Why Are Things As They Are?

,,We Say Fight Back!

The Little Red Schoolhouse

Meet the NEW Detroit EAA Boss, Rich as the Last Crook who ran off with $3/4 mil of poor people’s money  The interim chancellor for the Education Achievement Authority announced Monday she has instituted new travel and expense procedures for staff, seven weeks after The Detroit News reported that nearly $240,000 in travel, gas and IKEA furniture was charged on two credit cards of the former chancellor in less than two years.

Veronica Conforme, appointed interim chancellor June 16 after the abrupt departure of John Covington, made the disclosure during the EAA’s board meeting Monday at Wayne County Community College.,,,The board also approved an employment contract for Conforme that runs through July 31 and pays her $27,083.33 per month. She was granted two days each of sick leave and vacation time and given $2,000 a month for temporary housing.  From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20140630/SCHOOLS/306300090#ixzz36TU3nSrM

Top SweetWater (Ca) school boss ($252 thousand a year) Forced Out “The board has decided to place (superintendent) Dr. (Ed) Brand on paid administrative leave effective July 3 through the end of his contract on October 1, 2014,” district attorney Randy Winet said.    http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2014/jun/30/sweetwater-board-brand-superintendent-leave/

Capitalizing StudentsFirst FIRST LOOK: STUDENTSFIRST OPENS ITS BOOKS Former D.C. Chancellor Michelle Rhee directed hundreds of thousands of dollars in the last election cycle to conservative candidates and organizations through her ed reform group StudentsFirst, according to the group’s latest tax filings. The 990 forms cover the fiscal year from August 2012 through July of 2013. They show that StudentsFirst and its sister organization, StudentsFirst Institute, raised a combined total of $26.7 million, down slightly from $28.6 million the previous year. The haul includes a huge bequest of stock, worth $2.6 million, from an unnamed donor. (Rhee will not disclose her funders.) On the expense side, Rhee’s group spent $2 million for consulting services from the Democratic firm SKDKnickerbocker. It also spent $1.7 million on membership fees paid to the grassroots activist site Change.org. The site hosted a number of StudentsFirst petitions that gathered tens of thousands of signatures — and provided Rhee’s organization with a trove of email addresses — until protests from organized labor prompted Change.org to cut ties with StudentsFirst.

— Rhee, who earns nearly $350,000 a year, also spent heavily on political activism in the year covered by the tax forms. StudentsFirst gave $500,000 to a business-backed committee in Michigan that successfully worked to defeat a union effort to enshrine collective bargaining rights in the state constitution. It also spent $250,000 to support a charter-school campaign in Georgia. StudentsFirst gives to candidates and committees from both parties but many of its biggest political donations went to Republican caucuses and conservative alliances in states including Florida, Maine, Michigan and Pennsylvania.    http://www.politico.com/morningeducation/0714/morningeducation14519.html

Hillbillary Cleans Up at Top Universities in Time of “Austerity”  At least eight universities, including four public institutions, have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for Hillary Rodham Clinton to speak on their campuses over the past year, sparking a backlash from some student groups and teachers at a time of austerity in higher education.

In one previously undisclosed transaction, the University of Connecticut — which just raised tuition by 6.5 percent — paid $251,250 from a donor fund for Clinton to speak on campus in April. Other examples include $300,000 to speak at the University of California at Los Angeles in March and $225,000 for a speech scheduled for October at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.

The potential 2016 Democratic presidential candidate also has been paid for speeches at the University at Buffalo, Colgate University and Hamilton College in New York, as well as Simmons College in Boston and the University of Miami in Florida. …

At UNLV, where officials have agreed to raise tuition by 17 percent over the next four years, student government leaders wrote a letter to Clinton last week asking her to return the planned $225,000 fee to the university. If she does not, they say, they intend to protest her visit.

“The students are outraged about this,” said Elias Benjelloun, UNLV’s student body president. “When you see reckless spending, it just belittles the sacrifices students are consistently asked to make. I’m not an accountant or economist, so I can’t put a price tag on how much we should be paying her, but I think she should come for free.”      www.washingtonpost.com/politics/at-time-of-austerity-eight-universities-spent-top-dollar-on-hillary-clinton-speeches/2014/07/02/cf1d1070-016a-11e4-b8ff-89afd3fad6bd_story.html

Capitalism trumps Free Speech in California’s Campuses In his lawsuit, Sinapi-Riddle is challenging Citrus’ free-speech area as well as an anti-harassment policy that he argued is overly broad and a multi-step process for approving student group events. The college was sued over its free speech zones in 2003 and eliminated them after a legal settlement a year later. But last year, college trustees “readopted in essence the unconstitutional policy it abandoned,” Sinapi-Riddle’s complaint said.

