Why Are Things As They Are?

Spectacle Schmectacle: Remember the March 4th Strike!

Check Out Miami’s Paul Moore on the Superbowl:
http://www.richgibson.com/blog/?p=122#comments

The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich. Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied but written off as trash. The twentieth-century consumer economy has produced the first culture for which a beggar is a reminder of nothing.    John Berger

On the Little Rouge  School Front:

A Rouge Forum Broadside on March 4th,  Resistance, and Fear: http://rougeforum.org/resistancefear.html

Call For Proposals–Rouge Forum Conference August 2-5, 2010:
http://www.rougeforumconference.org/

Call for Manuscripts: A Return to Educational Apartheid? Critical Education: “This current series will focus on the articulation of race, schools, and segregation, and will analyze the extent to which schooling may or may not be returning to a state of educational apartheid.”
http://m1.cust.educ.ubc.ca/journal/index.php/criticaled/announcement/view/8

Whose School? Our School? Occupations in Glasgow: “Parents in Glasgow occupied yet another primary school this week; the latest in a series of school occupations which have taken place over the past year.”
http://libcom.org/news/parents-occupy-school-lanarkshire-threatened-closure-26012010

Harvard Initiates Educational Leadership-Business Partnership (this is new?): “ The Harvard doctorate broadens the reach of traditional programs by collaborating with the Harvard Business School and the John F. Kennedy School of Government, he said. The first year of studies is devoted to a rigorous core curriculum. The next year, students chose from a slate of courses at the three schools–such as “Managing Human Capital” at the business school or “Marketing for Non-Profits and Public Agencies” at the Kennedy school.”
http://findarticles.com/p/news-articles/community-college-week/mi_7781/is_4_22/harvard-announces-plans-offer-doctorate/ai_n39302082/

What They Do With The Kiddies After High School–Pedagogy With Those Fun Loving Marines:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/waging-war/immersion-training/shooting-at-pendleton.html?play

Arne Duncan: “Atta Boy Detroit Bobb (Broad): “Duncan praised Bobb and what he’s done in the district, calling him “a breath of fresh air.”
http://www.detnews.com/article/20100205/SCHOOLS/2050364/1026/schools/Education-secretary-says-Robert-Bobb-is-a–breath-of-fresh-air-#ixzz0ee66pNNn

SF City College Cancels Summer Sessions: “Thousands of students who expected to make up missed courses or simply move their education forward will have to put those plans on hold this year because City College of San Francisco is canceling its popular summer session.”
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/02/04/MNGF1BS143.DTL&type=education#ixzz0ejarzK4e

LA Times Exams the Explosion of Charters in the Second Largest School District: “Los Angeles is home to more than 160 charter schools, far more than any other U.S. city. Charter enrollment is up nearly 19% this year from last, while enrollment in traditional L.A. public schools is down.”
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-charters10-2010jan10,0,5522248.story?page=2

On the Perpetual Wars and Booming Inequality Front:

Davos Banksters to Obamagogue, “*!*&#* You:” The more contentious discussions were around Mr. Obama’s plan to restrict proprietary trading. One hedge fund manager described the proposed rule by using more four-letter words in one sentence — as nouns and verbs — than I thought possible…“I can find a way to say that virtually any trade we make is somehow related to serving one of our clients. They can go ahead and impose the rule on Friday, and I can assure you that by Monday, we’ll find a way around it. Nothing will change unless the definition is ironclad.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/business/02sorkin.html

Underwater Homeowners To Banksters, “@#!#! You!”: The number of Americans who owed more than their homes were worth was virtually nil when the real estate collapse began in mid-2006, but by the third quarter of 2009, an estimated 4.5 million homeowners had reached the critical threshold, with their home’s value dropping below 75 percent of the mortgage balance.
Suggestions that people would be wise to renege on their home loans are at least a couple of years old, but they are turning into a full-throated barrage.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/03/business/03walk.html?hp

UAW Meeting Uprising in Bay Area Regarding the Future Closing of the NUMMI Plant (video, short and hot): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj32Okmz-ho
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9qyTsoPHFQ&feature=related

Can the Afghan Puppet Cut His Strings? “ a long-simmering conflict between Karzai and key officials of the Barack Obama administration over that issue came to a head at last week’s London Conference, when the Afghan president refused to heed U.S. signals to back off his proposal to invite the Taliban leaders to participate in a nationwide peace conference.” http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50196

Mineworkers Strike vs Concessions in Kern County CA: “”I think the company had the impression we were going to roll over and let them feed us the poison.”"After hours of analyzing and evaluating the contract, every one of the 500 workers at the meeting voted no,” said union spokesman Craig Merrilees. “The contract would allow the right to discriminate and practice cronyism when it comes to deciding who gets a raise, who gets overtime and who gets training opportunities.” http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-boron1-2010feb01,0,362036.story

AIG To Dole Out $100 Million in Bonuses: “The Obama administration has been outmaneuvered. And the closed-door negotiations just add to the skepticism that the taxpayers will ever get the upper hand.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/03/business/03aig.html?hp

Nobel Peacenik Wants Biggest War Budget Ever: “ The budget calls for a 3.4 percent increase in the Pentagon’s base budget to $549 billion plus $159 billion to fund U.S. military missions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Obama’s spending freeze on other parts of the budget, to try to rein in the deficit, did not apply to the military.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6103C520100202

There Goes the Passport Kevlar: US Can Kill It’s Scary Citizens When Overseas: “Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair acknowledged Wednesday that government agencies may kill U.S. citizens abroad who are involved in terrorist activities if they are “taking action that threatens Americans.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/03/AR2010020303968_pf.html

There Goes the Dow: “In the final minutes of trading, the blue-chip gauge was briefly below 10,000, falling as low as 9,998.71.”
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/money_co/2010/02/dow-flirts-with-10000point-level-as-markets-sink-worldwide.html

There are NO US Troops in Pakistan, No US Troops in Pakistan, No US Troops In Pakist…“Mr. Aziz said it was odd that American soldiers would go to such a volatile area where Taliban militants were known to be prevalent even though the Pakistani security forces insisted that they had been flushed out.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/04/world/asia/04pstan.html?th&emc=th

Global Research on the Istanbul War Confab: “That the same conference discussed the bloc’s 21st century new global military doctrine – former U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright delivered an address on the topic – raises the question of how many of the 35 partner states’ military chiefs may have joined their 28 NATO colleagues for that phase of discussions. That such a high percentage of the world’s leading military commanders attended a two-day affair which deliberated on both the war in South Asia and the expansion of the world’s only military bloc’s activities even further outside the Euro-Atlantic area (when it has already conducted operations in four continents) confirms that the Afghan war serves more than one purpose for the West. It is the laboratory for strengthening military ties with nations on every inhabited continent and for building the nucleus of and foundation for a potential future world army.”
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17428

Poem of the Week :
Lord Byron
Hereditary bondsmen! know ye not,
Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow?
By their right arms the conquest must be wrought?

Weirdness of the Week: Baptists Stealing Children: “They Knew it Was Wrong!” One nine-year-old girl was crying, and saying, ‘I am not an orphan. I still have my parents.’ And she thought she was going on a summer camp or… something like that [when she was taken],” he said.http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-baptists-knew-taking-children-out-of-haiti-was-wrong-1886357.html

Thanks to Pana, Paul, Amber, Wayne, Doug, Sandy, Cheri, Candace, Tony, Elvira, Marisol, Perry, Kathryn, Adam, Gina, Faith, Greg and Katie, Isabella, Grace, Peter, Stephen, Rick, Dirty Edd, Jill, Sorry We Missed You Karen, Dina, Bill, SSg Lloyd, Kay T, Elaine, Sharon A, Mary, the Susans (as always), Joe, and Will.

Good luck to us, every one.
r

OPPORTUNISM

“All morons hate it when you call them a moron.” In Memoriam: Holden Caulfield

On the Little Rouge School Front This Week:

Outline of California Budget Cuts From NYTimes: Some public school classes in Los Angeles are so crowded that students perch on file cabinets, or sit on the floor, while teachers struggle to maintain quality and grade hundreds of papers.  http://projects.nytimes.com/california-budget?ref=us

Pat Washington Writes On San Diego State’s Entrenched Racism (and look for nepotism, cowardice, and sheer ignorance too): Deafening Silence around African American Student Enrollment Quotas at San Diego State University SDSU never admits more than 25% of its qualified first-time African American student applicants and—furthermore—never allows the total campus population of African American students to rise above 5%? … Clearly, SDSU does not have an African American student application problem. Rather, SDSU has an African American student rejection problem… The peril is magnified by SDSU’s elimination of the local student guaranteed admissions policy… African American Student Enrollment Quotas

A Video Demonstrating the Potential of Student/Worker Campus Strike Action:
http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2009/12/national-call-for-march-4-strike-and.html

Washington State Student Zine “We are All Workers”:
http://gatheringforces.org/2009/11/04/we-are-all-workers-stories-of-struggle-at-the-university-of-washington/#more-806

UCLA IDEA Report on California School/Society Crises: “More than half of the principals reported a sharp increase in student needs for health, psychological, or social services; many reported extremely high social needs — “an epidemic of hunger” — with children receiving no food when they go home for the night or weekend. Educators have responded by connecting students and families with social service providers or by contributing food and clothing, but budget cuts to social welfare programs and school services have left the system with less capacity to respond to these growing needs.” http://idea.gseis.ucla.edu/educational-opportunity-report

NY City–another Bellwether in the School Closings Movement: “Since 2002, the city has closed or is in the process of closing 91 schools, replacing them with smaller schools and charter schools, often several in the same building, with new leadership and teachers. This year, the city has proposed phasing out 20 schools, the most in any year…Because the new schools, at first, accepted relatively few special education and non-English-speaking students, those students began enrolling in greater numbers in the remaining large high schools. Overall enrollment increased at many large high schools, and attendance fell. “While a few schools were successful in absorbing such students, most were not,” the report said…In Chicago, school officials closed 44 schools between 2001 and 2006 more abruptly than New York did: instead of phasing out schools by grade, the entire student body was dispersed at once. When the schools reopened the next year, there were new administrators, teachers and students. But the displaced students often went into other weak schools, adding little benefit for those students and sending those schools into tailspins.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/nyregion/26closings.html?hpw

Alan Singer in Huff Post: What if Capital’s Schools are Working? “In a society where education is organized to achieve capitalist goals, mass public education has two primary purposes. It sorts people out, determining who will be recruited to the elite, learn and succeed, who will receive enough basic training to make an acceptable living, and who will be pushed to the margins of society. It does this through an elaborate system that includes racially and economically segregated school districts that receive different levels of funding, magnet, private and charter schools that sift-off the highest performing or most cooperative students, and rigorous testing and tracking within schools.” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-singer/what-if-our-schools-are-w_b_438733.html

Romeo and Juliet Meet the Battle in the Detroit Federation of Teachers (one of the more creative reads yet):
“We do not approve your plan.
Now listen up, you purchased man.
Your views have sold us down and out
Hear us now or we’ll just shout.
We move to stop our paychecks taken,
We move to make the presidency vacant,
We move to count our vote recall,
We move to remove you, once and for all.”
http://www.metrotimes.com/news/story.asp?id=14748

John Yoo’s Class Goes Into Hiding: “ Yoo was scheduled to begin his first class of the semester Tuesday night of this week and is the only professor in the law school whose class location is not listed on its class schedule.” http://democratic-individuality.blogspot.com/

CalSters on the Ropes: “The California State Teachers’ Retirement System, which lost a quarter of the value of its investment portfolio in the spending year that ended June 30, currently faces a $43-billion shortfall in the money it needs to pay future pensions. What’s worse, warns Chief Executive Jack Ehnes, the $134-billion fund could be broke in 35 years – the length of a typical teaching career – if the state Legislature doesn’t raise the employer contributions paid by school districts in the next few years.”
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/money_co/2010/01/calstrs-teachers-pension-fund-faces-shortfall.html

