Why Are Things As They Are?

We Say Fight Back!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7_uRS0t8XU&feature=youtu.be

Tacoma Teachers Back to Work but Prove the only illegal Strike is a Strike that Loses: Tacoma teachers who had been striking for 10 days agreed to a contract Thursday following a meeting with Gov. Chris Gregoire.
Earlier this month the Tacoma School District argued in court that 19 different judges in Washington state have ruled teacher strikes illegal since 1976. So, how many teacher strikes have there been in Seattle and Tacoma since then?
There were three previous strikes in the Tacoma School District: 1974, 1978 and 1991. The latter two were strikes that Seattle teachers also participated in. www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Teacher-strikes-illegal-but-happen-a-lot-2183987.php

SD City College Students Drive off Racist DA: District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis canceled a talk at San Diego City College after students threatened to protest over the controversial Diana Gonzalez case, according to campus officials.  http://www.kpbs.org/news/2011/sep/21/da-dumanis-cancels-talk-san-diego-city-college-ami/?utm_campaign=todays-news-analysis&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=headline/

Kaiser Health Care Workers Strike: Nurses and other health care providers carried signs and chanted slogans outside Southern California Kaiser hospitals on Thursday as they continued a three-day strike over benefit cuts and other concessions sought by hospital management.

The California Nurses Association and National Union of Healthcare Workers, the unions organizing the strike, rallied nearly 27,000 nurses, psychologists, physical therapists and others who protested outside Kaiser facilities in Los Angeles, Fontana and San Bernardino, as well as in Northern California.
The strike affected 33 not- for-profit hospitals run by Kaiser Permanente and Sutter Health, and the independent Children’s Hospital Oakland, said Charles Idelson, a spokesman for the California Nurses Association. Idelson said the nurses wouldn’t get paid during the strike. …Our members tell us they’re witnessing reckless behavior by Kaiser management, understaffing and so forth, so the sense and the reason for the strike is to bring attention to what we feel is Kaiser putting patients’ unnecessarily at risk every day,” Woodhouse said. www.contracostatimes.com/california/ci_18958945

Wisconsin Teachers’ Union Employees’ Union Urges WEA Jobs Boycott: Wisconsin’s largest teachers union has a problem.A union problem.This week, National Support Organization, which bills itself as the world’s largest union of union staffers, posted an online notice discouraging its members from seeking work with the Wisconsin Education Association Council.”Don’t apply for WEAC vacancies!” screams the headline.The reason for the boycott?
Chuck Agerstrand, president of the National Support Organization, is accusing WEAC officials of “breaching staff contracts and destroying any working relationship with its employees.”  http://www.jsonline.com/watchdog/noquarter/129700138.html

www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBKkydIu2cU

The Little Red Schoolhouse

Obamagogue’s Extoritionist NCLB Waivers Mean (1) regimented curricula (2) more high stakes racist exams (3) militarism (4) pay per scores (5) deeper segregation (6) attacks on school workers’ live–schools remain as human munition factories in service to capitalism: Under the plan Obama outlined, states can ask the Education Department to be exempted from some of the law’s requirements if they meet certain conditions, such as imposing standards to prepare students for college and careers and setting evaluation standards for teachers and principals.
Despite allowing states to do away with the approaching 2014 deadline, Obama insisted he was not weakening the law, but rather helping states set higher standards. He said that the current law was forcing educators to teach to the test, give short shrift to subjects such as history and science, and lower standards as a way of avoiding penalties and stigmas.  http://www.detnews.com/article/20110923/POLITICS03/109230411/1026/schools/Obama–Changes-will-help-school-law–not-weaken-it

