Why Are Things As They Are?

Rouge Forum Dispatch: Through and Beyond Capital

We Say Fight Back!

Philly Bank Occupiers Skate A jury has acquitted a dozen demonstrators arrested during a November 2011 sit-in at a Philadelphia bank. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports the Common Pleas Court jury deliberated for about 13 hours over three days before finding the defendants not guilty of conspiracy and defiant trespass.

The demonstrators appealed after they were convicted last summer by a municipal court judge and ordered to pay $500 fines. They accused Wells Fargo of what they called “racist predatory lending” policies resulting in a disproportionately large number of home foreclosures in black neighborhoods.

Prosecutors argued unsuccessfully that the protesters’ free speech rights didn’t apply once they went into the bank because they were on private property, not on a public sidewalk.

A spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office declined comment on the verdict. www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Occupy-Wells-Fargo-Acquittal-195434381.html

Indiana University

Debt Testimonial: Junior at IU Bloomington
I am a junior at Indiana University. I work two jobs on campus to make ends meet. As of today, I have accumulated $21,037.52 of debt in Federal Stafford loans. All of this was still not enough to cover the costs for me to attend. So, each semester my parents have graciously taken out Parent PLUS loans for me with the stipulation that I begin to pay them off once I graduate. Once I calculate in the PLUS loans, after my junior year of state university I will be in approximately $31,000 of debt. These numbers loom over my head as I try to look forward to my career in social services. I will strike because this is simply not acceptable. Education was supposed to be my way out of the working class. – Junior, IU Bloomingon

iuonstrike.tumblr.com/

Sydney University on Strike Staff at Sydney University took 24-hour strike action on Thursday. Despite management’s hard work to undermine the action, a very large number of staff either participated or stayed at home, whether they were union members or not.

Students who came to listen to the few scabs that did continue their classes were greeted by strong pickets at every gate. Members of the NTEU, CPSU, student activists and supporters turned out in their hundreds to staff the pickets. Construction workers from the nearby Charles Perkins Centre walked off the job to show solidarity with the picket. A vibrant rally then marched to the vice chancellor’s office. www.sa.org.au/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=7680%3Astrikers-defy-management-to-shut-down-sydney-university&Itemid=392

The Little Red Schoolhouse

Yes Virginia, the Education agenda is a War Agenda: class and imperialist war–and it always has been (what follows is hollow liberalism which seeks to more deeply empower the police state) Have American university campuses become so inured to the militarization of policy, culture – our thought – that they can’t see the Trojan horse sitting in the quad, its occupants pouring out and passing out sweets and credits to all the Ivy Leaguers passing by with goggled eyes and open arms?

A caricature for sure, but is it so off base? How else does one explain the muted response to news that the Department of Defense may have been funding the “U.S. SOCOM (Special Operations Command) Center of Excellence for Operational Neuroscience,” at the Yale Medical School in New Haven? The proposed program, according to a report by ABC News last week, would teach special operations personnel the art of “conversational,” and “cross cultural” intelligence gathering, and pay volunteers from the community’s vast immigrant population (mainly poor Hispanics, Moroccans and Iraqis) to serve as the guinea pigs test subjects. original.antiwar.com/vlahos/2013/02/25/boots-on-campus/

Grand Rapids Teachers on Food Stamps Since Feb. 15 when the district began deducting back health insurance premiums over what it’s allowed to pay under the state’s Publicly Funded Health Insurance Contribution Act of 2011, Ratliff said morale among teachers has suffered dramatically and a sort of depression has set in. Some are losing $300 per pay check.

“I am a five-year teacher who brings home $555.39 for two weeks and who currently qualifies for a Bridge Card,” Ratliff told the school board Monday to loud applause from her colleagues. “How is this possible?”

Some two dozen teachers told similar stories during nearly an hour of often emotional testimonials. Some told of renting rooms in order to keep their homes while others said they simply can no longer pay their bills. www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/03/grand_rapids_teachers_say_sala.html

Michigan’s Capitalist Schools Head toward Bankruptcy Only 11 of the 49 Michigan school districts in deficit expect to end the budget year in the black, while 13 have seen their deficits grow during the year, according to a report by State Superintendent Mike Flanagan.

In his quarterly report to the Legislature on Feb. 26, Flanagan updated lawmakers on the financial state of districts that incurred year-end deficits in 2012 and their progress — of lack thereof — in reducing the shortfall during the 2012-13 year.