Arne Duncan, “Atta Girl Hurricane Katrina:” Education Secretary Arne Duncan called Hurricane Katrina “the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans” because it forced the community to take steps to improve low-performing public schools, according to excerpts from the transcript of a television interview made public Friday afternoon.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/29/AR2010012903259.html

Berkeley Rising on March 4th: “The UC Berkeley General Assembly yesterday voted to organize for militant action on the nationwide March 4 Strike and Day of Action: a campus strike 7am to noon, noon rally at Bancroft and Telegraph, followed by a mass march to join the Oakland March 4 rally at Ogawa Plaza.” (From Jack G)

A San Diego Educator Warns Against SDEA Concessions: “Why should SDEA leadership continue to prosper with their non-reduced salaries and non-reduced operating budget when all the rest of us have to “do our fair share”??”
http://richgibson.com/OnSDEASalary.html

Paul Moore on Bloomberg, Klein, and More: “The new danger appears in the rise of the seamless melding of the corporation and the state in the US. The corporate-state was certified as constitutional by the US Supreme Court in its recent decision on corporate campaign financing. The new reality is reflected in the unprecedented amount of money Secretary of Education Arne Duncan suddenly has at his disposal to undermine the public schools.”http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nyceducationnews/message/19412

Mug Shots Of Billionaire School “Reformers”: http://www.indypendent.org/2010/01/29/faces-of-school-reform/

The Perpetual Wars and Booming Inequality Front:

Seeking National Security Secrecy Status for AIG Bailout Scam: “The request to keep the details secret were made by the New York Federal Reserve — a regulator that helped orchestrate the bailout — and by the giant insurer itself, according to the emails.”
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60N1S220100124

Those Who Scored Well on High Stakes Exams Muck Up Military: “The red tape isn’t just on the battlefield. Combat commanders are required to submit reports in PowerPoint with proper fonts, line widths and colors so that the filing system is not derailed. Small aid projects lag because of multimonth authorization procedures. A United States-financed health clinic in Khost Province was built last year, but its opening was delayed for more than eight months while paperwork for erecting its protective fence waited in the approval queue.” http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/08/opinion/08vaccaro.html?_r=2

The Yes Men Strike Again (click on the Interviews) at the World Economic Forum:
http://www.we-forum.org/annualmeeting/schwab.shtml

A Pot For Every California Garage: “Supporters of legalized marijuana announced today that they have gathered about 700,000 signatures for their initiative, virtually guaranteeing voters will see it on the November ballot.”
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/01/marijuana-legalization-backers-california-initiative-petitions.html

Obama is Bush Too on Bogus Terror Surveillance: “ yet another sign that the Obama administration can be just as assertive as Bush’s in claiming sweeping and controversial anti-terrorism powers.”  http://www.mcclatchydc.com/336/story/82879.html

Stiglitz on the Obamagogue/Bush Bankster Scams: “the failures in our financial system are emblematic of broader failures in our economic system, and the failures of our economic system reflect deeper problems in our society” — including growing inequities of wealth, a lack of accountability on the part of business and political leaders, and an emphasis on short-term gains as opposed to long-term benefits… we will emerge from the crisis with a much larger legacy of debt, with a financial system that is less competitive, less efficient and more vulnerable to another crisis.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/19/books/19book.html?pagewanted=2

The Supremes Sing: Dollars are Here and Now You’re Gone: “The coup is over. We lost. The ruling is one more judicial effort to streamline mechanisms for corporate control. It exposes the myth of a functioning democracy and the triumph of corporate power. But it does not significantly alter the political landscape. The corporate state is firmly cemented in place….
There is no national institution left that can accurately be described as democratic. Citizens, rather than participate in power, are allowed to have virtual opinions to preordained questions, a kind of participatory fascism as meaningless as voting on “American Idol.” Mass emotions are directed toward the raging culture wars. This allows us to take emotional stands on issues that are inconsequential to the power elite.   ”
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24491.htm

Hey! Just Who is the Enemy Anyway? “Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan – Western forces killed four Afghan troops Saturday in an airstrike, and military officials disclosed that an Afghan interpreter had shot dead two U.S. service members a day earlier, in a rare concentration of deaths at the hands of allies…relations between the two sides are sometimes marked by
mistrust. ”
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-afghan-friendly-fire31-2010jan31,0,1723475.story

Staughton Lynd on the Death of His Friend, Howard Zinn: “I came to feel that historians practicing “history from below” and “history from the bottom up,” of whom I was one, had a tendency to romanticize the poor and oppressed persons whom they studied and, especially, to believe that such folks were motivated by ideology to a greater degree than was in fact the case.”
http://www.richgibson.com/RememberingHowardZinn.html

In Memory, Howard Zinn: “There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment will continue. We forget how often we have been astonished by the sudden crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary changes in people’s thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion against tyrannies, by the quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible…

What leaps out from the history of the past hundred years is its utter unpredictability.
An optimist isn’t necessarily a blithe, slightly sappy whistler in the dark of our time. To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places–and there are so many–where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

Thanks to Yvonne, Joe B, Amber, Paul, Elvira, Sandy, Sally, Lloyd, Emily, Mr Z and J, Ken and Barb (no kidding), Doug, Adam, Gina, Perry, Penny and Sue, Ruth, Jenna, Crystal, Donna, Candace, Lila, Ann S, Vicko, Tony, Kino, Tommie and Bob, Della, Judy Sanden, Dennis, Melissa, Marisol, Luis, Edgar, Michael, Georgie, Mr J and Z, Sneaky Pete and Dirty Edd.

Good luck to us, every one. r

Above: The Hand of Fate

On the Little Rouge School Front This Week:

If I Boost Your Grade, Will You Please CARE About the Tests? “They’re bribing them with grades,” said Linman, an educator who helps professors improve their instruction at San Diego State University. “If we can’t make the ethical decision about what’s best for students, we have no choice but to say we’re not going to be involved….”reputations are at stake. Valhalla High Assistant Principal Sam Lund said that education has become a competitive marketplace where schools need good facilities and booming scores to draw families. Like it or not, Lund said, test scores matter. But critics argue they matter for the wrong reasons. “Raising our grades is much too drastic,” said Mitchell Winkie, a junior at Valhalla. “It seems like the point of all this is to make the school look better.”http://voiceofsandiego.org/education/article_4628d152-0645-11df-9ea5-001cc4c03286.html

Detroit Federation of Teachers Reacts to Recall Petition vs DFT President: “In interpreting its governing documents the Executive Board was doing exactly what AFT locals around the country and virtually all other unions regularly do. The membership does not have the authority to reject or overrule the decision of the Executive Board on constitutional questions. If the membership could overrule the Executive Board then the Constitution would have no fixed meaning. Rather it would mean nothing more than what a majority at any membership meeting, however large or small, would decide. The membership has the authority to amend the Constitution in accordance with the terms of that document. It does not have the authority to reject the Executive Board’s interpretation and application of that document.” http://mi.aft.org/dft231/ January 15 2010

Reading Corps on the March in Detroit (Beware of Benevolent Missionaries and Their Books): http://www.detnews.com/article/20100123/SCHOOLS/1230369/1026/Thousands-get-fired-up-at-DPS-Reading-Corps-rally

Inequality Booms In California Schools: * High-poverty schools were more than four times as likely (65.6% to 15%) as low-poverty schools to experience teacher layoffs.* 70% of principals reported that summer school had been cut back severely or eliminated. High-poverty schools were almost three times as likely (48.7% to 16.7%) as low-poverty schools to eliminate summer school. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-schools21-2010jan21,0,4957693.story

San Diego Teachers Asked to Take 8% Pay Cut (can we smell the Detroit Rat?): http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/jan/23/sd-teachers-asked-take-pay-reduction/

NYTimes on the End of Higher Ed (Class Struggle) in California: “In 1960, he added, the state created “the gold standard in high-quality, low-cost public higher education. This year, the California legislature abandoned the gold standard.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/education/24sfstudent.html?pagewanted=2&hp

Paul Moore on the Corptocracy of Education and Social Life:http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24481.htm

The Perpetual Wars and Booming Inequality Front:

Haiti Background from NLR, 2004: “Haitians have thus had to pay for their original oppression three times over–through the slaves initial labor, through compensation to the French for the loss of this (slave) labor, and then the interest on the payment.” http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43a/555.html

Videos on Haiti—check out “We Must Kill the Bandits.”http://radioteleginen.ning.com/video/video/listTagged?tag=kevinpina

Pakistan to Gates: If You Want ‘Em, You Chase ‘Em,” : “The Pakistani army said Thursday during a visit by U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates that it can’t launch any new offensives against militants for six months to a year to give it time to stabilize existing gains.The announcement probably comes as a disappointment to the U.S.  President Obama’s comments in December that the U.S. would begin to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan in mid-2011 have raised questions among many Pakistani officials about Washington’s commitment. Analysts say such concerns only reinforce the Pakistani government’s reluctance to target the Afghan Taliban http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122804452

Herbert on Black People Under Attack in USA: “The election of a black president may have been important to African-Americans for myriad reasons, but it hasn’t done much for their bottom line, which continues to deteriorate. For example, without a dramatic new intervention by the federal government, the poverty rate for African-American children could eventually approach a heart-stopping 50 percent, according to analysts at the Economic Policy Institute. Already more than a third of black children are living in poverty. Present trends are not good. Communities of color are being crushed economically and the national news media have not fully focused on the carnage. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/19/opinion/19herbert.html?hp

Mass Constant Unemployment: “In December 2008, 22.9 percent of the unemployed had been out of work for at least 27 weeks. A year later, that portion rose to 39.8 percent. That translates to having about 4 percent of the total civilian work force categorized as long-term unemployed.”http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/14/a-growing-underclass/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+creditwritedownsnews

WSJ: The Unemployment Catastrophe: “ What about the future? The problem in the job market going forward is not so much layoffs in the private sector, which are abating, but a lack of hiring. The federal stimulus program is offset by a 2010 budget shortfall for state, city, county and school districts, which the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities recently estimated will be in the range of an astonishing $200 billion nationally. Since virtually all states and cities have to run balanced budgets, the result will be reduced services, layoffs and tax hikes.” http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703837004575013592466508822.html?mod=rss_opinion_main

Two Million Plus Foreclosures, Obama Plan Helps 1%: up to 99% of eligible homeowners struggling with their mortgage payments have been unable thus far to modify their loans.http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704541004575011420045962424.html?mod=rss_opinion_main

An Anti-War Vet Speaks: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akm3nYN8aG8

Punked Demagogue Spits Back: “Obama sounded unusually defiant..” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/23/us/politics/23obama.html?hp

Bureau of Labor Stats–Private Sector Unionism Collapsing (meaning the corrupt and sold out AFL-CIO is more broke than ever—the reason they want NEA to affiliate so bad): “The overall unionization rate edged lower, to 12.3 percent last year from 12.4 percent in 2008.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/23/business/23labor.html?hp

Thanks to MrJ, Amber, Joe C and B,  MrZ, Lloyd, JT, Joel, Steve, Sandy, Sally, Elvira, Bob, Ruthie, Jen, MT, Adam and Gina (on to a new adventure), Nancy, Vera, Irene, Doug (hey were is that book?), Wayne, Colin, Sandra, Shelley, Betty, Don, and Bill A.

Poem of the Week:

What the Moon Saw byVachel Lindsay

Two statesmen met by moonlight.

Their ease was partly feigned.

They glanced about the prairie.

Their faces were constrained.