After Added 10% Paycut (on top of $10,ooo paycut and more) Detroit Will Dump 1,500 teachers: Detroit Public Schools expects to shed nearly 40 percent of its teachers in the next four years to help close a $327 million deficit, yet projects a loss of just 6,000 students under a state-approved fiscal blueprint.
The district would cut more than 1,500 teachers by fall 2015, according to a deficit-elimination plan obtained by The Detroit News.
Most of the reduction — nearly 1,100 teachers — would occur next fall as DPS moves some of its weakest schools into a statewide recovery system, the Education Achievement Authority.
Some of the teachers who leave DPS could be employed in the new system, though it’s unclear how many schools the district will move into the EAA.
And even as it moves teachers and schools off its books, DPS projects its enrollment losses will slow dramatially between now and 2015-16, according to the deficit-elimination plan, which the state signed off on last week.
The district has lost an average of 10,000 children a year since 2000, when it had 168,000 students. It projects enrollment of about 66,360 students for this school year and 60,360 in 2015-16, according to the plan.
In the summary, DPS says it believes “the new EAA over time will increase (enrollment) or offset the declining enrollment” by aiding struggling schools and offering scholarships to college-ready students.
But the plan does not address how many students and how much state aid DPS will lose to the new system created by Gov. Rick Snyder for failing schools.
DPS spokesman Steve Wasko confirmed the district would no longer get state aid for children who attend an EAA school, but he declined to elaborate on how the statewide school district would affect enrollment, or if the district’s projection takes the new system into account….The district has about 3,800 teachers this fall, down from 6,230 five years ago.  http://www.detnews.com/article/20110920/SCHOOLS/109200366/1026/schools/DPS-plans-to-cut-1-500-teachers

Meet the New Boss of the Failed Schools (bad bank) in Michigan! He’s the Old boss of Failed KC Schools! The new leader of a Michigan recovery system for failing schools defended his record in Kansas City on Wednesday, a day after the district he used to lead lost its state accreditation
But education leaders in Detroit said the development raises questions about John Covington’s hiring as chancellor of the Education Achievement System, which will open in Detroit next fall. Covington begins work in Detroit on Monday.
“I haven’t seen anything … that would make me believe he is bringing something to the table that is new and innovative,” said Keith Johnson, president of the Detroit Federation of Teachers. “We need someone who has an established track record of narrowing the achievement gap and improving student outcome.”
In a statement, Covington said the decision by the Missouri Board of Education to strip accreditation from the Kansas City School District, where he led a turnaround plan, had been years in the making. www.detnews.com/article/20110922/SCHOOLS/109220395/Recovery-schools-chief-John-Covington-defends-record-in-K.C.

Detroit and Mich Failed School Boss now a Millionaire and who sent him? Broad: The executive committee unanimously approved Covington, who will be paid $225,000 a year with a $175,000 signing bonus, the Detroit Free Press reported. The contract is for four years….the Broad Foundation urged Covington to seek the Michigan post. Covington was a graduate of the Broad Foundation’s academy for superintendents, and founder Eli Broad is from Michigan.  http://www.kansascity.com/2011/08/26/3100912/sources-covington-considered-for.html

A Take From California on High-Stakes Test Frenzy: To begin with, every spring students in grades 9 to 11 take the California Standards Test (CST). The state establishes “standards,” or expectations for student performance on certain subjects: English, mathematics, science, and history/social sciences.In addition, students in grades 9 to 11 take the Common Formative Exam (CFA) eight times a year. All students take the quarterly and end-of-course exams that the district devises for various subject areas. All 10th-grade students take the high school exit exam (CAHSEE); students who don’t pass retake it several times in 11th and 12th grades until they pass it. All 11th-grade students take the Early Assessment Essay Exam. English-language learners take the California English Language Development Test (CELDT) at least once a year. LAS (Language Assessment Scales) Links is taken four times a year by students enrolled in English language development. Students who intend to apply to four-year universities also take the PSAT, SAT, and ACT in 11th or 12th grades.
Morton, like other teachers, also gives her own exams. … “It often appears that the tests are driven by the testing companies and the textbook companies.” Testing companies charge for devising, distributing, and grading test materials, as well as for providing test-preparation materials and storing results. To get an inkling of the money involved, for the federally mandated state standards test and the high school exit exam, the state allocated $205,752,000 in the 2010–2011 budget.
The same year, the Sweetwater district spent $574,599 on state testing research and evaluation alone, according to documents supplied in response to a public records request. Staff salaries accounted for 85 percent of the figure.  http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2011/sep/21/citylights2-tests/#comment_form

The Counterfeit (Class War) Achievement Gap as a Bipartisan Affair: Indeed, at the elite level, there’s a bipartisan consensus on this question. President Bush bragged in 2008 that NCLB “focused the country’s attention on the fact that we had an achievement gap that–you know, white kids were reading better in the 4th grade than Latinos or African-American kids.”
Echoing Bush, President Obama has termed education the “civil rights issue of our time” and declared that his agenda is intended to address “the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students.” Secretary of Education Arne Duncan repeated the familiar formulation last year at the National Press Club, declaring, “The achievement gap is unacceptable. Education is the civil rights issue of our generation.”  http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/rick_hess_straight_up/2011/09/our_achievement_gap_mania.html?cmp=ENL-EU-VIEWS2