Overall, Michigan has seen a steady increase in the number of school districts with negative fund balances. In 2001, only 18 of the state’s 549 districts and 256 charters had deficits, but the number has been rising for five years. From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20130307/SCHOOLS/303070362#ixzz2MtjUBbpc

Holy Crap! The Common Core leads to Tests! (but WHY the Common Corpse?) I confess that I was naïve. I should have known in an age in which standardized tests direct teaching and learning, that the standards themselves would quickly become operationalized by tests. Testing, coupled with the evaluation of teachers by scores, is driving its implementation. The promise of the Common Core is dying and teaching and learning are being distorted. The well that should sustain the Core has been poisoned.

I hear about those distortions every day. Many of the teachers in my high school are also the parents of young children. They come into my office with horror stories regarding the incessant pre-testing, testing and test prep that is taking place in their own children’s classrooms. Last month, a colleague gave me a multiple-choice quiz taken by his seven-year old son during music. Here is a question:

Kings and queens COMMISSIONED Mozart to write symphonies for celebrations and ceremonies. What does COMMISSION mean? www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/03/04/principal-i-was-naive-about-common-core/?wprss=rss_national

Welcome Home Vet. Now Pay Triple Tuition After Brian Stone graduated from Dearborn High School, he moved to Florida, then lived in Japan, Thailand, Russia and other countries while serving in the Navy.

After four years of service, he returned to his home state last year and enrolled at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, only to learn he was classified as an out-of-state resident.

That meant he would have to pay three times as much tuition as his resident peers — $9,000 per semester instead of $3,000.

Stone fought back and now pays in-state tuition. He has since become the face of Michigan student veterans who are battling universities over tuition policies that add costs for military personnel trying to earn a degree after being stationed out of state. From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20130309/SCHOOLS/303090364#ixzz2N1JNUjqV

Capital Pounding Down the Doors of Every School Tuition costs for public colleges and universities are at a record high nationally while state funding to higher education is at its lowest level in 25 years, according to a national report released Wednesday.

When stacked up against the rest of the nation, Michigan is at the extreme ends, with tuition costs above the national average and state support among the lowest, according to the report by the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association.

The scenario is complicated by the demand and the need for higher education at all-time highs — and states have been unable to keep pace with enrollment and inflation, said Paul Lingenfelter, president of the Boulder, Colo.-based organization that issued the report.

“It’s been particularly hard in states like Michigan, which has suffered economically,” Lingenfelter said. “That’s probably why you see the trends in Michigan are essentially worse than the national averages.”
Even so, the overall problem is serious nationally, he added. From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20130307/SCHOOLS/303070364#ixzz2Mu0OtPYW

Police Agent Joins Dues Eater and 1 Sap to Save Capitalist Schooling Diane Ravitch, the historian and former assistant education secretary who has become an outspoken critic of those who favor high-stakes testing, tenure reforms and other controversial measures aimed at the public schools, has joined with other education advocates to form a group that will grade and endorse political candidates. www.nytimes.com/2013/03/08/education/diane-ravitch-joins-group-to-monitor-public-schools.html?emc=tnt&tntemail0=y&_r=0

above, Ravitch Gets Applause from NEA’s boss, Dennis Van Roekel ($465,000 a year for his betrayals)

Against Ravitch Nothing significant is going to happen if it takes place behind the leadership of the vacillating reactionary Dianne Ravitch and the union bosses who lionize her.

Still a patriot, still a nationalist, still god-blessing everything in sight, still favoring the exploitation that is at the root of capital and its state, as well as the empire’s wars, there is a reason why she is hugged by unionite heads like the presidents of the NEA and AFT who allowed the militarization of schooling, helped create the No Child Left Behind Act and its Democratic inheritor, the Race to the Top, who poured millions of dollars and volunteer hours into electing the easily recognized demagogue, Obama, and who now oversee the wreckage of teachers wages, benefits, and their very jobs. richgibson.com/againstravitch.htm

California Teachers Association Offers “How to” Suck up to the Common Corpse A major shift in literacy emphasis and a stronger balance between mathematics procedural knowledge and understanding are key components of the new Common Core State Standards (CCSS). California will begin fully implementing assessments in the 2014-15 school year. The state is preparing for the transition and many districts are already gearing up, so CTA members are advised to become familiar with the coming changes now. www.cta.org/en/Professional-Development/Publications/2013/02/February-2013/Common-Core_What-you-need-to-know-now.aspx

AFT and the Common Corpse, helping school workers become instruments of their own oppression The American Federation of Teachers, with Britain’s TES Connect, today unveiled “Share My Lesson,” which will become the largest online community for U.S. teachers to collaborate and share teaching resources and innovative ideas, with a significant emphasis on resources to guide teachers on implementing the new Common Core State Standards. The announcement about Share My Lesson was made today at the Global Education Conference at Stanford University.