In various ways aforetime

They had misled the state,

Yet did it so politely

Their henchmen thought them great.

They sat beneath a hedge and spake

No word, but had a smoke.

A satchel passed from hand to hand.

Next day, the deadlock broke.

Good luck to us, every one. r

We’ll Strike March 4th!

How About You?

Educate! Agitate! Organize Freedom Schools on March 4th’s School Strike!

“If any question why we died, Tell them, because our fathers lied.” Kipling

On the Little Rouge School Front This Week:

DPS Teachers Sue Union and Boss: “Washington claims the loan violates Michigan’s Payment of Wages and Fringe Benefits Act, which forbids an employer from demanding a gift from an employee as a condition of employment. “Bobb does not have the right to extort loans from district employees, and the DFT does not have the right to authorize Bobb to waive the minimum protections of the law,” Washington said.
http://www.detnews.com/article/20100111/SCHOOLS/1110414/DPS-teachers-sue-district–union-over-contract

The Rouge Forum News Latest Edition is Now Available At: http://www.therougeforum.blogspot.com

The Call For Papers for the Next Edition of the Rouge Forum News:
http://therougeforum.blogspot.com/2010/01/call-for-papers-rouge-forum-news-issue.html

Teaching Resources on the History of Haiti: http://canadahaitiaction.ca/?page_id=49

Martin Luther King Speech: Vietnam, A Time to Break the Silence:
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/058.html

A Surprising List From the CIA: Nations’ Percentage Education Expenditures per GDP (US is 57th): https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2206rank.html?countryName=United%20States&countryCode=us&regionCode=na&rank=57#us

Chicago Trib Discovers What Substance News Reported for Years: The Duncan Miracle was a Fraud: “ Scores from the elementary schools created under Renaissance 2010 are nearly identical to the city average, and scores at the remade high schools are below the already abysmal city average, the analysis found. The moribund test scores follow other less than enthusiastic findings about Renaissance 2010 — that displaced students ended up mostly in other low-performing schools and that mass closings led to youth violence as rival gang members ended up in the same classrooms. Together, they suggest the initiative hasn’t lived up to its promise by this, its target year.” http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/education/chi-renaissance-2010-17-jan17,0,3877012.story

Stephen Krashen on the LEARN Act: “I do not support the LEARN Act. As described in the Senate Bill, the LEARN Act is Reading First expanded to all levels. It is Reading First on steroids.” http://susanohanian.org/show_research.php?id=325

Alfie, “Have They Lost Their Minds?” : “ If you read the FAQ page on the common core standards website, don’t bother looking for words like “exploration,” “intrinsic motivation,” “developmentally appropriate,” or “democracy.”  Instead, the very first sentence contains the phrase “success in the global economy,” followed immediately by “America’s competitive edge.”
If these bright new digitally enhanced national standards are more economic than educational in their inspiration, more about winning than learning, devoted more to serving the interests of business than to meeting the needs of kids, then we’ve merely painted a 21st-century façade on a hoary, dreary model of school as employee training.  Anyone who recoils from that vision should be doing everything possible to resist a proposal for national standards that embodies it.
http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/edweek/national.htm

Grassroots Education Movement in NYC Protest Jan 21: “We are picketing Bloomberg’s residence because he is in charge of these wrongful closings. We need to bring our opposition to his doorstep.” http://grassrootseducationmovement.blogspot.com/2010/01/protest-bloombergs-school-closings.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FMIxM+(GEMnyc)

Randi Weingarten (AFT) Proposes to Abolish Tenure (as in Detroit):
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/13/education/13teacher.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y

Joan Roelofs Analysis of the Relationship of Schools and the Military (Click under pages, it’s several pdf files well worth the candle): http://joanroelofs.wordpress.com/military-industrial-complex/4-education-and-culture/

AFL-CIO Goons Open a College: “the online college would charge about $200 a credit, competitive with community colleges and far cheaper than most four-year colleges and for-profit schools.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/15/us/15labor.html?ref=education

The Perpetual Wars and Booming Inequality Front:

On the Ruinous Debt: “When a nation’s debt exceeds 60 percent of its GDP, its growth rate slows precipitously, the study found. When that ratio exceeds 90 percent, nations’ economies barely grow, and can even contract.” http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/81969.html
(“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.” Wilkins Micawber). The U.S. national debt is at roughly 84 percent of the country’s GDP, and it’s projected to cross the authors’ 90-percent threshold late this year or early next year.
The implication is stark: The authors don’t say that the U.S. economy can’t grow briskly despite even higher debt, but if it does, it would be an outlier in roughly 200 years of economic statistics.

Brother Can You Spare a Job? CSMonitor on Endless Unemployment: “in the December unemployment report, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said the number of people out of work for 27 weeks or more hit 6.1 million Americans, or 40 percent of all 15.3 million jobless. This is the most since 1948, when the data was first recorded, according to the Department of Labor. On average, it now takes 20.5 weeks to find a new job – double the amount of time in the 1982-83 recession.”http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0108/Number-of-long-term-unemployed-hits-highest-rate-since-1948

Honest Graft, Per George Washington Plunkett: “Obama Received $20 Million from Healthcare Industry in 2008 Campaign. Almost three times the amount given to McCain” http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/01/12-9

Union Bosses Sell-Out on Health Care Tax: “While politically powerful labor leaders support the plan — which Obama considers crucial to controlling healthcare costs — rank-and-file workers now must be convinced that it is not a betrayal of Obama’s campaign promise to oppose any new taxes on their health benefits.”http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-naw-health-congress15-2010jan15,0,7559784.story

Wall Street Bonuses to Exceed $145 Billion (compare to the meager $100 million in Haiti aid from the entire USA): “Major U.S. banks and securities firms are on pace to pay their people about $145 billion for 2009, a record sum that indicates how compensation is climbing despite fury over Wall Street’s pay culture.An analysis by The Wall Street Journal shows that executives, traders, investment bankers, money managers and others at 38 top financial companies can expect to earn nearly 18% more than they did in 2008—and slightly more than in the record year of 2007. The conclusions are based on an examination of securities filings for the first nine months of 2009 and revenue estimates through year-end.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704281204575003351773983136.html

Come Play on My Yemen Web Says OBL: “”Any association with the (Yemeni) regime will only confirm al Qaida’s narrative, which is that America is only interested in maintaining corrupt and despotic rulers and is not interested in the fate of Arabs and Muslims,” warned Bernard Haykel, a Princeton University professor.” http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/82399.html

Cost of War Update: “These new appropriations bring total war-related spending for Iraq to $747.3 billion and for Afghanistan to $299 billion, with total war costs of $1.05 trillion.”
http://www.nationalpriorities.org/2009/1/11/Cost-of-war-tallies-through-FY2010

California Credit Rating Collapses: “often translate into higher borrowing costs. The latest downgrade leaves California two notches below Illinois, the next lowest among the 50 states, said S&P analyst Gabriel Petek.”     http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/82323.html

The US Produced Tragedy of Haiti, Again: “ It may startle news-hungry Americans to learn that these conditions the American media correctly attributes to magnifying the impact of this tremendous disaster were largely the product of American policies and an American-led development model.” http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/01/14-2

Escobar on Yeman: “The Strait of Bab el-Mandab between Yemen, Djibouti and Eritrea is a key strategic oil chokepoint between the Horn of Africa and the Middle East, linking the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, through which flows at least 3.5 million barrels of oil a day towards the US, Europe and Asia.” http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/LA13Ak04.html

Thanks to Joel S., AMG, EWR, Nancye, Shelly, Peter, Doug, Connie, Kathy and Kathie, Sarah and Bill, MM, Bob, TLS, Gerry, Sharon A, Dave, Arturo, Dan, Jackie, Marisol, Sandy, Geno, Pat, Candace, Ruth, Lisa, Sherry, Marc, the Susans and Jack.

Good Luck to us, every one, r

It’s the Twenty Tens! On to The Twenty Tens!

On the Little Rouge School Front This Week:

The Rouge Forum News Latest Edition is Now Available At: http://www.therougeforum.blogspot.com

The Call For Papers for the Next Edition of the Rouge Forum News:
http://therougeforum.blogspot.com/2010/01/call-for-papers-rouge-forum-news-issue.html

Louisville Education Dean To Plead Guilty; Those of us who have followed this case wish the dean every bad year he deserves. “…Bryant Stamford, a former faculty member who worked at U of L for more than 30 years and who has joined other former education faculty in criticizing the university for its handling of Felner, said Monday he had “mixed feelings” about news of a plea agreement.… It was good that he was finally caught and held accountable for his actions, but I think all of us still sort of default back to: How is it possible that this man was allowed to operate in such a manner for years? He wasn’t operating in a vacuum.”    http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20100104/NEWS01/1040344/Attorney-Robert-Felner-to-plead-guilty-to-siphoning-millions-from-Louisville-Rhode-Island-universities

The Detroit Federation of Teachers’ Contract–the Worst Ever? “The core issue of our time is the rapid rise of color-coded social and economic inequality and the promise of perpetual war, challenged by the potential of mass, class-conscious, resistance. Will we win? The best news is: we do not know. We might if we form trusting communities of care and resistance. If we do not, we can wind up alone disappearing like Johnnie Redding. It is a choice. Community or barbarism.”    http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=1063&section=Article

Detroit Reading Corps Gears Up (Old South African Saying, “Before the missionaries arrived, we had land but no bibles; now we have bibles and no land”): “Soon the Detroit Public Schools could be overrun with thousands of retirees, former teachers, grandparents, stay-at-home moms, corporate employees and even a student from Cranbrook School in Bloomfield Hills.”
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091231/NEWS01/912310429/1001/News/Theyre-ready–to-help-kids-read&template=fullarticle

Charters Blossom in LA: “ Even now, there are those who believe that charter schools are private (they aren’t), that they are run by for-profit companies (rarely in California), that they primarily serve affluent communities (the opposite is true) and that they are better than traditional public schools…Nearly 9% of Los Angeles public school students now attend charters, which offer great variety. Ocean Charter, a predominantly white, middle-class school on the Westside, emphasizes “experiential learning” based on the Waldorf model. The Alliance for College Ready Schools, whose 16 schools south and east of downtown mostly serve low-income black and Latino students, use a strict and structured adherence to state curriculum standards.” http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-charters10-2010jan10,0,5522248.story

No Charges Filed in Attack on UC Boss’ House: “Eight people arrested after protesters vandalized the campus home of the UC Berkeley chancellor have not been charged with any crime and may never be, according to the Alameda County district attorney’s office.
There is insufficient evidence…”
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/12/no-charges-filed-in-vandalization-of-uc-berkeley-chancellors-campus-home.html

Dan Perstein on Attack on UC Boss’ House: “I believe that the university administration not only set the stage for a violent turn in protests by acts which have repeatedly raised tensions and undermined belief in its good will, but actually engaged in most of the violence that has occurred… “ http://www.reclamationsjournal.org/issue01_dan_perlstein.html

Walton’s, Broad, Fund Top Brass in LA United: “Private money is paying for key senior staff positions in the Los Angeles Unified School District — providing needed expertise at a bargain rate, but also raising questions about transparency and the direction of reforms in the nation’s second-largest school system.”
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lausd16-2009dec16,0,298804.story

Michigan Signs Up For Ratt: “Gov. Jennifer Granholm on Monday signed into law a sweeping series of education bills that give the state new power to close failing schools, dump bad teachers and administrators and measure if students are moving ahead… legislation also expects more from students, requiring them to stay in school until age 18, starting with the class of 2016. Students now can leave school at age 16. It allows up to 32 more charter schools to open each year but gives the state the power to close poorly performing charter schools. It also gives professionals from areas other than education an alternative way to become teachers and allows merit pay for excellent teachers and cyber-schools for students who have dropped out.”
http://www.battlecreekenquirer.com/article/20100105/NEWS01/1050313/State-takes-power-over-schools

