy
> I spoke with one person who has known Obama since he was a senator from
> Illinois who suggested the President is fearful that if he does release
> these secrets and some negative consequences result that he'll be blamed.
> In
> order words, Obama in practice is too scared to live up to his commitment
> about "transparency."
> Another less generous explanation is that Obama is at heart an elitist who
> likes to surround himself with secrets but doesn't want to share them with
> common citizens who are best treated like the proverbial mushrooms kept in
> the dark and fertilized.
> Or put differently, Obama is like the character Gollum in J.R.R. Tolkien's
> The Lord of the Rings series who is entranced by the power of the One Ring
> and obsessively pursues it, what he calls "my Precious." In that analogy,
> Obama can't part with his precious secrets despite his promises to the
> American people about government openness.
> Surely, Obama does get warnings against letting the public in on what the
> U.S. government knows about pivotal events. Government bureaucrats can
> always find reasons to keep information secret. But presidents have the
> ultimate say in what is kept secret and what is released.
> And, except for a flurry of disclosures immediately after taking office,
> including Bush's legal memos justifying torture, Obama has done less about
> opening up the federal government's archives than many recent presidents.
> For instance, President Bill Clinton declassified Cold War-era files on
> U.S.
> participation in Guatemala's decades of brutal repression.
> Obama has shown less enthusiasm for giving Americans back their history.
> More importantly, however, Obama has withheld crucial information about
> current crises, such as the Syrian sarin attack and events that drove the
> Ukrainian civil war. [See Consortiumnews.com's "The Collapsing Syria-Sarin
> Case" and "The Danger of an MH-17 Cold Case."]
> In both areas, his administration rushed to judgment based on fragmentary
> information and - as more detailed data became available challenging the
> earlier claims - Obama clamped down on what the American people were
> allowed
> to hear.
> Much like the Tonkin Gulf case, war hawks in the U.S. government found the
> misimpressions useful, so they didn't want to correct the record. All the
> better to get an edge on foreign "adversaries" and manage the perceptions
> of
> the American people.
> And, for whatever his reasons, President Obama couldn't let go of his
> "Precious."
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blind-Democracy mailing list
> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
> https://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>
Tuesday, February 17, 2015
Fwd: NPR.org Text-Only : Female Libido Pill Fires Up Debate About Women And Sex
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Carl Jarvis <carjar82@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2015 08:50:54 -0800
Subject: NPR.org Text-Only : Female Libido Pill Fires Up Debate About
Women And Sex
To: Blind Democracy Discussion List <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
Sometimes I wonder if I'm out in left field. I do know that
politically I have to look over my right shoulder to see where the
Liberals are. But am I out of it when it comes to Sex? Listen, I
am fast approaching 80 years of age. I've had prostrate issues and
"getting it up" takes a great deal of effort. But back in the
day...there were some fun times. But that was back in the day. Back
then I could run several miles and then head off to my job hauling
freight around a warehouse. I could eat a lunch consisting of three
sandwiches, a rack of cookies and a couple of oranges, and never gain
an ounce. Usually on my way home I would stop and have a slice of
chocolate cream pie with a side of soft ice-cream. Back in the day, I
admit that I could not get enough sex. I hung out in bars, wandered
about the college campus, and made myself available to every woman who
seemed remotely interested. But that was then. That was when I could
drink and make love all night long and crawl out of the sack come
morning, and head off for a day's labor.
Now I hit the sack around 9:00 PM. and rise up at 5:00 A.m. wondering
if maybe I should stay in bed another hour or two. "Sex", for me, is
cuddling. And if were not a mutually agreed thing, I'd do what I
needed to do in order to show my love.
But this over fascination with sex is pushing us down a wrong road, in
my humble opinion. When we reach an age where our sex organs don't
perform any longer. Shouldn't we take that as a sign that it's time
to let them rest? We're allowing our Masters to play with us, forcing
us to focus on the sex act rather than on our ability to love. Love
is not screwing. Love is the respect we show for one another. But
our Corporate Bosses can't figure out how to reap profit from Love.
So they turn to sex. Sex can be packaged and sold. Pills to get it
up. Pills to get it down. Pills to get it on after menopause. On
and on it goes. And just listen to the potential side effects!
"Enjoy your new found youth". But don't forget, you may die for all
your effort. Probably I should remind you all that this ramble is
coming from an older man whose lahbeto is on half empty. And I'm
just fine with it.
Carl Jarvis
On 2/16/15, ted chittenden <tchittenden@cox.net> wrote:
> Hi to all.
>
> I'm sending this NPR story for two reasons. First, we have been discussing
> sexuality and the disabled which is somewhat related to this story. Second,
> while NPR covered the controversy okay, it didn't present enough factual
> information for me to make a good judgment on this new approach.