“Teachers are expected to do so much, often with very little support, and they are thirsty for the tools they need to improve instruction. The AFT decided to accept the challenge and make its biggest investment ever in a tool to improve the teaching profession,” said AFT President Randi Weingarten. The AFT and TES Connect have committed $10 million to develop and maintain the site.

“Share My Lesson supports teachers by giving them a place to come together and share their knowledge, skills, lesson plans and effective classroom strategies. It’s by teachers, for teachers, and is an easy-to-use source for classroom resources—and it’s free. It will become every teacher’s go-to online destination for the support they need,” Weingarten said. Any educator, from preschool to college, can register and use the site. www.aft.org/newspubs/press/2012/061912.cfm

Mexico: The Country that Stopped Reading Nowadays more children attend school than ever before, but they learn much less. They learn almost nothing. The proportion of the Mexican population that is literate is going up, but in absolute numbers, there are more illiterate people in Mexico now than there were 12 years ago. Even if baseline literacy, the ability to read a street sign or news bulletin, is rising, the practice of reading an actual book is not. Once a reasonably well-educated country, Mexico took the penultimate spot, out of 108 countries, in a Unesco assessment of reading habits a few years ago.

One cannot help but ask the Mexican educational system, “How is it possible that I hand over a child for six hours every day, five days a week, and you give me back someone who is basically illiterate?” www.nytimes.com/2013/03/06/opinion/the-country-that-stopped-reading.html?emc=tnt&tntemail0=y&_r=0

Nepotism for Bosses, Concessions for School Workers in San Diego When explaining to U-T Watchdog how they came to hire a new executive for labor relations at the San Diego Unified School District, officials talked about two previous recruitments for a similar position.

“We had one candidate each time, an internal candidate. We had no other takers for the position,” said Deputy Superintendent Phil Stover. “Our input was that our pay was not adequate to encourage candidates to apply. The board then this year increased the position from that of a director to an executive director. This enabled us to offer a better salary.”

Sounds like they started from scratch with the recruitment for the beefed up position, right?

Wrong.

The district filled the original position — and then added the higher level position as well.

In its story about the $131,000 executive position (which went to a friend of school board member Richard Barrera in January), the Watchdog included Stover’s original answer. Several readers contacted us to say — hold on, that’s not how it went down.

Stover confirmed that the original director job was filled, as was the new executive director job. www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/mar/08/san-diego-unified-labor-relations-hiring/

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

New CIA Boss and the Torture Memos … a blistering, 6,000-page Senate study that includes incendiary accusations that agency officials for years systematically misled the White House, the Justice Department and Congress about the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques like waterboarding that were used on Qaeda prisoners.

By the account of people briefed on the report, it concludes that the program was ill-conceived, sloppily managed and far less useful in obtaining intelligence than its supporters have claimed.

“It’s a potential minefield for John Brennan,” said Mark M. Lowenthal, a former assistant C.I.A. director and former House Intelligence Committee staff director.

The still-classified report by the Senate Intelligence Committee will place Mr. Brennan squarely in the cross-fire between Democratic critics of what they call a morally and practically disastrous experiment in torture, and some Republican defenders who say the report is biased and fault President Obama for banning coercive interrogations. And it could place Mr. Brennan in a difficult position inside the agency’s headquarters in suburban Virginia. www.nytimes.com/2013/03/07/us/politics/cias-harsh-interrogations-pose-hurdles-for-john-brennan.html?pagewanted=1&tntemail1=y&_r=0&emc=tnt

www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMNRnrAooII

Suicide Bombers Strike Duing Hagal Visit A suicide bomber on a bicycle struck outside the Afghan Defense Ministry today, one of two attacks that killed at least 18 people as U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel visited the nation, officials said.

Nine people were killed in the bombing at the ministry, a fresh reminder that insurgents continue to fight and challenges remain as the U.S.-led NATO force hands over the country’s security to the Afghans.