The Perpetual Wars and Booming Inequality Front:

Logistics: More Powerful Than the Silly UFPJ “Peace Movement” : Senior White House advisers are frustrated by what they say is the Pentagon’s slow pace in deploying 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan and its inability to live up to an initial promise to have all of the forces in the country by next summer, senior administration officials said Friday.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/09/world/09military.html?hp

Obamagogues Backers Betrayed Again on Health Care: “now labor leaders are fuming that President Obama has endorsed a tax on high-priced, employer-sponsored health insurance policies as a way to help cover the cost of health care reform.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/09/business/09union.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y  

Bloomberg: Geithner’s Scam With AIG: “ The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, then led by Timothy Geithner, told American International Group Inc. to withhold details from the public about the bailed-out insurer’s payments to banks during the depths of the financial crisis, e-mails between the company and its regulator show. AIG said in a draft of a regulatory filing that the insurer paid banks, which included Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Societe Generale SA, 100 cents on the dollar for credit-default swaps they bought from the firm. The New York Fed crossed out the reference, according to the e-mails, and AIG excluded the language when the filing was made public…”
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aXIvW4igKV38

Seven CIA Agents/Mercs Blown Up:” One former senior intelligence official said the bomber was being courted as an informant and that it was the first time he had been brought inside the camp. An experienced CIA debriefer came from Kabul for the meeting, suggesting the purpose was to gain intelligence…”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/31/taliban-cia-agents-killed-afghanistan

Times Reveals Names of Spies and Mercs: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/07/world/asia/07intel.html?hp

Blackwater Mercenary Shooters Skate: “Urbina’s ruling does not say whether the shooting was proper, only that the government improperly used evidence to build the case. After the shooting, the State Department ordered the guards to explain what happened…unclear what the ruling means for a sixth Blackwater guard who turned on his former colleagues and pleaded guilty to killing one Iraqi and wounding another.
http://www.latimes.com/news/la-na-blackwater1-2010jan01,0,3833151.story

Estate Tax Vanishes For A Year, Not Long Enough For the Rich To Die Off: “THE RICH and ailing might want to post guards outside their hospital doors this year. Thanks to a provision of the Bush tax cuts, the tax on inherited estates will phase out completely in 2010 before springing back to life in 2011 at its old, higher levels. This means that the rich could save their families millions or more by dying in 2010.” http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2010/01/01/as_estate_tax_drops_to_zero_congress_should_take_action/

The End of the Coalition of the Willing: “There’s no difference, even if they change the name,” said Mohammed Abdul Jabar, 40, a furniture salesman in Baghdad. “The main enemy, the ones who destroyed the country, who disbanded our military, it’s the Americans. If I see a fighter jet loaded with missiles, do I wonder whose it is? No, it’s always been the Americans.”
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/226/story/81544.html

Financial Times on Unfreeing the Free Market: “We made a mistake in the closing decades of the 20th century. We removed restrictions that had imposed functional separation on financial institutions. This led to businesses riddled with conflicts of interest and culture, controlled by warring groups of their own senior employees. The scale of resources such businesses commanded enabled them to wield influence to create a – for them – virtuous circle of growing economic and political power. That mistake will not be easily remedied, and that is why I view the new decade with great apprehension. In the name of free markets, we created a monster that threatens to destroy the very free markets we extol.” http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1959f72c-fa2f-11de-beed-00144feab49a.html

NATO’s Top Intel Officer on US Intel: “’These analysts are starved for information from the field — so starved, in fact, that many say their jobs feel more like fortune telling than serious detective work,” said the report. ”It is little wonder then that many decision makers rely more on newspapers than military intelligence to obtain `ground truth.”’
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/01/05/world/AP-AS-Afghanistan.html?_r=1

On the History is Not Just The Propaganda of the Victors Pedagogy Front:

The Siege and Commune of Paris, 1870-1871: This site contains links to over 1200 digitized photographs and images recorded during the Siege and Commune of Paris cir.1871. In addition to the images in this set, the Library’s Siege & Commune Collection contains 1500 caricatures, 68 newspapers in hard-copy and film, hundreds of books and pamphlets and about 1000 posters.
http://www.library.northwestern.edu/spec/siege/

The Economist Map of Global Tinder-boxes: “poverty alone does not spark unrest—exaggerated income inequalities, poor governance, lack of social provision and ethnic tensions are all elements of the brew that foments unrest.” http://www.economist.com/daily/chartgallery/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15098974&source=most_commented

The Rouser Front: Wayne Ross’ Fave Hits of the Music Year: http://blogs.ubc.ca/ross/

From the Can’t Make This Stuff Up Desk: http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20100105/FREE/100109977#
A human skull that once apparently belonged to Yale’s mysterious Skull and Bones society is now for sale. Christie’s auction house believes the skull was used as a ballot box around 1872. It has a hinge on top and is surrounded by crossbones.

and the best line of the year so far...

“While we’ve been running around playing whack-a-mole with the Taliban and “investing” billions each year in the corrupt Karzai government,” China has been investing in things that might actually be of some value, like a big copper mine. ”
http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/12/30/making_the_world_safe_for_chinese_investment

Thanks to MrJ, Amber, MrZ, Lloyd, JT, Joel, Steve, Sandy, Sally, Elvira, Bob, Ruthie, Jen, MT, Adam and Gina (on to a new adventure), Nancy, Vera, Irene, Doug (hey were is that book?), Wayne, Colin, Sandra, Shelley, Betty, Don, and Bill A.

Good luck to us, every one. r

On to The Twenty Tens!

On the Education Front is a Class War Front Little Rouge School This Week:

The Rouge Forum News Latest Edition is Now Available At: http://www.therougeforum.blogspot.com

Walt Gardner: The RaTT Won’t Fix Schools: Competition may bring out the best in business and sports, but that logic doesn’t necessarily apply to public schools. The practical way to mend the educational system is by implementing economic and social reforms that focus on the children. http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2009/1230/Obama-s-Race-to-the-Top-competition-won-t-fix-public-schools

The War Agenda is an Education Agenda (click on video link):
http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/24/iraqs-school-run-scenes-from-2009/?hp

National Call For March 4th Strike: http://www.defendeducation.org/

NEA Prepares to Dump Seniority, Back Merit Pay, AFT Hacks Cheer: “Mr. Van Roekel testified that “we cannot cover up the fact that too often schools with the greatest needs are filled with the most inexperienced and least skilled teachers.”…Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federal of Teachers, with about 1.4 million members, praised the NEA’s announcement but noted that her union already has entered into such agreements with districts like Chicago and New York City.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125435845367054723.html?mod=loomia&loomia_si=t0:a16:g2:r1:c0.0733717:b28040546

Did NEA Really Spend $56, 349,269 (yes, $56 and 1/3 Million Dollars) on the 2007-08 Election Cycle? http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list_stfed.php?order=A

UTLA Sues To Block Charters: “The union is particularly opposed to charters because the campuses are not required to hire union employees.” http://www.dailynews.com/breakingnews/ci_14045070

RATT Reforms Michigan: “ The state could add more charter schools and poor-performing schools could be taken over by state officials under legislation approved Saturday in the Michigan Legislature. The broad legislation — which also raises the state’s dropout age from 16 to 18 and ties teacher evaluation to student test scores — will be signed by Gov. Jennifer Granholm. The bills are aimed at obtaining up to $400 million in the federal Race to the Top competition run by the Obama administration. The program will distribute more than $4 billion from the Recovery Act to states that most..” http://www.edweek.org/login.html?source=http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2009/12/19/3200

On the International War of the Rich on the Poor Front:

The Demagogue’s Tax the Workers’ Health Plan: “The bill that passed the Senate with such fanfare on Christmas Eve would impose a confiscatory 40 percent excise tax on so-called Cadillac health plans, which are popularly viewed as over-the-top plans held only by the very wealthy. In fact, it’s a tax that in a few years will hammer millions of middle-class policyholders, forcing them to scale back their access to medical care.Which is exactly what the tax is designed to do….  little choice but to ratchet down the quality of their health plans.  ” http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/29/opinion/29herbert.html?hpw

GMAC Picks up Another Nice $3.9 Billion, Total Now $16.3 Billion of Our Cash: “The Treasury Department said on Wednesday it would give $3.8 billion more to GMAC Financial Services and become its majority owner because the auto lender has been unable to raise sufficient capital on its own.” http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/31/business/31gmac.html?hp

Ten Biggest Wall Street Lies of 2009: “Income inequality is good for everyone.” Lord Brian Griffiths, Vice-Chairman of Goldman Sachs at least had the nerve to say what so many of the super-rich really believe:””I’m doing God’s Work.” Lloyd Blankfein, Chairman of Goldman Sachs said what too many Wall Street leaders truly believe: that they are so privileged and entitled that it seems as if the heavens bless their work…”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/les-leopold/wall-streets-10-biggest-l_b_399759.html

Peter Phillips: “The American people face a serious moral dilemma. Murder and war crimes have been conducted in their name. Yet most Americans have no idea of the magnitude of deaths and tend to believe that they number in the thousands and are primarily Iraqis killing Iraqis.  Corporate mainstream media are in large part to blame. The question then becomes how can this mass ignorance and corporate media deception exist in the United States and what impact does this have on peace and social justice movements in the country.”
http://www.mediafreedominternational.org/2009/12/21/inside-the-military-media-industrial-complex-impacts-on-movements-for-peace-and-social-justice/

Heartbreak in Illinois: Gitmo Won’t Close Until 2001! Can’t Illinois Lock Up Some Governors and Mayors in the Interim? “officials now believe that they are unlikely to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and transfer its population of terrorism suspects until 2011 at the earliest — a far slower timeline for achieving one of President Obama’s signature national security policies than they had previously hinted.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/23/us/politics/23gitmo.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

Full Text of the Smedley Butler Classic, “War is a Racket:” ‘WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small “inside” group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.’  http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html

China Rising Fast: “if the projections from Jim O’Neill, Goldman Sachs’ chief economist, prove to be correct, China will overtake America as soon as 2027: in less than two decades.”
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ac26eb9a-f30a-11de-a888-00144feab49a.html

US Military Meeting Recruitment Rates: “ For the first time since the establishment of all-volunteer forces in 1973, the US military has met all of its recruiting goals. This success can be attributed in part to the new video games and graphic novels aimed at America’s youth. It may sound like the US military has solved a major recruitment problem, but there may be a high cost. In another first, suicides among US soldiers have hit a post-Vietnam War high for the fifth year in a row.”
http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2009/1228/US-military-is-meeting-recruitment-goals-with-video-games-but-at-what-cost

Time Running Out in Afghanistan: “As the U.S. and its allies try to overcome logistical hurdles and rush some 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan in 2010, intelligence officials are warning that the Taliban-led insurgency is expanding and that “time is running out” for the U.S.-led coalition to prove that its strategy can succeed. The Taliban have created a shadow “government-in-waiting,” complete with Cabinet ministers, that could assume power if the U.S.-backed government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai fails, a senior International Security Assistance Force intelligence official said in Kabul, speaking only on the condition of anonymity as a matter of ISAF policy. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/81358.html

On the Weirdness Grows Every Day Front:
Lady in Red Topples Anti-Christ: “Footage from the Vatican aired on Italy’s RAI state TV showed a woman dressed in a red, hooded sweat shirt vaulting over the wooden barriers and rushing toward the pope before being swarmed by bodyguards.” http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2009/dec/24/pope-knocked-down-by-woman-at-christmas-mass/ or http://www.break.com/index/pope-attacked-by-crazy-woman-during-vatican-mass.html

Thanks to Mike Antonucci of EIA for the head’s up on NEA campaign spending. And thanks to all on our Rouge Forum list for patience and perseverance, coupled with a sense of urgency, for more than a decade.