> Specifically, in what percentage of males was Viagra effective before it was
> approved. In what percentage of women was RU486 effective before it was
> approved. And what is the percentage of women who have side effects after
> taking this pill versus the percentages of people who expierenced negative
> side effects after taking Viagra or RU486.
>
> Finally, there interwoven links within the text material that can only be
> seen if one looks at the story through the provided link instead of inside
> this email.
> --
> Ted Chittenden
>
> Every story has at least two sides if not more.
> --
> http://thin.npr.org/s.php?sId=384043661&rId=2&x=1
> By Rob Stein
>
> All Things Considered, · For 15 years, Carla Price and her husband's sex
> life was great. But then things began to change.
>
> "Before, I would want to have sex," says Price, who is 50 and lives in
> central Missouri. "But over the years my sexual desire has just dwindled to
> nothing."
>
> Price has no idea why. She's healthy. She's not really stressed out about
> anything. And she's still totally crazy about her husband.
>
> "It's not that our relationship got boring," Price says. "Because it's
> actually the opposite -- we became closer as we got older together."
>
> But her lack of interest in sex almost wrecked their marriage.
>
> "It did get to the point where my husband thought that perhaps we just
> needed to divorce," she says.
>
> Women like Price, who see their decreasing sex drive as a problem, are at
> the center of an intense, emotional debate that's been raging for years over
> whether the Food and Drug Administration should approve the first drug that
> claims to boost a woman's libido.
>
> NPR reached Price through Sprout Pharmaceuticals Inc., the company that
> makes the drug.
>
> "Men have a number of treatment options for sexual dysfunction, says Cindy
> Whitehead, Sprout's CEO. "We haven't yet gotten to one for women's most
> common dysfunction."
>
> "Up until now," she says, "the treatment paradigm for women with sexual
> dysfunction has essentially been: Let's take a drug that works in men and
> let's see if it works in women."
>
> None of them did. But Sprout's drug, flibanserin, takes a totally different
> approach than, say, Viagra. Instead of increasing blood flow to the
> genitals, flibanserin affects a different part of the body: the brain.
>
> Flibanserin shifts the balance of three key brain chemicals, Whitehead says.
> The drug, she says, increases "excitatory factors for sex" -- dopamine and
> norepinephrine -- and decreases serotonin, which can dampen the sex drive.
>
> But there's a lot of skepticism about flibanserin. The FDA has rejected it
> twice, saying there wasn't much evidence it works. The agency also
> questioned the drug's safety, especially with long-term, daily use.
>
> "The combination of ... not very robust effectiveness, and the fact that the
> safety profile had not been really characterized very well at all made us
> reach that conclusion, that it really wasn't ready for approval," says
> Sandra Kweder, deputy director of the FDA's Office of New Drugs.
>
> The company acknowledges flibanserin can have side effects, including
> sleepiness, nausea and dizziness. And there are no results yet, Sprout says,
> on whether the drug might interfere with the helpful action of Zoloft,
> Prozac or other SSRI antidepressants, which are thought to work primarily by
> boosting levels of serotonin in the brain.
>
> But Whitehead argues that flibanserin is safe and says the company's studies
> show it can help many women.
>
> "We increase their desire by 53 percent," she says of study participants.
> "We decrease their distress by 29 percent, and then they doubled their
> number of satisfying sexual events."
>
> Whitehead argues the FDA is holding flibanserin to a higher standard than it
> uses to evaluate drugs for men. And some women's rights advocates worry that
> might be true.
>
> "We live in a culture that has historically discounted the importance of
> sexual pleasure and sexual desire for women," says Terry O'Neill, president
> of the National Organization for Women. "And I fear that it's that cultural
> attitude that men's sexual health is extremely important, but women's sexual
> health is not so important. That's the cultural attitude that I want to be
> sure the FDA has not, maybe unconsciously, imported into its deliberative
> process."
>
> The FDA denies any bias.
>
> "We have taken those concerns very seriously and we think the accusation is
> truly misplaced," Kweder says.
>
> Many other women's health advocates agree with the agency's caution.
>
> "It doesn't seem to work very well, if at all, and it's got some safety
> concerns that are troubling and haven't been fully explored," says Cindy
> Pearson of the National Women's Health Network. "So we felt very comfortable
> saying to the FDA, 'You know, women want attention, but they want drugs that
> work. And this doesn't seem to be one of them.' "
>
> Others argue that the campaign for flibanserin is oversimplifying female
> sexuality. And many women (and men) who experience a waning libido at
> midlife don't see it as a problem.
>
> "The misrepresentation that everybody should be having it -- needs to have
> it, wants to have it, has a problem if they don't have it -- is to change,
> really, what sexuality is into more of a medical thing," says Leonore
> Tiefer, a psychologist at New York University. "I think that's a terrible
> direction for knowledge, for understanding, for society."