About a half hour later, another suicide bomber attacked a police checkpoint in Khost, the capital of Khost province in eastern Afghanistan. An Afghan policeman and eight civilians, who were mostly children, died in that blast, said provincial spokesman Baryalai Wakman. www.freep.com/article/20130309/NEWS15/130309008/Suicide-bomber-attacks-Afghan-defense-ministry-during-Hagel-s-visit

Pakistanis: Nope. Not Our Drones. Yours The Pakistani military on Tuesday denied suggestions by American officials quoted in an article in The New York Times that Pakistan had used the C.I.A. drone program as cover for its own military operations in the tribal belt. …The strident denial creates an unusual situation in which officials from both countries are effectively accusing the other of carrying out the same attack, albeit with different weaponry.

The C.I.A. has carried out about 330 attacks in the tribal belt, using Predator and Reaper drones, mostly over the past five years. The Pakistani military is not widely thought to have armed drone capability, but does have both American- and Chinese-designed warplanes capable of delivering airstrikes.

The furor reflects the political sensitivity of the drone campaign, which is viewed by many Pakistanis as an expression of American hostility that infringes their sovereignty and undercuts human rights www.nytimes.com/2013/03/06/world/asia/pakistan-rejects-us-disavowal-of-drone-strikes.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y&_r=0

Pakistan on the Brink A powerful explosion ripped through a crowd of Shiites as they left a mosque in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, on Sunday, killing at least 45 people. It was the latest atrocity in an escalating campaign of countrywide sectarian violence. www.nytimes.com/2013/03/04/world/asia/bombing-in-shiite-district-of-karachi.html?ref=global-home&_r=1&

above, the Russian Orthodox Mask of Infamy Torture device

The Looting Within the Iraq Invasion STUART BOWEN: Well, the first sign of it was my first trip to Iraq in February of 2004, when I was walking the halls of the Republican Palace behind two people, and one turned to the other and said, we can’t do that anymore. There’s a new inspector general here. That sent me a signal that the challenges before me were quite substantial.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, as we said, $60 billion dollars, and you write it’s the largest relief and reconstruction effort for one country in U.S. history.

What happened to the money?

STUART BOWEN: Well, it was spent, about half of it, on security, on training the Iraqi police and the army. ……STUART BOWEN: We have achieved 82 convictions of U.S. contractors and government personnel who committed crimes in Iraq and recovered over $191 million dollars from those cases.

We have 60-plus ongoing cases which we will continue to pursue through the balance of this fiscal year, and I expect at least 20 more convictions and the recovery of at least $100 million dollars.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Was that — is that par for the course when that much money is being spent, or was there something particular to Iraq?

STUART BOWEN: There was something particular to Iraq, Judy.

The lack of controls at the outset created what some — what one person called a free fraud zone in Iraq. And the Bloom/Stein conspiracy, we broke in Hillah, Babylon in 2004, convicted a colonel, three lieutenant colonels. Philip Bloom, the contractor, who has had a previous felony conviction, and Robert Stein, the comptroller for the south-central region.

JUDY WOODRUFF: These were Americans.

STUART BOWEN: Yes, essentially, the comptroller for the south-central region had a previous felony conviction. This is a man who had control over hundreds of millions of dollars.

And he told me when we interviewed him a few years ago that, hey, if there had been a powerful, robust oversight presence on the ground, that the crimes that they engaged in wouldn’t have happened.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Stuart Bowen, you were observing all this from the very beginning. Did you see as you went along the mistakes that were being made?

STUART BOWEN: Yes, I did, and we reported on them. www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/world/jan-june13/iraq2_03-06.html

Imperialist War Breeds Capitalist Corruption Three civilian defense contractors who worked at Camp Pendleton pleaded guilty Thursday to conspiring to steal more than $3 million worth of medical equipment that was to be shipped overseas to be used for injured Marines, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

Henry Bonilla, 25, of Pomona; Richard Navarro, 39, of Fallbrook; and Michael Tuisee, 34, of Oceanside, each pleaded guilty to conspiracy to engage in theft of government property, federal officials said.

They are scheduled to be sentenced May 24. They could each face five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

The three worked in warehouses operated by the 1st Medical Logistics Company, which stores and ships medical items to combat troops around the world.

During their court appearance Thursday, they admitted they stole medical equipment, including ultrasound machines and ventilators, and then resold the items.