To Close, a Note Where on Where We’ve Been and Where We May Go:

In mid- 2001, we wrote, “This is the seiche time…From time to time in the St. Clair River, which runs rapidly along the eastern coast of Michigan connecting Lake Huron with Lake St. Clair, a combination of high winds and atmospheric pressure causes the river to split apart, leaving a wet marsh between an onrushing tide of water headed south, and a trailing wave of great power. The locals call this a seiche, and the long moments that pass as the broken water surges to connect with itself, usually accompanied by dark purple skies, they call the seiche time.”

September 11, 2001 followed.

Four years earlier, we argued that schools were even then the centripetal organizing point of de-industrialized North American life (and elsewhere too), that the struggles in schools would mesh ideology and money; sometimes colliding, other times in a perfect marriage.

We said any society engaged in militarism, imperialism, tied to a consumer economy, would surely move to greater control over what citizens know and how they come to know it. Schools would be key.

In schools, we said that six thrusts from elites would come into play:
1. Regimented national curricula (we used the history standards as a model).
2. Anti-working class, racist, high-stakes tests.
3. Merit pay linked to the tests.
4. More militarism.
5. Some privatization.
6. A full blown assault on educators’ wages and benefits.

We argued that the traditional unions and professional organizations would be worse than useless in meeting these attacks as their leaders are flatly on the other side of what is a class(room) war.

We said “an injury to one will proceed an injury to all.” It has, as we indicated, urban districts serving especially exploited populations and rural districts would be hit first, but middle class districts would follow–then even some of the richer public schools would be hit.

We insisted for nine years that a consumer society that has a vanishing productive base, a society rooted in spectacles, massive internal and external borrowing, and financial shenanigans was built on sand–and that the sky would fall. It did.

For a decade, we built school resistance around, mostly, research and action aimed at the high-stakes exams with some success in both wealthy and poor districts while most middle class district school workers muddled along.

In early 2008, we expressed sympathy for those who would vote Democratic, but suggested that relying on Democrats to make fundamental change demonstrated a key misunderstanding of the relationship of capitalism and democracy, the former then trumping democracy at every turn. We insisted that “capitalism has to be named.”

We said, “The core issue of our time is the rapid rise of color-coded social and economic inequality and the promise of perpetual war, challenged by the potential of mass, class-conscious, resistance.”

Over more than a decade, our conferences and our resources became community and comfort to educators who often felt isolated in this onslaught.

We claim no special foresight. What is most surprising to us is that in North America the Rouge Forum stands alone as an organized group of people who recognize that what is afoot is an education agenda as a war agenda, a class war agenda, and who seek to construct reason, connected to power, in order to not only push back, but transform our own lives and our society.

The Rouge Forum transcends the divisions of academic and social labor, rather than recreating them as do unions and the “professional” organizations. We include doctors, professors, k12 educators, support personnel, social workers, media specialists, librarians, parents, two principals, truck drivers, custodians, secretaries, retirees, stadium workers, construction workers, unemployed people, soldiers, union staffers, that is, people from all over world, the US to India to England to Grenada to South Africa.

The Rouge Forum News, our Broadsides, videos, and other publications reflect that unity–and our varying critiques of why things are as they are.

We close a horrific decade begun and ended with war heaped upon war—battles where the children of the poor kill other children of the poor on behalf of the rich in their homelands.
We witnessed the greatest theft of wealth in the history of the world, the $12.9 trillion Tarp bank bailout (no strings) and the takeover of the auto industry by the federal government, finalizing what can only be seen as a corporate state.

On the near horizon, we suspect the Democrats will tax the existing health insurance of those who have jobs, dump GM, Chrysler, and Walmart employees into a debased pool of the barely insured, and let the rich off the hook once again.

What is ahead? Surely more wars, intensifying as imperial rivalries grow. China, Russia, Japan, and Europe all desperately need that oil, that cheap labor, that copper, those markets, the pipelines, and those shipping lanes.

The wars will come home in the economy and daily life. Our crystal ball isn’t clear enough to predict deflation, inflation, or devaluation, but the throw of the dice says rampant inflation.

In daily life, the assaults on reason and well being in schools will necessarily sharpen as will political repression, often disguised as protection of the citizenry.

We have said persistently that people will fight back as they will have no choice but to fight back—and people will pull back when they see no alternative but to retreat. Will we make good sense of why we must fight? Will the fight be the isolating call of, “Save My Job!” and lose, or will it be, “When They Say Cut Back, We Say Fight Back!” and win?

Resistance is rising as the recent battles in California universities show. However, it remains that retreat is workers’ main move now–as the debacle of the Detroit Federation of Teacher contract ($500 per month pay cut, massive health care cuts, merit pay, teachers disciplining teachers–all as the DFT leadership hugged the employer; teachers ratified at 60% as they were isolated from one another, saw no option).

Justice demands organization. If we are to overcome what can now be reasonably described as the emergence of fascism as a mass, popular, world-wide movement, the Rouge Forum needs to grow.

We need your ideas, suggestions, comments, and criticism. You can post here at the blog or write any member of the Rouge Forum Steering Committee.

We hope you will spread the word, urge others to join our community, so the next decade will not end with the darkness this one has.

Good luck to us, every one.

R

Good Luck to Us, Every One.

And Up the Rebels!

Dear Friends, Here’s to the 4468 of us on the Rouge Forum list who have, in one way or another, sought to fashion reason and connect that to power. Here’s to a decade that lays the foundation for a just and equitable society—fun too!

On the Education Front is a Class War Front This Week:

The Rouge Forum News Latest Edition is Now Available At: http://www.therougeforum.blogspot.com/

National Call for March 4 Strike and Day of Action To Defend Public Education:

California has recently seen a massive movement erupt in defense of public education — but layoffs, fee hikes, cuts, and the re-segregation of public education are attacks taking place throughout the country. A nationwide resistance movement is needed.

We call on all students, workers, teachers, parents, and their organizations and communities across the country to massively mobilize for a Strike and Day of Action in Defense of Public Education on March 4, 2010. Education cuts are attacks against all of us, particularly in working-class communities and communities of color.

The politicians and administrators say there is no money for education and social services. They say that “there is no alternative” to the cuts. But if there’s money for wars, bank bailouts, and prisons, why is there no money for public education?

We can beat back the cuts if we unite students, workers, and teachers across all sectors of public education — Pre K-12, adult education, community colleges, and state-funded universities. We appeal to the leaders of the trade union movement to support and organize strikes and/or mass actions on March 4. The weight of workers and students united in strikes and mobilizations would shift the balance of forces entirely against the current agenda of cuts and make victory possible.

Building a powerful movement to defend public education will, in turn, advance the struggle in defense of all public-sector workers and services and will be an inspiration to all those fighting against the wars, for immigrants rights, in defense of jobs, for single-payer health care, and other progressive causes.

Why March 4? On October 24, 2009 more than 800 students, workers, and teachers converged at UC Berkeley at the Mobilizing Conference to Save Public Education. This massive meeting brought together representatives from over 100 different schools, unions, and organizations from all across California and from all sectors of public education. After hours of open collective discussion, the participants voted democratically, as their main decision, to call for a Strike and Day of Action on March 4, 2010. All schools, unions and organizations are free to choose their specific demands and tactics — such as strikes, rallies, walkouts, occupations, sit-ins, teach-ins, etc. — as well as the duration of such actions.

Let’s make March 4 an historic turning point in the struggle against the cuts, layoffs, fee hikes, and the re-segregation of public education.
- The California Coordinating Committee

(To endorse this call and to receive more information contact 1. march4strikeanddayofaction@gmail.com and check out www.defendcapubliceducation.wordpress.com )

The Detroit Federation of Teachers Just Ratified (by 60%) A Contract that Includes a $500 per Month Pay Cut, Merit Pay, Teachers Evaluating Teachers, Almot $30 Million in Health Care Cuts–the Worst Teacher Contract in History (solely in order to ensure AFT dues income). Here is American Federation of Teachers Boss, Randi Weingarten, in a New York Times ad appearing in the Sunday December 13 edition of the Week In Review on p. 5: “What Matters Most: Detroit Teaches America a Valuable Lesson…This tentative agreement includes several reforms that will drive the enhancement of school achievement, including school based bonuses, peer assistance, and review and a new, comprehensive teacher evaluation system. At the same time, both parties recognize the severe financial conditions of the district and sought innovative approaches to saving money. Teachers, who are also struggling in these tough times, are being asked to sacrifice – by agreeing to a reduction in pay received now and deferring pay increases until the third year of the contract. Teachers will receive a bonus when leaving the district. The players also recognized the need to address skyrocketing health care costs and agreed to measures that will save the district millions…”
Susan Ohanian on the Ratt Money and Gates: “ Let Bill Gates Fix Windows and Leave Schools Alone.” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susan-ohanian/raise-test-scores-or-die_b_390433.html

Arne Duncan Loves Louisiana Teacher Ed Test Scores: “  Through an initiative that Education Secretary Arne Duncan calls a model for the nation, Louisiana has become the first state to tie student test scores into a chain of evaluation that reaches all the way to teacher colleges. Those that fail to perform on this new metric someday could face shake-ups or, in extreme cases, closure. “It’s accountability on steroids,” said E. Joseph Savoie, president of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette…” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/12/AR2009121202631.html

On the Class War at Home–the Economy:

Luxemburg, about 100 Years Ago: “Violated, dishonored, wading in blood, dripping filth – there stands bourgeois society. This is it [in reality]. Not all spic and span and moral, with pretense to culture, philosophy, ethics, order, peace, and the rule of law – but the ravening beast, the witches’ sabbath of anarchy, a plague to culture and humanity. Thus it reveals itself in its true, its naked form. In the midst of this witches’ sabbath a catastrophe of world-historical proportions has happened: International Social Democracy has capitulated…” http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1915/junius/ch01.htm

Monthly Review on the Real Economy and the Bubbles: “Insofar as the financial system is growing not by servicing production, but through a process of money simply begetting more money (in Marx’s shorthand M-M ), without the intervening production of commodities, this takes the form of a financial bubble, or an unsustainable explosion of credit/debt. This means that the speculative process depends for its very continuation on the piling up of greater and greater amounts of debt, and in order to do this, it needs to have constant cash infusions from the real economy to provide additional capital that can be “leveraged up.”http://www.monthlyreview.org/091130trainer.php

Chrysler Won’t Pay You Back the $4 Billion: “ A reorganization plan filed in bankruptcy court in New York today by the former Chrysler LLC, now known as Old Carco LLC, shows the automaker will not repay the $4 billion government loan it received in January.Unsecured creditors also are unlikely to recover any of their claims, unless there is a successful outcome in a lawsuit against former Chrysler owner Daimler AG by the Creditors’ Committee.” http://www.detnews.com/article/20091215/AUTO01/912150431/Chrysler-liquidation-plan-won-t-repay-$4B-fed-loan

Wash Post: Banks Free to Fail Again: “…caution was thrown to the wind when Bank of America, Citigroup and then Wells Fargo demanded to be freed of the stigma and extra supervision that came along with the bailout funds.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/15/AR2009121504939.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns

Chalmers Johnson Speaks on His Book, Nemesis: Empire Destroys Democracy and Itself, “a serious American Imperialist would like Bill Clinton better than George Bush.”
http://fora.tv/2007/03/06/Chalmers_Johnson#fullprogram  and his January 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on the USA: “Bankruptcy and Collapse: Confronted by the limits of its own vast but nonetheless finite financial resources and lacking the political check on spending provided by a functioning democracy, the United States will within a very short time face financial or even political collapse at home and a significantly diminished ability to project force abroad. http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/01/0081346