Oakland Museum Cancels Palestian Kids’ Artwork: An Oakland children’s museum, citing pressure from the community, canceled a planned exhibit of artwork by Palestinian youth that depicted the Israeli assault during the 2008-09 Gaza conflict.
The Museum of Children’s Art was scheduled to display the art from Sept. 24 to Nov. 13. The exhibit had been in the works for several months, with an opening reception to feature poetry and special art activities for children.
The drawings in the exhibit were created by children ranging in age from about 9 to 11 and included bbombs dropping, tanks and people getting shot. www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=%2Fc%2Fa%2F2011%2F09%2F10%2FBA921L2H5J.DTL

International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

Obama to Palestinians, “Shut the F Up!” With his administration and U.S. allies unable to dissuade Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas from pursuing membership at the United Nations, President Barack Obama will make a case Wednesday for reviving the moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.  http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/09/20/124695/obama-to-palestinians-seek-goals.html

US To build Massive New Prison in Bagram (can’t we update Pelicay Bay while you’re at it?) As the Obama administration announced plans for hundreds of billions of dollars more in domestic budget cuts, it late last week solicited bids for the construction of a massive new prison in Bagram, Afghanistan. Posted on the aptly named FedBizOps.Gov website which it uses to announce new privatized spending projects, the administration unveiled plans for “the construction of Detention Facility in Parwan (DFIP), Bagram, Afghanistan” which includes “detainee housing capability for approximately 2000 detainees.” It will also feature “guard towers, administrative facility and Vehicle/Personnel Access Control Gates, security surveillance and restricted access systems.” The announcement provided: “the estimated cost of the project is between $25,000,000 to $100,000,000.”
In the U.S., prisons are so wildly overcrowded that courts are ordering them to release inmates en masse because conditions are so inhumane as to be unconstitutional (today, the FBI documented that a drug arrest occurs in the U.S. once every 19 seconds, but as everyone knows, only insane extremists and frivolous potheads advocate an end to that war). In the U.S., budgetary constraints are so severe that entire grades are being eliminated, the use of street lights restricted, and the most basic services abolished for the nation’s neediest. But the U.S. proposes to spend up to $100 million on a sprawling new prison in Afghanistan.  http://www.salon.com/news/afghanistan/?story=/opinion/greenwald/2011/09/19/bagram

Would Military Cuts Revive the Draft? Military Times—The House Armed Services Committee chairman is warning that further reductions to projected defense spending could make a military career so unattractive that it would force the Pentagon to revive the draft.above, troop mutiny at the Presidio, 1968

Rep. Buck McKeon, R-Calif., suggested that spending cuts beyond the $350 billion that President Obama and Congress agreed to in the debt accord this past summer could force the military to slash the number of service members, now some 2.3 million, including National Guard and reserves.
A special bipartisan committee is trying to come up with $1.5 trillion in spending cuts from all government spending. If it fails, or if Congress rejects its proposal, automatic cuts of $1.2 trillion would kick in, with half coming from defense.  http://www.militarytimes.com/news/2011/09/ap-military-buck-mckeon-defense-cuts-draft-return-092111/

Best Bosses for Vets (GE numero Uno) but who is Hiring? www.militarytimesedge.com/projects/best-for-veterans/best-employers-for-veterans/2010/

US Building Secret Drone Bases in Arabian Penninsula, Africa, and More: The Obama administration is assembling a constellation of secret drone bases for counterterrorism operations in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula as part of a newly aggressive campaign to attack al-Qaeda affiliates in Somalia and Yemen, U.S. officials said. One of the installations is being established in Ethiopia, a U.S. ally in the fight against al-Shabab, the Somali militant group that controls much of the country. Another base is in the Seychelles, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, where a small fleet of “hunter killer” drones resumed operations this month after an experimental mission demonstrated that the unmanned aircraft could effectively patrol Somali territory from there.
The U.S. military also has flown drones over Somalia and Yemen from bases in Djibouti, a tiny African nation at the junction of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. In addition, the CIA is building a secret airstrip in the Arabian Peninsula so it can deploy armed drones over Yemen.
The rapid expansion of the undeclared drone wars is a reflection of the growing alarm with which U.S. officials view the activities of al-Qaeda affiliates in Yemen and Somalia, even as al-Qaeda’s core leadership in Pakistan has been weakened by U.S. counterterrorism operations.  http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/09/20/wapo/main20109195.shtml