U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy said the charges stem from an ongoing investigation into the theft of valuable property at the base. www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/mar/07/pendleton-contractors-plead-guilty2/

Happy 10th Anniversary of the Iraq War! Not to put too fine a point on it, but the invasion of Iraq turned out to be a joke. Not for the Iraqis, of course, and not for American soldiers, and not the ha-ha sort of joke either. And here’s the saddest truth of all: on March 20th as we mark the 10th anniversary of the invasion from hell, we still don’t get it. In case you want to jump to the punch line, though, it’s this: by invading Iraq, the US did more to destabilize the Middle East than we could possibly have imagined at the time. And we—and so many others—will pay the price for it for a long, long time. www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/03/happy-anniversary-iraq-war#13628738799181&action=collapse_widget&id=4726413

Tunisia and the Farcical Arab Spring At least Tunisia is not as bad as Egypt — that is the hardly comforting good news coming out of the country where the Arab Spring began, more than two years ago. The bad news is that Tunisia has come up far short of the lofty expectations set by Tunisians and outsiders in January 2011, when protests finally forced President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali from office. Among the Middle East’s post-revolutionary governments, Tunisia still has the best chance of turning into a consolidated democracy, but barriers old and new are making the task far more difficult.

As I discovered during a recent research trip, Tunisians are deeply worried about their country’s sluggish economy, worsening security situation, and never-ending political stalemate. The protests that began the revolution centered on the lack of job opportunities, and Tunisians at all levels of society are still demanding economic improvement. Now, however, they are increasingly fearful for their own safety, the assassination of the popular left-leaning and secular politician Chokri Belaid being just the latest cause for concern, and they are growing disillusioned with the country’s acute political polarization. www.foreignaffairs.com/features/letters-from/tunisias-post-revolution-blues?cid=nlc-this_week_on_foreignaffairs_co-030713-tunisias_post_revolution_blues_3-030713

Sexual Assault Ok by the US Military An Air Force general’s decision to overturn the conviction of a standout fighter pilot on sexual assault charges is stirring anger on Capitol Hill, where some lawmakers say they are losing patience with the military after a string of related scandals.

Several members of Congress have demanded that the Pentagon intervene after Lt. Gen. Craig A. Franklin, commander of the Third Air Force in Europe, ordered the release of the fighter pilot from prison on Feb. 26 and tossed out his conviction without explanation. www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/air-force-generals-reversal-of-pilots-sexual-assault-conviction-angers-lawmakers/2013/03/08/f84b49c2-8816-11e2-8646-d574216d3c8c_story.html

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

“Capitalism teaches the people the moral conceptions of cannibalism are the strong devouring the weak; its theory of the world of men and women is that of a glorified pig-trough where the biggest swine gets the most swill.” -James Connolly 1910.

Banking in the Corporate State Neil Barofsky, who was the special investigator general of the US government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program until his resignation in 2011, spoke to RT about how the Washington-Wall Street political culture could lead to another devastating collapse.

RT: You refer to Washington as “an alien world – a culture more concerned with looking out for themselves or the next headline.” What happened with the TARP program that led you to say such a thing?

Neil Barofsky: It was a remarkable thing coming in. I was a life-long Democrat; I even contributed then to President Obama’s presidential campaign. But I was actually appointed by President Bush, a Republican. It was very striking to me, as a life-long Democrat, how little things have changed. And everything, I think – over time it became increasingly so – was very much politicized. Decisions were made with an eye towards the press cycle: what headlines are going to get generated. And sometimes it resulted in remarkably head-scratching arguments that had very little to do with what TARP was supposed to do. So the official story line – the official narrative that survives to this day – is that TARP worked, TARP was incredibly successful because it helped to preserve the financial system. But that was not what TARP was supposed to do. History was eventually rewritten by the Treasury Department to make it seem that all was TARP supposed to do was Band-Aid over a broken financial system. All those other things, for which there would have never been a bank bailout, all those things that were to help all those people other than the executives at the giant financial systems that just got ignored and brushed away.

RT: You have said that the largest banks in the US did and still do hold a gun to the head of America’s financial system. Why?