>
> Some say Sprout's campaign is part of a bigger trend by the pharmaceutical
> industry to turn everything into a disease that needs a pill.
>
> "There's really been a move toward medicalizing normal human experience,"
> says Adriane Fugh-Berman, who studies drug companies at Georgetown
> University. "And while there are certainly some women who have very
> troublesome symptoms of low libido, it's not at all clear that medication is
> a good answer for them."
>
> A low libido may be a symptom of fluctuating hormones or of some health
> problem that needs attention. Some women may just be in a bad relationship.
> For others, therapy might be the answer.
>
> Carla Price says she would like to try flibanserin. Marriage counseling and
> a hormonal cream have helped, she says. But not enough.
>
> "Even though it's better, it's not perfect," she says. "I would gladly take
> risks of side effects to keep my marriage and my relationship."
>
> Sprout says the company plans to submit some new studies soon that it hopes
> will finally convince the FDA to approve the first drug to boost a woman's
> libido
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blind-Democracy mailing list
> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
> https://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
From: Carl Jarvis <carjar82@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2015 08:50:54 -0800
Subject: NPR.org Text-Only : Female Libido Pill Fires Up Debate About
Women And Sex
To: Blind Democracy Discussion List <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
Sometimes I wonder if I'm out in left field. I do know that
politically I have to look over my right shoulder to see where the
Liberals are. But am I out of it when it comes to Sex? Listen, I
am fast approaching 80 years of age. I've had prostrate issues and
"getting it up" takes a great deal of effort. But back in the
day...there were some fun times. But that was back in the day. Back
then I could run several miles and then head off to my job hauling
freight around a warehouse. I could eat a lunch consisting of three
sandwiches, a rack of cookies and a couple of oranges, and never gain
an ounce. Usually on my way home I would stop and have a slice of
chocolate cream pie with a side of soft ice-cream. Back in the day, I
admit that I could not get enough sex. I hung out in bars, wandered
about the college campus, and made myself available to every woman who
seemed remotely interested. But that was then. That was when I could
drink and make love all night long and crawl out of the sack come
morning, and head off for a day's labor.
Now I hit the sack around 9:00 PM. and rise up at 5:00 A.m. wondering
if maybe I should stay in bed another hour or two. "Sex", for me, is
cuddling. And if were not a mutually agreed thing, I'd do what I
needed to do in order to show my love.
But this over fascination with sex is pushing us down a wrong road, in
my humble opinion. When we reach an age where our sex organs don't
perform any longer. Shouldn't we take that as a sign that it's time
to let them rest? We're allowing our Masters to play with us, forcing
us to focus on the sex act rather than on our ability to love. Love
is not screwing. Love is the respect we show for one another. But
our Corporate Bosses can't figure out how to reap profit from Love.
So they turn to sex. Sex can be packaged and sold. Pills to get it
up. Pills to get it down. Pills to get it on after menopause. On
and on it goes. And just listen to the potential side effects!
"Enjoy your new found youth". But don't forget, you may die for all
your effort. Probably I should remind you all that this ramble is
coming from an older man whose lahbeto is on half empty. And I'm
just fine with it.
Carl Jarvis
On 2/16/15, ted chittenden <tchittenden@cox.net> wrote:
> Hi to all.
>
> I'm sending this NPR story for two reasons. First, we have been discussing
> sexuality and the disabled which is somewhat related to this story. Second,
> while NPR covered the controversy okay, it didn't present enough factual
> information for me to make a good judgment on this new approach.
> Specifically, in what percentage of males was Viagra effective before it was
> approved. In what percentage of women was RU486 effective before it was
> approved. And what is the percentage of women who have side effects after
> taking this pill versus the percentages of people who expierenced negative
> side effects after taking Viagra or RU486.
>
> Finally, there interwoven links within the text material that can only be
> seen if one looks at the story through the provided link instead of inside
> this email.
> --
> Ted Chittenden
>
> Every story has at least two sides if not more.
> --
> http://thin.npr.org/s.php?sId=384043661&rId=2&x=1
> By Rob Stein
>
> All Things Considered, · For 15 years, Carla Price and her husband's sex
> life was great. But then things began to change.
>
> "Before, I would want to have sex," says Price, who is 50 and lives in
> central Missouri. "But over the years my sexual desire has just dwindled to
> nothing."
>
> Price has no idea why. She's healthy. She's not really stressed out about
> anything. And she's still totally crazy about her husband.
>
> "It's not that our relationship got boring," Price says. "Because it's
> actually the opposite -- we became closer as we got older together."
>
> But her lack of interest in sex almost wrecked their marriage.