Rabbinni Kablooey. Mini-Tet Two: The assassination of Burhanuddin Rabbani, the leader of Afghanistan’s High Peace Council and a former president, on the heels of a carefully planned attack on the American Embassy a week ago, underscored the fierce opposition of those who want to shatter the country’s tenuous stability and thwart its tentative steps toward peace.
It also demonstrated once again the ability of the government’s enemies to reach into even the most secure bastions of the capital, whether through treachery or frontal assaults, and to carry out a rising number of carefully selected assassinations. This one, however, may be the most significant of the war.  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/21/world/asia/Burhanuddin-Rabbani-afghan-peace-council-leader-assassinated.html?_r=3&hp

US Disinformation via Al Jazeera Revealed by Wikileaks: Al Jazeera, the pan-Arab news network financed by Qatar, named a member of the Qatari royal family on Tuesday to replace its top news director after disclosures from the group WikiLeaks indicating that the news director had modified the network’s coverage of the Iraq war in response to pressure from the United States   www.nytimes.com/2011/09/21/world/middleeast/after-disclosures-by-wikileaks-al-jazeera-replaces-its-top-news-director.html?_r=2&hp

International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

Bankers’ Pimp Geithner plays his Finance Card; Dow Collapses Investors began giving in to fears Thursday that a global recession is already under way, and stock markets shuddered around the world. Selling started in Asia, picked up speed in Europe and sent Wall Street near its worst finish of the year.
The Dow Jones industrial average lost 391 points and at one point was down more than 500, a return to the volatility that gripped the market this summer. www.thestarpress.com/article/20110923/NEWS01/109230336/Dow-drops-391-fears-global-recession

Obamagogu’s Solyndra Pals Take the Fifth (after making off with $1/2 Billion) Stony-faced, the chief executive and chief financial officer of Solyndra, the bankrupt solar company, took the Fifth Amendment on Friday before a House subcommittee as they were verbally pummeled by committee members until Democrats complained that the badgering was becoming unseemly.  The case is an acute embarrassment for the Democrats because Solyndra was the first loan guarantee approved by the Obama administration under a program designed to generate jobs and invigorate the American solar industry. When the loan was approved, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. announced it, and later, President Obama visited the factory in California.  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/24/us/politics/solyndra-executives-take-fifth-at-house-hearing.html?hp

Default Rates Rise on Student Loans: The U.S. Department of Education today released the official FY 2009 national student loan cohort default rate, which has risen to 8.8 percent, up from 7.0 percent in FY 2008. The cohort default rates increased for all sectors: from 6.0 percent to 7.2 percent for public institutions, from 4.0 percent to 4.6 percent for private institutions, and from 11.6 percent to 15 percent at for-profit schools.  http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/default-rates-rise-federal-student-loans

Moody Cuts Rates For BofA, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo (run to the bank!) Moody’s Investors Service has cut the credit ratings of three major U.S. banks, saying that Washington is less likely to bail out big U.S. financial companies if another financial crisis were to hit Wall Street.
The rating company Wednesday downgraded the long-term credit ratings of Bank of America Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co. and bumped down Citigroup Inc.’s short-term credit rating, citing “a decrease in the probability that the U.S. government would support” them in future financial crises. However, Moody’s still believes that the likelihood of such bailouts would be “very high” if there was any kind of systemic danger. www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-moodys-banks-20110922,0,4673695.story

US inflation Up a Hair (forewarning?) The inflation rate in United States was last reported at 3.8 percent in August of 2011. From 1914 until 2010, the average inflation rate in United States was 3.38 percent reaching an historical high of 23.70 percent in June of 1920 and a record low of -15.80 percent in June of 1921. Inflation rate refers to a general rise in prices measured against a standard level of purchasing power. The most well known measures of Inflation are the CPI which measures consumer prices, and the GDP deflator, which measures inflation in the whole of the domestic economy. This page includes: United States Inflation Rate chart, historical data and news.  http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/inflation-cpi