NB: Essentially in the most recent stuff that we’ve seen coming out of the Department of Justice – and they have done some big settlements – they’ve done HSBC over sort of a breathtaking amount of money laundering, they’ve done some of the LIBOR cases and interest rate-rigging with some big European banks. One of the questions that has been raised was, ‘why are you not requiring guilty pleas from these institutions?’ The response of the Department of Justice was ‘ if we charge these institutions it could potentially destabilize the entire economic system of the world.’ This is a stunning admission. I give them an ‘A’ for honesty. This means that in essence there are two sets of rules. And now there is a special subset of the Too Big to Fail/Too Big to Jail’ corporations. And that creates a tremendous incentive to commit more fraud, to break more laws.

RT: So who is managing the economy: the government or the banks?

NB: It’s a fair question. A lot of the management of the government in the economy is outsourced to the banks. That’s how TARP was originally run. It wasn’t that the US government has hundreds of billions of dollars and they are going to save these banks for the purpose to put back the money into the economy to increase lending to businesses, homeowners … to get the economy rolling again. But when they did they didn’t do it the way you would think you would have if that was your goal: banks – JP Morgan Chase, here is your $25 billion, but when you use this you are going to agree to increase lending and we’re going to measure it or at least require it … incentivize it, and keep track of it. That is how you think it would be if the government was running the program. That’s not what they did. They gave it to the banks with no strings attached – no conditions, no requirements, no incentives, no transparency. When I said, ‘let’s make the banks tell us what they are doing with the money,’ so we would know their goals, I was told that I was stupid, that I was playing politics – that if I did it myself I would destroy the banking system. This led to Tim Geithner himself cursing me out of a meeting when I suggested that he was anything less than the most transparent secretary of the Treasury in US history. That is all part of that incredible deference that they showed to the banks. Just give the money to the banks and trust them. rt.com/op-edge/neil-barofsky-crisis-politics-918/

Bubble Bubble Five and a half years after the start of a frightening drop that erased $11 trillion from stock portfolios and made investors despair of ever getting their money back, the Dow Jones industrial average has regained all the losses suffered during the Great Recession and reached a new high. The blue-chip index rose 125.95 points Tuesday and closed at 14,253.77, topping the previous record of 14,164.53 on Oct. 9, 2007, by 89.24 points. From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20130305/BIZ/303050392#ixzz2Mtr8jMzC

Real Unemployment and the Part Time Life One of the more unsettling trends in this recovery has been the rise of part-time work.

We are nowhere near recovering the jobs lost in the recession, and the track record looks even worse when you consider that so many of the jobs lost were full time, whereas so many of those gained have been part time.

Compared with December 2007, when the recession officially began, there are 5.8 million fewer Americans working full time. In that same period, there has been an increase of 2.8 million working part time. Part-time workers — defined as people who usually work fewer than 35 hours a week — are still a minority of the work force, but their share is growing. …These trends are part of the reason that many people believe the standard unemployment rate of 7.7 percent understates the extent of underemployment. If you include both part-time workers who want full-time work and people who have stopped looking for jobs but still want to work, the unemployment rate is actually 14.3 percent. economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/08/the-rise-of-part-time-work/

The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement

Diane Feinstein Wants to Disarm Americans. Her Husband: Blum’s wife, Senator Dianne Feinstein, has received scrutiny due to her husband’s government contracts and extensive business dealings with China and her past votes on trade issues with the country. Blum has denied any wrongdoing, however.[3] Critics have argued that business contracts with the US government awarded to a company (Perini) controlled by Blum may raise a potential conflict-of-interest issue with the voting and policy activities of his wife.[4] URS Corp, which Blum had a substantial stake in, bought EG&G, a leading provider of technical services and management to the U.S. military, from The Carlyle Group in 2002; EG&G subsequently won a $600m defense contract.[1] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_C._Blum

Chalmers Johnson on Feinstein JOHNSON: Because we aren’t paying attention to what we’re doing, to what the defense budget is supposed to do. We think it’s been alright to use it as a jobs program. As I say, the mother hens of the defense facilities subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee [sic] are the senators of the states with the two largest numbers of military bases, Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas and Dianne Feinstein of California [actually members of the United States Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense]. These are the mother hens that would do anything in their power to keep the bases open. That’s their function. We have over 700 military bases around the world. They do not contribute one iota to our security. We can get along with 30 of them and still be a new Rome, but we keep building more. We just created a new—of all the things that we don’t need—an Africa command. Africa’s got enough troubles without having a bunch of American military officers in it. newprioritiescampaign.org/home/resources/85-2/

Hellbound Drones Boomerang–We Can Blow You Up in the USA–Holder (White House, “No We can’t, or maybe or–what’s that up in the air????) The controversy, arising out of the drone war, that President Obama has the authority to assassinate US citizens abroad in non-war zones just got even more disgraceful.