>
> "It did get to the point where my husband thought that perhaps we just
> needed to divorce," she says.
>
> Women like Price, who see their decreasing sex drive as a problem, are at
> the center of an intense, emotional debate that's been raging for years over
> whether the Food and Drug Administration should approve the first drug that
> claims to boost a woman's libido.
>
> NPR reached Price through Sprout Pharmaceuticals Inc., the company that
> makes the drug.
>
> "Men have a number of treatment options for sexual dysfunction, says Cindy
> Whitehead, Sprout's CEO. "We haven't yet gotten to one for women's most
> common dysfunction."
>
> "Up until now," she says, "the treatment paradigm for women with sexual
> dysfunction has essentially been: Let's take a drug that works in men and
> let's see if it works in women."
>
> None of them did. But Sprout's drug, flibanserin, takes a totally different
> approach than, say, Viagra. Instead of increasing blood flow to the
> genitals, flibanserin affects a different part of the body: the brain.
>
> Flibanserin shifts the balance of three key brain chemicals, Whitehead says.
> The drug, she says, increases "excitatory factors for sex" -- dopamine and
> norepinephrine -- and decreases serotonin, which can dampen the sex drive.
>
> But there's a lot of skepticism about flibanserin. The FDA has rejected it
> twice, saying there wasn't much evidence it works. The agency also
> questioned the drug's safety, especially with long-term, daily use.
>
> "The combination of ... not very robust effectiveness, and the fact that the
> safety profile had not been really characterized very well at all made us
> reach that conclusion, that it really wasn't ready for approval," says
> Sandra Kweder, deputy director of the FDA's Office of New Drugs.
>
> The company acknowledges flibanserin can have side effects, including
> sleepiness, nausea and dizziness. And there are no results yet, Sprout says,
> on whether the drug might interfere with the helpful action of Zoloft,
> Prozac or other SSRI antidepressants, which are thought to work primarily by
> boosting levels of serotonin in the brain.
>
> But Whitehead argues that flibanserin is safe and says the company's studies
> show it can help many women.
>
> "We increase their desire by 53 percent," she says of study participants.
> "We decrease their distress by 29 percent, and then they doubled their
> number of satisfying sexual events."
>
> Whitehead argues the FDA is holding flibanserin to a higher standard than it
> uses to evaluate drugs for men. And some women's rights advocates worry that
> might be true.
>
> "We live in a culture that has historically discounted the importance of
> sexual pleasure and sexual desire for women," says Terry O'Neill, president
> of the National Organization for Women. "And I fear that it's that cultural
> attitude that men's sexual health is extremely important, but women's sexual
> health is not so important. That's the cultural attitude that I want to be
> sure the FDA has not, maybe unconsciously, imported into its deliberative
> process."
>
> The FDA denies any bias.
>
> "We have taken those concerns very seriously and we think the accusation is
> truly misplaced," Kweder says.
>
> Many other women's health advocates agree with the agency's caution.
>
> "It doesn't seem to work very well, if at all, and it's got some safety
> concerns that are troubling and haven't been fully explored," says Cindy
> Pearson of the National Women's Health Network. "So we felt very comfortable
> saying to the FDA, 'You know, women want attention, but they want drugs that
> work. And this doesn't seem to be one of them.' "
>
> Others argue that the campaign for flibanserin is oversimplifying female
> sexuality. And many women (and men) who experience a waning libido at
> midlife don't see it as a problem.
>
> "The misrepresentation that everybody should be having it -- needs to have
> it, wants to have it, has a problem if they don't have it -- is to change,
> really, what sexuality is into more of a medical thing," says Leonore
> Tiefer, a psychologist at New York University. "I think that's a terrible
> direction for knowledge, for understanding, for society."
>
> Some say Sprout's campaign is part of a bigger trend by the pharmaceutical
> industry to turn everything into a disease that needs a pill.
>
> "There's really been a move toward medicalizing normal human experience,"
> says Adriane Fugh-Berman, who studies drug companies at Georgetown
> University. "And while there are certainly some women who have very
> troublesome symptoms of low libido, it's not at all clear that medication is
> a good answer for them."
>
> A low libido may be a symptom of fluctuating hormones or of some health
> problem that needs attention. Some women may just be in a bad relationship.
> For others, therapy might be the answer.
>
> Carla Price says she would like to try flibanserin. Marriage counseling and
> a hormonal cream have helped, she says. But not enough.
>
> "Even though it's better, it's not perfect," she says. "I would gladly take
> risks of side effects to keep my marriage and my relationship."
>
> Sprout says the company plans to submit some new studies soon that it hopes
> will finally convince the FDA to approve the first drug to boost a woman's
> libido
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blind-Democracy mailing list
> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
> https://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
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