On the International War of the Rich on the Poor Front, Where the Rich Use the Children of the Poor, Everywhere, to Make War on Other Children of the Poor on Behalf of the Rich in the Homeland:

Washington Post: Up to 56,000 more contractors likely for Afghanistan:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/15/AR2009121504850.html?wprss=rss_business

And the Obamagogue Defense Budget Booms: “When the Obama Administration first took office, it appeared to many in the government contracting community that the government spending spree would be coming to a halt. Recently, President Obama said “the days of giving defense contractors a blank check are over.” However, given recent events, these fears may prove to be exaggerated, as the Obama Administration looks set to significantly increase the Department of Defense’s budget for 2011..significant opportunities for contractors will be available for the present. The total defense funding requested will be above $700 billion for the first time in history. As the US seeks to deploy an additional 30,000 combat troops to Afghanistan, the opportunities for government contractors will only continue to grow, particularly in added weapons development and providing support. Government contractors can take heart that “reports about [their] death have been greatly exaggerated… ”
http://govconwire.com/2009/12/early-forecasts-of-reduced-dod-spending-may-have-been-exaggerated/

China Opens Pipeline Through Asia: “Though helpful to energy-parched China, the project siphons potential supplies from the long-delayed pipeline that the European Union would like to see built from Turkey to Central Europe. Such a project could also tap sources of natural gas in Turkmenistan, a stark illustration of the overlapping energy interests at play in the region…The pipeline is the first major export corridor for natural gas out of the region that does not pass through Russia. It breaks from the Soviet-era design of a pipeline system built to supply Eastern Europe via Russia to the north of Central Asia. The new pipe revives a pre-Soviet view of trade in the region, in which economic exchanges flow east and west, not just through Russia…Russia’s paramount goal is to prevent the West from breaking a monopoly on natural gas pipelines from Asia to Europe, which is the core of Gazprom’s business. The eastbound Chinese pipeline, in contrast, does not undercut an existing Russian export market, because Russia sells no pipeline gas to China now.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/15/world/asia/15pipeline.html?scp=1&sq=china%20pipeline&st=cse

Juan Cole on the Latest from Pipelanistan: “China has landed the big bid to develop a major gas field in Turkmenistan, along with a pipeline to Beijing. Turkmenistan had strongly considered piping the gas to Moscow instead, but developed conflicts with Gazprom. So the US is bogged down in an Afghanistan quagmire, and China is running off with the big regional prize.”http://www.juancole.com/2009/12/china-wins-struggle-for-pipelinestan.html

On the Wolves In Sheeps’ Clothing Front:

Architect of Ford Sellout To Be UAW Boss, After the Rejected Contract is Imposed By the UAW Hacks: On more than one occasion, dissidents booed when King tried to defend the deal at factories from Michigan to Missouri. http://detnews.com/article/20091216/AUTO01/912160432/UAW-nominates-Bob-King-to-be-next-president

Same Work, Half Pay: Thank the UAW: “Even as thousands of Minnesotans hit the unemployment line this year, thousands more who kept their jobs took deep wage cuts or saw their hours cut, resulting in an overall drop in earnings that’s the steepest since the state began reporting wage data in 1970, officials say. That helps explain why Minnesota tax revenue has plummeted and the state faces another big budget deficit.”
http://www.startribune.com/business/79138492.html?elr=KArks:DCiU1OiP:DiiUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUU

Thanks to Peter R., Bill T, Amber, Gina and Adam, Nancy, Katy and Greg and the kids, Marcie, Arturo and Melinda, TC, Sandy H, Sue W, Mr J, MrK, MrZ, Judy T, The Entire DPS gang, Bill, Sherry, Marc and Bonnie, VS, Tommie, Ileana, Erin, the Susans, Terry, Elvira, Tony, Rick W, Eduardo, Hinken, Riley, Beau, David, Agops up in Canada, Wayne, Sandra and Colin (no concussions, dude), Harv, Faith and Craig, the Joes, the Bryan, Ophira, Travis, and Denny–and the entire group that has held up the light of reason for more than a decade.

Good Luck to Us, Every One.

R

“Though we have heard of stupid haste in war, cleverness has never been seen associated with long delays.” Sun Tzu, the Art of War.

Dear Friends,

It’s an action packed and thought-filled week as we head into what were the holidays, once. Check out the links below to see the brewing wars in education, on the battlefield, and in the economy—and the rising resistance as well.

But first—Fun: Obvious-Man vs Capitalist Democracy: http://www.gocomics.com/nonsequitur/  (Check Dec 13).

On the Education Agenda is a War Agenda Front:

In Detroit, hysteria fostered by the Broad Foundation, the Michigan Governor, the Mayor of Detroit, and the Detroit Federation of Teachers’ bosses has the public demanding teachers be jailed for the kids’ NEAP test scores: http://www.detnews.com/article/20091212/SCHOOLS/912120373/Detroit-parents-want-DPS-teachers–officials-jailed-over-low-test-scores/?imw=Y

At the same time, rank and filers prepare for yet another Detroit schools wildcat strike:
http://www.detnews.com/article/20091212/SCHOOLS/912120351

Review for yourself the pressure the DFT dishonestly applies on members and the sellout contract: http://mi.aft.org/dft231/

In Michigan, Low Test Scores Fuel Attack on Educators and Kids with NEA and AFT backing:
http://www.detnews.com/article/20091209/SCHOOLS/912090368/Detroit-schools–test-results-could-fuel-reform-push while Detroit News Urges Mayor to Follow Michelle Rhee and the D.C AFT: http://www.detnews.com/article/20091209/OPINION01/912090314 where Randi Weingarten joins Darling-Hammond, The Wretched Caroline Kennedy,  and Broad: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/03/AR2009050301872.html

DFT President, in Tandem With Broad Foundation and Skillmans, uses NAEP Results to Try to Ram Through Give-back Contract (Merit Pay, Peer Review, wage and benefit concessions, etc.)
“The results, Johnson stressed, should not be a comment on the commitment of teachers. And a tentative agreement between the district and teachers calls for reforms like peer review and teacher evaluations that help instructors build in their strengths”
http://www.freep.com/article/20091208/NEWS01/91208035/1319/

Meanwhile, In DC where Michelle Rhee hired 900 teachers over the summer, then fired more than 250 senior teachers in October, WTU members claim that the union’s lawyers failed in their duty to represent them when they managed to lose the case. Members demand an appeal
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/dc/2009/12/fired_teachers_rip_union_ask_f.html
Reactionary Post Columnist Jay Matthews Touts AFT’s President Weingarten for the next Czar in DC schools. Makes all the sense in the world.

Protestors Attack UC Hack—at Home: “ Eight people were under arrest Saturday after protesters broke windows, lights and planters outside the home of the chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley. University spokesman Dan Mogulof said 40 to 70 protesters also threw incendiary devices at police cars and the home of Chancellor Robert Birgeneau about 11 p.m. Friday. There were no fires or injuries.”
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2009/dec/12/protesters-damage-calif-university-leaders-home/

26 More Students Arrested in California: Campus and city police entered the business administration building and ended the occupation at 3:15 a.m., university spokeswoman Ellen Griffin said. But Berkeley’s Wheeler Hall Remains a Freedom School:
http://www.ktvu.com/news/21920112/detail.html

LA’s “Pilot Schools”: Strategic Hamlets? Charters operate independent of direct district control and are free from some rules that govern traditional schools, including adherence to L.A. Unified’s union contracts….Local school officials and the teachers union have reached a tentative deal that would help groups of teachers bid for control of 30 campuses under a recently adopted school-reform plan….The agreement, announced today, would allow the number of “pilot schools” in the Los Angeles Unified School District to increase from 10 to 30. Pilots are small schools where teachers, administrators and community members have broad latitude to establish the rules under which the school operates. Unlike charter schools, the pilots remain closely affiliated with the district, and employees retain their representation by district unions.” http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/12/deal-would-let-la-teachers-create-pilot-schools.html

On the Class War in the Economy Front:

Matt Taibbi: “Barack Obama ran for president as a man of the people, standing up to Wall Street as the global economy melted down in that fateful fall of 2008. He pushed a tax plan to soak the rich, ripped NAFTA for hurting the middle class and tore into John McCain for supporting a bankruptcy bill that sided with wealthy bankers “at the expense of hardworking Americans.” Obama may not have run to the left of Samuel Gompers or Cesar Chavez, but it’s not like you saw him on the campaign trail flanked by bankers from Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. What inspired supporters who pushed him to his historic win was the sense that a genuine outsider was finally breaking into an exclusive club, that walls were being torn down, that things were, for lack of a better or more specific term, changing. Then he got elected.What’s taken place in the year since Obama won the presidency has turned out to be one of the most dramatic political about-faces in our history.… Neil Barofsky, the inspector general charged with overseeing TARP, estimates that the total cost of the Wall Street bailouts could eventually reach $23.7 trillion. And while the government continues to dole out big money to big banks, Obama and his team of Rubinites have done almost nothing to reform the warped financial system…What we do know is that Barack Obama pulled a bait-and-switch on us. If it were any other politician, we wouldn’t be surprised. Maybe it’s our fault, for thinking he was different.  ”  http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31234647/obamas_big_sellout?action=rate#rate

Failed United Auto Workers hack Bob King who negotiated contract members rejected to become next UAW Prezzie and the contract is “Imposed,”: “In a stunning role reversal, Gettelfinger told UAW employees Thursday that he would impose the terms of a concessionary contract that they voted down last month. That means reduced benefits for the union’s own retirees and requires each UAW employee to take a two-week unpaid furlough or give up their 401(k) matching contribution next year.”
http://www.detnews.com/article/20091212/AUTO01/912120361/King-emerges-as-next-UAW-chief

What shall we call the UAW and other “unions,” when they aren’t what most people think a union is?
http://clogic.eserver.org/2006/gibson.html

Bernie Sanders Slams Bernanke: “ What the American people did not bargain for was another four years for one of the key architects of the Bush economy. Before Ben Bernanke became the Fed chairman in 2006, he headed the council of economic advisers for President Bush – one of the most right-wing presidents in American history. He also sat on the Fed board of governors from 2002 to 2005. Perhaps more than anyone else, Bernanke was in a position to diagnose the impending economic disaster and take steps to stop it. Tragically, not only did he fail to prevent the economic collapse that we have experienced, he did not even warn the American people that it was coming until it was too late. Equally distressing, his actions since the crisis began may leave taxpayers holding the bag for an even bigger bailout in the future. . . Since Bernanke took over as Fed chairman in 2006, unemployment has more than doubled and, today, 17.5 percent of the American workforce is either unemployed or underemployed. Not since the Great Depression has the financial system been as unsafe, unsound, and unstable as it has been during Mr. Bernanke’s tenure.  More than 120 banks have failed since he became chairman.
http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=3565601c-6a0c-4918-ad8a-a8f6162a05a2

And on the Perpetual War Front Where Children of the Poor Fight Other Children of the Poor on Behalf of the Rich in Their Homelands:

Petraeus Promises a Long and Expensive War: America’s involvement in Afghanistan could stretch on for years and cost upward of $10 billion annually just to finance an adequate Afghan security force, the overall commander in the region told Congress on Wednesday.
Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the commander, Gen. David H. Petraeus, one of the military’s most influential generals, estimated that building and maintaining a combined army and police force of 400,000 — a size that American commanders believe may eventually be needed to fully secure the country — would cost more than $10 billion a year.
On Tuesday, President Hamid Karzai, at a news conference with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, said Afghanistan would not be able to pay for its own security until at least 2024, an assertion that surprised Mr. Gates and drew expressions of concern from senators of both parties.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/10/world/asia/10policy.html?scp=2&sq=petraeus&st=cse