The Obama administration’s Attorney General Eric Holder sent a letter in response to persistent inquiries from Senator Rand Paul, who vowed to block the confirmation of John Brennan to CIA chief if the White House didn’t respond. In the letter, Holder maintains that the President does have the authority to kill US citizens on US soil without any due process.

“It is possible, I suppose, to imagine an extraordinary circumstance in which it would be necessary and appropriate under the Constitution and applicable laws of the United States for the President to authorize the military to use lethal force within the territory of the United States,” Holder wrote. antiwar.com/blog/2013/03/05/obama-administration-yes-we-can-kill-americans-on-us-soil/

Barbarism–Currently the Most Popular Social Movement Worldwide–Children Rob Tuskegee Airman As he stared down the barrel of a nickel-plated pistol wielded by a teenaged gunman demanding the keys to his Jeep, Jesse Rutledge said an odd thought entered his mind:

“I’m thinking, ‘This kid is so little; how’s he going to see over the steering wheel?'” said the 88-year-old former Tuskegee Airman who flew bombing missions over Japan in World War II.

That initial thought was replaced by fear, said Rutledge, who was carjacked by four youths as he left a barber shop near Harper and Van Dyke at about 4 p.m. Saturday.

“Yeah, I was scared.” Rutledge, a former gunner on a B-25 bomber, shook his head. “I’m 80-something years old and I still got to fight out here.”

Police arrested the alleged robbers — ages 13, 14, 15 and 16 — the next day. From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20130304/METRO01/303040391#ixzz2MtrkjUKL

Two Detroit Children Spend Night With Dead Bodies Family members say a 5-year-old girl witnessed the gruesome shooting of her mother and two others on the city’s west side and possibly spent the night with their bodies.

A neighbor discovered the bodies of two women and a man Thursday morning inside a northwest-side abandoned house on the 11300 block of Coyle along with the unharmed girl and a second child, a newborn girl.

Kenyetta Hunt, a family member of the male victim whom she identified as Curtis Clements, said she spoke with the 5-year-old at the neighbor’s house Thursday morning.

“I think she’s going to be traumatized for the rest of her life after seeing her mom get killed,” Hunt said. “She is going to need a lot of family around her.” From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20130307/METRO01/303070434#ixzz2Mu8ic8Jq

www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nAZC80xgMo

The CFR is Clearer about Problems of Capitalism than the Entire US Left Inequality is indeed increasing almost everywhere in the postindustrial capitalist world. But despite what many on the left think, this is not the result of politics, nor is politics likely to reverse it, for the problem is more deeply rooted and intractable than generally recognized. Inequality is an inevitable product of capitalist activity, and expanding equality of opportunity only increases it — because some individuals and communities are simply better able than others to exploit the opportunities for development and advancement that capitalism affords. Despite what many on the right think, however, this is a problem for everybody, not just those who are doing poorly or those who are ideologically committed to egalitarianism — because if left unaddressed, rising inequality and economic insecurity can erode social order and generate a populist backlash against the capitalist system at large. www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/138844/jerry-z-muller/capitalism-and-inequality

Note to a Teacher From a SoCal Student Violence in Mexico?
In a personal opinion I will is terrible. Mexico is a corrupt state; people don’t respect authority, police sings, and people among each other. On Sunday February 17 2013 my brother was killed and found on the street next to the train trails tracks. His body was raped in a plastic tent. They strangled him and cut his forehead with a pocket knife all over his back head, he also have stab several time in the stomach. I am very affecting for the loss of my brother my only men brother. We had to be in all the government office of Tijuana doing the paper work to prepare everything for the funeral. Being in the office I got to appreciate the bad coordination that they have in Mexico Police. I never thought that I will go through something like this and had to attend the polices office because my brother murder was an assassination…

Arkansas Abortion Banners (home of Hillbillary) Arkansas adopted what is by far the country’s most restrictive ban on abortion on Wednesday — at 12 weeks of pregnancy, when a fetal heartbeat can typically be detected by abdominal ultrasound. www.nytimes.com/2013/03/07/us/arkansas-adopts-restrictive-abortion-law.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130307