SEC, Which gave Surcease to Madoff for Year, Covered up Post Scandal Connections: After Bernard L. Madoff’s giant Ponzi scheme was revealed, the Securities and Exchange Commission went to great lengths to make sure that none of its employees working on the case posed a conflict of interest, barring anyone who had accepted gifts or attended a Madoff wedding.  But as a new report made clear on Tuesday, one top official received a pass: David M. Becker, the S.E.C.’s general counsel, who went on to recommend how the scheme’s victims would be compensated, despite his family’s $2 million inheritance from a Madoff account.Mr. Becker’s actions were referred by H. David Kotz, the inspector general of the S.E.C., to the Justice Department, on the advice of the Office of Government Ethics, which oversees the ethics of the executive branch of government.The report by Mr. Kotz provides fresh details about the weakness of the agency’s ethics office and reveals that none of its commissioners, except for Mary L. Schapiro, its chairwoman, had been advised of Mr. Becker’s conflict. It says Ms. Schapiro agreed with a decision to keep Mr. Becker from testifying before Congress, where he would have disclosed his financial interest in the Madoff account.
Mr. Kotz’s inquiry also produced evidence that at least one S.E.C. employee had been barred from working on Madoff-related matters because of a conflict, suggesting there was a double standard at the agency.
The findings are another black eye  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/21/business/sec-refers-ex-counsels-actions-on-madoff-to-justice-dept.html?_r=2&hp

Maybe it is a bad Idea to Entrap yourself on Wall Street. Here is a Map where the Rich people Live: Barack Obama claims his plan to impose tax hikes on the middle classes and the wealthy is not ‘class warfare,’ but are the towns on the frontline of the President’s tax war.
The towns will be hit the hardest by Obama’s plans to target individuals earning more than $200,000 a year for tax rises and the so-called ‘Buffett Tax’ on those making $1million or more in income.
The analysis of IRS statistics indicates 64 communities nationwide where residents would undoubtedly suffer under the President’s plans.
They include an isolated island on the tip of sunny southern Florida that has been named the most densely populated community of millionaires in the U.S. According to Forbes magazine, the average millionaire household on Fisher Island, where both Mel Gibson and Oprah Winfrey have had homes, boasts an annual income of $3.23million, and a staggering net worth of $57million.  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2039422/Obama-tax-plan-Survey-reveals-wealthiest-towns-Americas-millionaires-live.html

And What Comes of Detroit, America’s Most Exploited City, ruined by Racism and Capitalism? Not long after he began a full term, data from the Census Bureau showed the city was living through a collapse of historic proportions: It had lost 25 percent of its population over the previous decade, more than any other American city above 100,000 people, aside from New Orleans, which lost 29 percent after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Those who left were generally those with the means to move, the mayor said. Those who remained were generally the poorest, and the least able to pay all the bills left over from better times. economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/23/making-the-case-for-detroits-future/?emc=eta1

Solidarity Fornever

New Deceiver to Boss NEA Members into Voting circuses (at more than $450,000 a year): When John Stocks began his career in Boise in 1982, he worked to add stop signs in high-traffic neighborhoods and persuade irrigation companies to quit charging people for water they couldn’t get.
“They’d watch the water run right past them while their lawns were drying up,” Stocks said, recalling his early days as a community organizer for Idaho Fair Share.
This month, Stocks reached the highest levels of American political advocacy, becoming executive director of the 3.2 million-member National Education Association. The Washington, D.C.-based NEA is the nation’s largest union, with an annual budget of $371 million and 535 employees, and is vital to the Democratic Party….John — nicknamed “Johno”— was 9. The three kids went to private schools and had an African-American maid, Lucinda Ewell, who cared for them. Ewell was there the day Stocks was born and walked him out the door when he left for college.
Stocks calls Ewell “my other mother,” and his “guardian angel and rock of stability during a tumultuous childhood.” She taught him the power of a good story, the value of hard work and that love could be expressed in the preparation of a meal. www.idahostatesman.com/2011/09/18/1803587/ex-idahoan-will-bring-years-of.html

School Worker Unions Among Top Donors to Supercommittee Budget Hacks: Who comes in one spot ahead at Number 32? America’s largest teachers union.
National Education Association members donated nearly $300,000 to supercommittee members, favoring Democrats by a nearly 9-to-1 margin….Also on the list: America’s other big teachers union, the American Federation of Teachers. Members of that organization donated more than $215,000, all to Democrats on the supercommittee.
These donation totals are both chump change compared to the PACs topping the CRP’s list — Club for Growth donated more than $1 million to Republicans; EMILY’s List, more than $700,000 to Democrats.
But as Politics K-12 notes, if you were to combine the AFT and NEA’s contributions, they would be the fifth-biggest donor on the list — behind only the PACs, Microsoft, and AT&T. stateimpact.npr.org/indiana/2011/09/20/teachers-unions-among-top-100-donors-to-debt-ceiling-supercommittee/