Chris Hedges, Liberals are Useless: “Anyone who says he or she cares about the working class in this country should have walked out on the Democratic Party in 1994 with the passage of NAFTA. And it has only been downhill since. If welfare reform, the 1999 Financial Services Modernization Act, which gutted the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act—designed to prevent the kind of banking crisis we are now undergoing—and the craven decision by the Democratic Congress to continue to fund and expand our imperial wars were not enough to make you revolt, how about the refusal to restore habeas corpus, end torture in our offshore penal colonies, abolish George W. Bush’s secrecy laws or halt the warrantless wiretapping and monitoring of American citizens? The imperial projects and the corporate state have not altered under Obama.”
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/12/07

TomGram–The Nine Pronged Surge: “Whatever the Obama administration does in Afghanistan and Pakistan, however, the American ability to mount a sustained operation of this size in one of the most difficult places on the planet, when it can’t even mount a reasonable jobs program at home, remains a strange wonder of the world.” http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175176/tomgram:__state_of_surge,_afghanistan/

A “Necessary War” — for a Gas Pipeline. It’s Obama’s War Now. http://www.counterpunch.org/leupp11302009.html

Spy vs Spy:

Yahoo Sells Its Users Emails: http://mathaba.net/news/?x=622292

Thanks to Amber, Adam and Gina, Andy, Kathy K., Nancy, Cheri and Sherry, Marc and Bonnie, Tommie Lee, Bob, both Bills, Susan O and H, Candace, Bryan, Tim, Donna, Arturo, Isabella, Mat, Ken and Jean, Kathryn, TC, Doug and Connie, Steve R., Jim O, Pete, Weird Eric, Edd, Susanne, Bonnie, Doug G, Kim B, Elaine H, Agops, Telly, and David.

Good luck to us, every one.

R

Supplement:
Letter to the Detroit News 12-09-09:

Let’s apply journalistic questions to the real crisis in DPS:

Who? Appointed by Democrat Granholm as Czar, Bob Bobb is loyal to the Broad Foundation, where he will return after Detroit. Now News columnist Burnam wants to make Bobb, “dictator.” Think twice.
DPS employees deserve some responsibility for the current DPS crisis, incompetence in academics and systematic corruption, but primary responsibility must lie with a series of corrupt and incompetent administrations (Takeover Board to Burnley to Calloway and the wacko current Board). Beyond that, a system propelled by greed and racism holds main responsibility for the ruin of civic life in Detroit.

What? Doing school reform without doing social and economic reform will fail. Only the dull or dishonest reject that. Bobb rejects it. Bobb arrived to restore order and hope to DPS by regimenting the curricula, pushing anti-working class high stakes exams, demanding merit pay to pit teachers vs teachers, schools vs schools, and kids vs kids, exacting draconian pay cuts, through privatization; all cooked in an atmosphere of fear and intimidation.

Bobb wants to rebuild hope in DPS because absent school-based hope, rebellions occur. It’s false hope. DPS will still be a pre-prison, pre-Walmart, pre-teacher, and for a very few, flight school district because that’s where the combination of greed and racism that makes up Detroit’s history leads. The key is discipline and order to create loyal, dutiful, and obedient youth, unlikely to rebel.

When? Fast. No thinking, the huckster’s tool.

Where? This is a nation wide flim-flam. It’s not just Detroit. It’s D.C., LA, Miami, New York, every big city in the US. Odd that in a nation desperate for jobs, the merger of corporate heads, union bosses, and government officials want to eradicate the jobs of school workers.

How: By attacking small time DPS crooks, ignoring big time crooks (contractors, developers, union hacks, top administrators), and going around the outright fools (the Board and many administrators) Bobb proves himself apt, but not honest.

Why? Because the education agenda, a bi–partisan effort, is a war agenda. Inside the US, it is a war on educators, among the last people with fairly predictable jobs, health benefits, and pensions in the country. It is a war on youth, using bogus forms of science (test scores that measure little more than income and race), to deepen segregation and prepare kids for a life of no jobs, bad jobs, prison, or the military where they will be enlisted by the economy to fight other poor kids, on behalf of the rich in their homelands.

People will resist. At issue is whether or not they make sense of things and fight back in ways that truly connect reason to power. We need no more dictators.

Dr Rich Gibson
Emeritus Professor of Education
San Diego State University

1.

Fight Back Against Budget Cuts At California Colleges And Universities
The Radical Caucus of the Modern Language Association supports the California students, faculty and campus workers who are fighting against budget cuts, fee increases, furloughs, and firings. We encourage all MLA members to support the Californians’ fightback.
This year California cut more than $800 million from the University of California (UC) statewide budget, $500 million from the California State University (CSU) system, and $700 million from California Community Colleges (CCC). University and college administrators reacted by eliminating programs and support services, reducing enrollments, offering fewer courses, cutting staff and faculty salaries via furloughs, and laying off hundreds of instructors and non-academic campus workers. To make matters worse, UC and CSU have hiked their fees by 32%, placing the cost of attending college out of reach for many students from low and middle income families. As a result of California’s downsizing of higher education, CSU will cut its enrollment by 40,000 students over the next two years, and CCC will force out a whopping 250,000 students. Working-class families, already facing a 12.2% unemployment rate in California, will be the hardest hit. Since September 24 of this year, thousands of students, workers and faculty have organized teach-ins, rallies, demonstrations, marches, walkouts, strikes and occupations to stop the cuts. Even though university administrators claim that students have the right to “free speech,” protesters at various campuses have been beaten by the police and arrested..

The California budget cuts?and the fee increases at four-year schools?smack of racism because students of color will feeel the effects of these cuts the most. But the cutbacks are also racist in a more devastating political sense. Tragically, while CSU will reduce enrollment by 40,000 students next year, the state has approved AB 900, a law that allocates $7.7 billion to add 40,000 new beds for prison inmates?on top of the $12 billion a year the state spends on prison operating costs. By 2012 California will spend more on prisons than it does on education. There is a direct correlation between the lack of educational opportunities and imprisonment: 18-to-24-year-old male high school dropouts have an incarceration rate 31 times that of males who graduate from a four-year college. And California’s prison inmates are overwhelmingly Black and Latino. Every dollar cut from higher education increases the likelihood of young men of color being siphoned away from higher education and toward a racist prison system.

The financial problems of colleges and universities are directly linked to US capitalism’s current economic crisis?the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression. With the collapse of the banking system last year, predatory banks and speculators wiped out vast amounts of capital, including capital used to sustain colleges and universities. While the federal government has spent billions to bailout banks and corporations, it has invested only a pittance on bailing out schools and colleges. In an exposé of capitalist greed, the California Budget Project has shown that California’s 1993 tax cuts benefiting corporations and the wealthy cost the state $11.7 billion in 2005-6 and $12 billion in 2007-2008. Had the state continued taxing at rates equal to those fifteen years ago, there would be no budget crisis in California—or at least it would be far less severe. What’s more, the economic crisis is bound up in a larger global crisis involving imperialist occupations and war. The US spends close to a trillion dollars a year on wars to dominate oil production and pipelines in the Middle East and Central Asia. Obama’s recent escalation of the wars in Afghanistan-Pakistan (at $30 billion and counting) and the continued occupation of Iraq make clear that this president plans to continue Bush’s policy of overspending endlessly on wars.

The struggle against budget cuts at UC, CSU and CCC is a political struggle: a fight against the decision of the state to make students, faculty and workers pay for the profit losses of capitalist corporations. MLA members should support the movement of students, faculty and workers in California because their fight is our fight. We support a second federal stimulus bill to fund higher education nationwide. We support Californians’ fight to abolish racist prisons and increase state funds for higher education: “No cutbacks! No fee increases! No furloughs! No firings!” We don’t want pie in the sky. We want to restore the 1960 California Master Plan for Higher Education in which public colleges were free for all and which guaranteed a place for all California students who wanted to go.

Radical Caucus of the MLA

Above, The New Hegemony (from the IWW).

“He who wishes to fight must first count the cost. When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, then men’s weapons will grow dull and their ardor will be dampened. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength. Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources of the State will not be equal to the strain. Now, when your weapons are dulled, your ardor dampened, your strength exhausted and your treasure spent, other chieftains will spring up to take advantage of your extremity. “
Sun Tzu, The Art of War.

Dear Friends,

Detroit may be the next centerpiece for education struggles soon. The Detroit Federation of Teachers bosses signed a tentative agreement (TA) with the Broad Foundation’s Detroit Financial Manager, Bob Bobb who now runs the system, that offers DPS $500 a month from each teacher’s check, or $10,000 a year, to be paid back as a no-interest loan when the teacher quits the system.

With about 7000 school workers in DPS (not all classroom teachers), paying the dun for 2 1/2 years of the 3 year contract, that’s a $105 million no-interest loan to a school system that claimed it needed about $40 million in concessions from the school workers. More, DPS claims its on the brink of bankruptcy, which would likely dissolve the debt to educators.

The TA also includes huge give-backs in insurances (eliminating Blue Cross), merit pay, teachers evaluating teachers, and worse.

The contract language is murky on what looks like a union bracero program, selling the labor of members to DPS with a specious promise of repayment on the “loan,” (blackmail for a job). The TA is here: http://mi.aft.org/dft231/ although in the past members have complained about not being told of the full measure of TA’s.

In a meeting of about 2500 of the DFT members at Cobo Hall on Sunday, most rank and filers agreed that 90% plus rose to oppose the TA that was bargained behind their backs, involving the top national leadership of the AFT, like President Randi Weingarten.

No group of organized educators has been on strike in the last decade more than DFT rank and filers who led a huge wildcat strike, against their union, against the law, and against the employer–and they made gains.

But today the DFT is relatively isolated. The union leadership stayed silent in the face of massive corruption and incompetence that infected nearly every aspect of Detroit school life. Citizens turned against the system as a whole.

When Broad’s Bobb arrived, citizens applauded as he rooted out the more obvious small time crooks in the system, but he left aside the contractors who looted the public by stealing millions in no-bid contract during the five year period of the Takeover Board, when the governor wiped out the elected board and replaced them with, mostly, suburban auto execs from the failing Big Three. The Takeover Board left DPS at least $40 million in debt.

Now, there are at least 10 newly built schools that sit empty and stripped of everything of value, schools that were built in the Takeover period–in a system that loses 12,000 students a year.

Bobb “won” a new $500 million bond issue to build more new schools by a 2/3 majority this fall, indicating his newly won clout, and his ability to syphon off more money from a system that claims it will build new schools, but demands blackmail payments from teachers. Bobb has already pulled out millions on no-bid offers to cronies in Broad related companies.

The DFT’s sellout Tentative Agreement will appear in urban bargaining tables everywhere next year, if DPS gets away with this. An injury to one really will go before an injury to all.

Every expression of solidarity in opposition to this TA will matter. More, suburban MEA members need to unite with the DFT rank and file, join with parents and kids to create enough educational civil strife that drives the DFT bosses back to the bargaining table, forces them to report out a TA that makes gains, not concessions.

No union is ideologically or structurally prepared to take on the battles ahead–why we formed the Rouge Forum a decade ago. When they say “Cutback,” We say “Fight Back!”