Solidarity for Never

UFT-AFT Tops Betray School Bus Strike (and so did the bus union bosses) On Friday, February 15, the month-long strike by the 8,100 school bus drivers and matrons of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1181 was called off by the union leadership. There was no vote by the membership, the decision was announced in a 45-minute teleconference call. The next day the labor-hating New York Post crowed, “Union Strike Bus-ted.” The liberal New York Times proclaimed the outcome a “Win for New York Mayor” Michael Bloomberg, who issued a statement gloating that “special interests, www.internationalist.org/nycschoolbusstrikebetrayed1302.html

CA Unionites Elect Brown–he cuts members pensions California unions, accustomed to getting their way in the Capitol, lost some ground last year when Gov. Jerry Brown pushed through the Legislature a series of public-pension cuts that affect their members.

Now several labor groups have gone to court in an attempt to reverse some of the cuts, forcing Brown to defend legislation he used to persuade voters that he was being frugal with their tax money. www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-pension-lawsuits-20130309,0,1054443.story

AFGE Boss/Thief Cops a Plea On February 14, Federck Petro, former president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 2094, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to one count of embezzlement of funds from the New York City union, which represents VA hospital employees. He had been charged and arrested in December 2011 with stealing more than $100,000. The actions follow a joint investigation by the U.S. Labor Department’s Office of Labor-Management Standards and the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Office of Inspector General. nlpc.org/union-corruption-update

UAW Boss/Thief On January 15, Joya Mills, former financial secretary of Local 2500 of the United Auto Workers, was sentenced in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan to one year of probation and 50 hours of community service, and ordered to pay a $25 assessment, for failure to maintain financial records following her theft of funds from the Detroit-based local. She previously had paid $11,600 in restitution. Mills pled guilty last October. The actions follow a probe by the U.S. Labor Department’s Office of Labor-Management Standards.

Spy versus Spy

www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuET0kpHoyM

Spying on Americans After the US Supreme Court upheld the right of the National Security Agency to wiretap Americans’ communications with foreigners without a warrant, the White House seeks to quash a similar lawsuit citing the plaintiff’s inability to provide evidence.

Last week the justices ruled 5-4 against the American Civil Liberties Union and others who sought to nullify a provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. The provision allows the National Security Agency (NSA) to intercept emails and phone calls of Americans as long as they are suspected of communicating with someone outside of the country.

Judges ruled that the ACLU et al were not eligible to complain because they could not submit evidence that they were targeted by the surveillance program.

Now the White House is seeking to quash another case against the same NSA eavesdropping program, citing the previous ruling as a precedent, reports Wired.

The lawsuit filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation accuses the US government of secretly monitoring all of Americans’ electronic communications with the assistance of nation’s telecom companies. ...Basically the government says its surveillance program is a state secret and its details cannot be revealed. But without such details it cannot be challenged in court, because the plaintiffs cannot prove that they were harmed by the surveillance. rt.com/usa/nsa-surveillance-lawsuit-secret-930/

CIA For Sale Three companies that contract with the CIA agreed Thursday to pay $3 million to settle a whistleblower case accusing them of plying CIA employees with gifts to win jobs.

According to court records, American Systems Corp., Anixter International Inc., and Corning Cable Systems LLC sought to do the cabling and wiring of CIA facilities. The lawsuit accused the companies of supplying expensive gifts to CIA workers in charge of the agency’s “Falcon” and “Buckeye” programs — the code names for CIA building projects.

They included trips to Mexico and Myrtle Beach, chartered fishing excursions, tickets to Redskins, Red Sox and Cubs games, deer hunting trips and golf excursions and other gifts, all in violation of federal law.

The CIA workers were also treated to scores of meals, according to the lawsuit, with the Hooters restaurant chain a favorite destination of the CIA project manager in charge of the “Falcon” and “Buckeye” programs. www.washingtonpost.com/local/whistleblower-case-results-in-3m-settlement-against-cia-contractor-for-violating-kickback-law/2013/03/07/2241b396-8778-11e2-a80b-3edc779b676f_story.html

Dexter White, architect of Bretton Woods, A Soviet Mole? In the course of 11 years, beginning in the mid-1930s, White acted as a Soviet mole, giving the Soviets secret information and advice on how to negotiate with the Roosevelt administration and advocating for them during internal policy debates. White was arguably more important to Soviet intelligence than Alger Hiss, the U.S. State Department official who was the most famous spy of the early Cold War. www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/138847/benn-steil/red-white

The Magical Mystery Tour