NEA’s Procurer for Capitalist Schooling and the Empire Touts Obamagogue’s Fake NCLB Waivers: September 23, 2011 (202) 822-7823, srobertson@nea.org
Obama, Duncan to provide relief from many NCLB restrictions
Van Roekel: Flexibility from rigid rules welcomed by educators
WASHINGTON— President Obama announced a plan today to provide relief to states from many of NCLB’s more onerous provisions, such as meeting Adequate Yearly Progress requirements and other deadlines.
“President Obama has taken a welcome step forward with this plan. It sets much more realistic goals for schools, while maintaining ESEA’s original commitment to civil rights, high academic standards and success for every student,” said NEA President Dennis Van Roekel.
“Teachers have been sounding the alarm on NCLB’s test-label-punish approach for more than 10 years. Now, there is an opportunity to move forward with real reform, especially for the most disadvantaged students,” said Van Roekel.
“Educators want commonsense measures of student progress, freedom to implement local ideas, respect for their judgment and the right to be a part of critical decisions,” said Van Roekel. “This plan delivers.”
Van Roekel notes that the waiver plan provisions get away from labeling schools as failures. “Instead, the Department of Education has adopted a term NEA also uses for low performing schools: Priority Schools. The waivers recognize the Title I schools that need the most help—and the students they serve—as a federal priority.”
Last week, Van Roekel completed a back-to-school tour for a first-hand view of how teachers are collaborating with key education stakeholders to significantly improvement student learning and success. “I’ve been visiting schools across the country and I know that teachers and education support professionals care deeply about their students and they want policies that work to benefit students,” said NEA President Dennis Van Roekel. “President Obama and Secretary Duncan have crafted a path that breaks through the logjam of bad NCLB policy and opened the way to better ideas that will work for students and schools.”
“NEA will continue to work with Congress and push for comprehensive NCLB reauthorization,” said Van Roekel.
See NEA’s letter to Sec. Duncan requesting regulatory relief for K-12 schools here.
Follow us on twitter at www.twitter.com/NEAMedia # # #
The National Education Association is the nation’s largest professional employee organization, representing
3.2 million elementary and secondary teachers, higher education faculty, education support professionals, school administrators, retired educators and students dennis2delegates.groupsite.com/uploads/files/x/000/06d/0a5/NEA%20Press%20Release.pdf

New Jersey EA Hustles School Workers to Participate in the Construction of their Own Oppression: the NJEA wants teachers involved in putting together their job reviews. Christie wants teachers to earn the length of tenure they receive by their performance.
New Jersey’s Department of Education said that 10 districts had been accepted into the $1.2 million pilot teacher evaluation program. It asks districts to come up with a system that uses 50 percent of student testing or another learning measurement and 50 percent from evaluation of classroom teaching.  http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/state/nj-teachers-helping-to-create-states-new-evaluation-system-despite-christies-war-against-them

Michigan Wants to End Detroit Fed of Teachers Dues Checkoff (good–end this extortion). What does DFT Do? Compare Unionism to the United Way and Tout Randi Weingarten: mi.aft.org/dft231/

In A Week of One “Union” Sellout after the Next:

***The Gangster UAW retains the Two Tier Wage and Worse (remember UAW agreed to no strike for years in exchange for GM/Chrysler Bailouts): expected smoke and mirrors not bad jokes and chicken dances.
Does King’s Concession Caucus really expect us to laugh it off as we peck scraps out of the dirt?Tier one workers haven’t had a raise since Gettelfinger opened the contract and created the magic VEBA (famous for disappearing acts). Now King wants workers to donate 10% of their profit sharing to the VEBA? How many times do these company sidekicks expect workers to pay for the same goose? We gave up a dollar an hour in 2006 for the VEBA. That’s a dollar an hour every hour of every working day of every working week of every working month of every working year for the rest of our working lives. Roll up your sleeves and ring it up on your calculator. A minimum of two grand a year for the last five years and rattling the cash registers like a one dollar slot machine that never pays out.
There’s a sordid reason we didn’t get COLA back. It was diverted to pay for health care. King didn’t hold the line on health care, he gave the company COLA again. Hell, retirees get COLA on Social Security (and the rest of the back story is here: www.soldiersofsolidarity.com/)