More on the Education Agenda is a Class War Agenda Front

By Susan Ohanian: The Education Agenda is a War Agenda: Sequel, Publication Date: December 04, 2009
Quick Summary: The spark for this commentary is a bland article in the New York Times, Panel Criticizes Military’s Use of Embedded Anthropologists, Dec. 4, 2009, reprinted below my commentary. This article brought the Rich Gibson & Wayne Ross article The Education Agenda is a War Agenda home to me, helped me see that the LEARN (sic) is indeed a war act. Clearly not all wars are fought on foreign soil. Many are fought right in our public school classrooms, where the corporate politicos have workers embedded to institutionalize their policies and programs. You can read AAA Commission on the Engagement of Anthropology with the
US Security and Intelligence Communities (CEAUSSIC) Final Report on The Army’s Human Terrain System Proof of Concept Program
Submitted to the Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association

Five Axioms for the University Resistance, Josh Clover, UC Davis:1. EVERY OFFER OF DIALOGUE AND DISCUSSION FROM THE ADMINISTRATION IS A STRATEGY FOR SILENCING US, AND SHOULD BE RECOGNIZED AS SUCH.2. ONE ACTION, ONE DEMAND
3. COPS OFF CAMPUS4. FACULTY: STAND WITH STUDENTS, PUSH BACK AGAINST THE ADMINISTRATION, OR GET THE HELL OUT OF THE WAY.5. HISTORY IS MADE BY THOSE WHO SAY NO
http://panicandvomit.blogspot.com/2009/12/five-axioms-for-action-at-uc-davis.html

Gates Buys PTA for $1 Million for Core National Standards: “Forty-eight states have agreed to work on creating more consistent academic standards through the common-core project. The venture is being led by the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association, two Washington organizations that work closely with states.The goal is to devise a more coherent and consistent set of academic expectations for students around the country…”
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2009/12/01/14pta.h29.html?tkn=RSRFKzpLF0o0zD7MzGwhr7ww0h4kgxwAXr+7

Alan Singer in Huff Post: Fire the Teacher (fun!): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-singer/fire-the-teacher_b_374126.html

Gutting Students in the California State University System: “Out of 44,544 freshman applicants at SDSU, the school plans to admit 3,380. And out of 17,088 transfer students, it intends to enroll 2,611. Systemwide, Cal State received 609,000 undergraduate applications for its 23 campuses. That’s up 28 percent from a year ago.” http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2009/dec/03/undergrad-applicants-set-record-two-schools/

30,000 More Students to be Cut From the CSUs in 2010: http://www.whittierdailynews.com/education/ci_13861357?source=rss

Educational Opportunity! AFT Opportunities for Civics Teachers [12.2.09]
The AFT Education Foundation is offering exciting professional development opportunities for civics teachers who teach global perspectives and use hands-on learning. Opportunities include civil rights seminars in Birmingham and Boston this March and April. Other opportunities include two-week international studies this summer with seven partner countries, including Poland, Northern Ireland, the Philippines, South Africa, Mongolia, Colombia and Georgia. To apply go to www.civicvoices.org. Click above for more detail. Apply by Dec. 4, 2009.

Statement of Solidarity from the University of the Ryukyus in Okinawa
http://loudaisei.seesaa.net/article/134161604.html
We stand in solidarity today with the students, staff, and faculty members at the University of California campuses who have been occupying campus buildings in protest of the 32% fee increase, budget cut, laying off of the workers, and loss of quality public education

Hope and Change Becomes Hoax and Chains:

Demagogue and Arne To Slam Shut “Failing” Schools but What Happens to the Next 5000 that are Bottom Schools?: “To get the money, a district must do one of four things:-Fire the principal and at least half the staff and reopen the school with new personnel.-Turn a school over to a charter school operator or other management organization.-Close the school and send students to higher-achieving schools in the district.Replace only the principal and take other steps to change how the school operates. http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jEfLzvCMhD6B_TFxCPZ5GHU_O-4QD9CC3RJG5

Troop Withdrawal in 2011? It Depends on What 2011 Is, and What “Troops” Are; and the Old Lie: I Promise I’ll Withdraw:
“Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates denied today that President Obama had set an “exit strategy” for Afghanistan, and he forecast that only a “handful” of U.S. troops may leave the country in July 2011, when a withdrawal is due…We will have 100,000 troops there, and they are not leaving in July 2011,” he said.Gates also sought to prepare Americans for higher military casualties, which are expected as U.S. troops flood the most hotly contested parts of the country in the south and the east. ”
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-gates-afghanistan7-2009dec07,0,5275244.story

The Demagogue Did Not Go to the Private Sector for Bailouts, But He Insists the Private Sector Must Produce the Jobs: true recovery will come from the private sector,”he said. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/dcnow/2009/12/obama-asks-private-sector-to-create-more-jobs.html

Hope! Change! What Racism? WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama said this morning that it would be a mistake to focus too narrowly on the troubles black Americans face from the recession, rejecting criticism from the Congressional Black Caucus that the government was ignoring the economic plight of minorities. “I will tell you that I think the most important thing I can do for the African-American community is the same thing I can do for the American community, period, and that is get the economy going again and get people hiring again,” the president said in an exclusive interview in the White House with the Free Press and USA Today. http://www.freep.com/article/20091203/NEWS15/91203046/1318/Exclusive-interview-Helping-all-will-help-black-Americans-Obama-says

Meet the New Imperialist Warrior, Same as the Old Imperialist Warrior; The Odd Similarity of the BushBama War Plans and Words: “Ostensible justifications for war are more or less universal, as is the familiar mix of fear, claims of moral necessity (and superiority), and appeals to patriotism and military love that are always hauled out to justify their continuation and escalation.  Beyond that, Bush’s escalation was based on many of the same counter-insurgency dogmas in which Obama’s escalation is grounded, designed by many of the same people.  So it’s anything but surprising that it all sounds remarkably similar.  And it’s possible that once we hear the actual speech, rather than the White House’s coordinated depiction of it, that there will be new elements.”
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/12/01-4

Demagogue Dems Fail To Extend Cobra: The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, passed in February, launched a temporary government program to subsidize the often crippling cost of buying health insurance through a former employer’s plan after a layoff. However, the so-called COBRA subsidy was designed to last no more than nine months for each person who was unemployed. Hundreds of thousands who got this subsidy when it was first made available in March are slated to roll off the program today.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-cobra1-2009dec01,0,6447635.story

NYTimes: Could Iraq Possibly Have Been About Oil?: “More than six and a half years after the United States-led invasion here that many believed was about oil, the major oil companies are finally gaining access to Iraq’s petroleum reserves. But they are doing so at far less advantageous terms than they once envisioned.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/world/middleeast/01iraqoil.html?scp=2&sq=iraq%20oil%20&st=cse

Text of the Obamagogue’s More War Is For Your Own Good Speech: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/02/world/asia/02prexy.text.html?pagewanted=all

Chris Hedges, Former NYTimes Reporter, Points to the Potential of Fascism as a Mass, Popular Movement:
“Fear and instability have plunged the working class into profound personal and economic despair, and, not surprisingly, into the arms of demagogues and charlatans of the radical Christian right who offer a belief in magic, miracles and the fiction of a utopian Christian nation. Unless we rapidly re-enfranchise these dispossessed workers, insert them back into the economy, unless we give them hope, these demagogues will rise up to take power. Time is running out. The poor can dine out only so long on illusions. Once they grasp that they have been betrayed, once they match the bleak reality of their future with the fantasies they are fed, once their homes are foreclosed and they realize that the jobs they lost are never coming back, they will react with a fury and vengeance that will snuff out the remains of our anemic democracy and usher in a new dark age.” http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/11/30-7

It’s Right to Rebel: On The Resistance Front Worldwide:

To The Left of the Official (and unofficially non-existent) Anti-War Movement (CPUSA’s UFPJ, et al): Logistics: “officials thought they’d have until the end of next year to deploy all the additional troops, but even before the president spoke at West Point, some Pentagon officials privately said they were dubious that the military could deploy that many troops so quickly.” ”
Getting the troops to Afghanistan will be easier than getting all their equipment there and setting up bases in areas where infrastructure is lacking. To get them the housing, equipment and services, the military will likely turn again to private contractors, even though Secretary of Defense Robert Gates conceded on Capitol Hill Wednesday that the Defense Department doesn’t have enough people to oversee those contracts. At the Pentagon Wednesday, Army officials began asking what infrastructure exists in various parts of Kandahar province, where many of the new troops will be sent.” http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/79953.html

Greek Workers Knew How To Answer Their Union Sellouts: Take Back the Union Building: “We will either determine our history ourselves or let it be determined without us…To flay and uncover the role of the trade union bureaucracy in the undermining of the insurrection -and not only there. GSEE and the entire trade union mechanism that supports it for decades and decades, undermine the struggles, bargain our labor power for crumblings, perpetuate the system of exploitation and wage slavery.”
http://balkans.puscii.nl/?q=content/workers-assembly-liberated-building-gsse-trade-unions-athens-greece

General Strike, Italy, December 11: These actions are path towards the massive strike of Italian schools and universities on 11 of December:- against cuts of funds of university, school and research- to fight against the law (DDL Gelmini) that reform university
- to break the blackmail of precarity- for a new welfare and guaranteed income – for quality of knowledge:We won’t pay for your crisis!

Tempest in the Unionite’s Teapot: Gangster SEIU, Campus Cowardice, and the Payoffs to Intellectual Hustlers:
http://embeddedwol.blogspot.com/2009/11/progressive-quandary-about-seiu-tale-of.html
and the Reality of US “Unions;” Every major labor leader in the US adopts the corporate-state view of unity of Labor Bosses, Government, and Corporations in the national interest. These are hardly “labor” unions in the strict sense of the word. They are the Empire’s unions. I assume the connections of Labor and US intelligence are known and do not need to be explained. They are the unions of what now is, surely, the Corporate State.” http://richgibson.com/USUnionism.html

The Coups’ Farcical Election in Honduras Parallels the Puppets of Afghanistan: “With complete satisfaction we announce to the Honduran People and the international community that the electoral farce set up by the dictatorship regime has been absolutely defeated due to the low turn-out of voters at the poll sites…Nation-wide monitoring by our organization proved that the level of abstention during the process is at least of 60-75% percent, which is the highest in our national history, and implies that only a maximum of 30 – 35% of registered voters voted. This is the way that the Honduran people are punishing the pro-coup candidates and the dictatorship regime…” http://hondurasresists.blogspot.com/2009/11/national-resistance-front-elections.html

Note From A Friend: This week was the 150th anniversary of the hanging of the Abolitionist. John Brown. In today’s New York Times, I make a plea on the op ed page for President Obama or Gov. Tim Kaine to posthumously pardon John Brown:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/02/opinion/02reynolds.html?_r=1 If you agree with me, please add your name to the online Pardon John Brown petition at:http://www.petitiononline.com/prdnbrwn/petition.html Forward this note to your friends and encourage them to join this worthy cause by signing the petition too.Let’s act in the spirit of Emerson, Thoreau, Douglass, and DuBois.  Let’s make Pardon John Brown a national movement! –David Reynolds

Our Week Ahead in History:

December 7th 1931, The First National Hunger March, followed by the Famous Battle at Ford:
http://www.novelguide.com/a/discover/egd_01/egd_01_00279.html

December 10, 1906, The First Sit-Down Strike in the USA, led by the IWW:
http://www.workerseducation.org/crutch/pamphlets/ebert/sitdown.html

Reminder: The Rouge Forum Steering Committee Meets December 15. Criticism, Comments and Suggestions all Welcome!

Thanks to Bill T, MrJ, MrZ, Joel, Tanya, Bob, Jim O, MsJtop, Amber, Faith and Craig, Gina and Adam, Kelly, Emily, Susan O and H, The Bobs, Candace, Elvira, Tonya, John W (Hoax and Chains), Betty and Don, Ruth, Lisa, Chris, Agops, Dave, Carol and Bob H in Hi, Joel, Paddy, Kelly, Emily, Gene, Wayne, DCBB and BB, Howard C, Arturo, Marty M, Don A, Jimmy F, Rick C, and Gil.

Good luck to us, every one.
r