UAW’s “King” Publishes False Promises about Sellout: www.freep.com/assets/freep/pdf/C4179448920.PDF

The Torment and Demise of the United Auto Workers Union: The UAW is not poor. Perhaps that is proof it is not dead. The UAW has money. It draws income from investments and membership dues (and it is a significant property holder as well). In 2005, the UAW made $51,960,369 from its investments. The UAW holds a strike fund of nearly one billion dollars, $914, 244, 968.00, to be precise. In twelve separate funds, the union holds $190,135, 870. And an emergency fund hosts $87,731,995. There are 524 people on staff, including seven top officers, eleven executive board members, and a host of “international” representatives, all drawing more than $100,000 per year. Yet the UAW leadership cannot mobilize its own members for strikes or job actions, having abandoned that kind of activity soon after WWII — and when UAW members attempted work actions on their own, UAW leaders and staff assaulted them, as we shall see. In the UAW, and the entire labor movement (for our purposes, I adopt the term “labor movement,” to mean AFL-CIO, which has little in common with labor or movement), there are very few people who have ever marched on a serious picket line, nearly no one who has ever led a strike, especially not a strike that won….clogic.eserver.org/2006/gibson.html

***California Grocery Union Bosses Declare Preservation of the Last Disasterous Contract a Victory and members begin voting Friday: Albertsons, Ralphs and Vons and the union representing their Southern California supermarket employees reached a tentative agreement on a new labor contract on Monday, averting a threatened strike.
Negotiators for the United Food and Commercial Workers union said the new contract, which must be approved by union members, will cover 62,000 union supermarket workers in Southern California when it is ratified.
“The agreement increases wages, protects health care and pension benefits throughout the life of the three-year contract,” UFCW said in a statement. today.msnbc.msn.com/id/44220007/ns/today-today_news/t/socal-grocers-union-avert-strike-deal/

The Defeat of the Last Grocery Workers Strike: eserver.org/clogic/2004/gibson.html

The Emergence of Fascism as a Mass Popular Multi-tentacled Movement

Troy Davis Killed by Every Level of Government

46+ Bodies Dumped in Vera Cruz: At least 11 more bodies have been found dumped around the Mexican city of Veracruz, according to local media reports, two days after the discovery of 35 other corpses in the Gulf port.
The bodies discovered on Thursday were in small groups scattered in various parts of the city, despite high security for a summit of attorneys general and justice officials.
On Tuesday, 35 people with suspected links to drug gangs were murdered and their bodies left in two lorries abandoned under a highway bridge in Boca del Rio, about 5km from the centre of Veracruz. english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2011/09/2011923412346390.html

Spy Versus Spy

Brian Kelley, Spy scammed by Hanssen, Dies: Brian J. Kelley, an American counterintelligence expert who helped focus attention on a possible Russian spy in Washington, only to be wrongly suspected of being a K.G.B. mole himself, died on Monday at his home in Vienna, Va. He was 68….Starting in the 1990s, Mr. Kelley, then a Central Intelligence Agency officer, was falsely accused by his own agency, as well as by the F.B.I., of supplying covert information to Moscow.
The real mole, the F.B.I. agent-turned-spy Robert P. Hanssen, was apprehended in 2001, but not before Mr. Kelley had been followed, interrogated, suspended and told that he might well be charged with a capital offense. Members of Mr. Kelley’s family were also interrogated, according to his wife and to news accounts.
Reinstated by the C.I.A. in 2001, Mr. Kelley retired in 2006. www.nytimes.com/2011/09/22/us/brian-j-kelley-onetime-spying-suspect-dies-at-68.html?_r=3&hpw

Who Killed CIA Phoenix Drug Dealer William Colby? Film Trailer: movieclips.com/Bu4R-the-man-nobody-knew-in-search-of-my-father-cia-spymaster-william-colby-movie-trailer-1/

Magical Mystery Tour

Battle Cry Versus the FSM vs The True Power

Nazi Pope! Germany! Cannons! Flyovers! Children (yummy)

Best  and Worst Think in the History of the World

Back to Jail For Pitcher and Thief Denny McLain McLain, who was arrested in Port Huron on Thursday at the bridge to Canada, McLain was wanted on an Aug. 26 warrant for not paying landowners money for scrap metal, as promised. www.freep.com/

So Long, Jaime Lujan: Professor.