Citrus officials were not available Tuesday for comment.

But communications Director Paula Green did email copies of the college’s free speech policy, which declares that the campus is a “non-public forum” except where otherwise designated in order to “prevent the substantial disruption of the orderly operation of the college.” The policy instructs the college to enact procedures that “reasonably regulate” free expression.  …Even in California — unique in the nation for two state laws that explicitly bar free speech restrictions at public and private universities — the majority of campuses retain written speech codes, he said. Among 23 California State University campuses surveyed by the group, 12 were rated “red” for employing at least one policy that “clearly and substantially restricts” free speech.

Pitt, Penn State Most Expensive Public Colleges in U.S (NYT Has it wrong–PSU claims to be private) A study by the U.S. Department of Education shows that the main campuses of the University of Pittsburgh and Penn State University are the most costly four-year public colleges in the country.

The study, which used tuition figures for in-state residents for the 2012-2013 academic year and was released on Monday, showed Pitt’s tuition and fees, excluding room and board, at $16,590, and Penn State’s at $16,444. The University of New Hampshire is a close third with the cost to state residents at $16,422.

The national average for in-state tuition at public colleges is $7,407. Out-of-state tuition is even higher.    http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2014/07/01/us/01reuters-usa-college-tuition.html

Capitalist “Public” Schools in New York City Are Poorer and More Crowded, Budget Agency Finds   Schools in New York are becoming more congested, federal and state aid has dropped, and the number of students in “temporary housing situations,” including homeless shelters, has shot up, according to a report on the state of public education the city’s budget oversight agency issued on Tuesday.

Nearly 450,000 students were enrolled in overcrowded buildings, defined as those at greater than 102.5 percent capacity, in the 2012-13 school year, the most recent covered by the report from the agency, the Independent Budget Office. The average class size is rising, too, particularly in the lower grades: The average elementary and middle school class had 25.5 children, up from 24.6 just two years before. This was true even as the total number of students in traditional and charter schools has hovered around 1.1 million for more than a decade, and as the city has created tens of thousands of new seats.

Advocates have fought for years to get the city to use more state aid, known as Contracts for Excellence money, to reduce class sizes.

Chicago: Emanuel and Holder Declare that Closed Schools Must Improve Safety –Just 24 Dead Kids! Mayor Rahm Emanuel brought in Attorney General Eric Holder Wednesday to help make the case that Chicago Public Schools students were safer during the recent academic year than they were before Emanuel made the controversial decision to close dozens of schools.

Emanuel’s school policies are certain to take center stage during his upcoming re-election bid, given the resentment in many neighborhoods where schools were closed last year and the promise by the Chicago Teachers Union to target the mayor for defeat.

At a round-table style meeting at Chicago Police headquarters, Holder applauded the “really amazing reductions in the kinds of negative behaviors and negative outcomes” among Chicago elementary and high school students.

“I don’t think that this community, this mayor, the leaders from this community get enough credit for it,” said Holder, who served with Emanuel in President Barack Obama’s administration.

Emanuel’s administration released statistics he said showed this school year was “the safest on record” —which means since the city began tracking violence involving students in 2007.

According to the city, 24 CPS students were victims of homicide during the 2013-2014 school year, from last September to June. While that is 12 fewer than in 2012-2013, when 36 CPS students were homicide victims, it is just three fewer than the 27 students who were killed in each of the previous two school years , according to city statistics.    http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-emanuel-holder-chicago-public-schools-safety-20140702,0,3288871.story

Stunning Survey Reveals Teachers “Feel” Undervalued Secondary schoolteachers around the world mostly love their job, but many say they are not valued by society, according to an international survey published last week by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The Teaching and Learning International Survey questioned more than 100,000 lower secondary school teachers and about 6,500 head teachers from 34 countries on a range of issues. It followed a similar but smaller-scale survey in 2008.

Among the findings: As few as 4.9 percent of teachers in France said that society valued their work, and 5 percent in Sweden, compared with highs of 83.8 percent in Malaysia, 67.6 percent in Singapore, and 66.5 percent in Abu Dhabi and South Korea. Finland scored highest in Europe, with 58.6 percent of teachers saying they felt properly appreciated.    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/02/nyregion/new-york-citys-public-schools-are-poorer-and-more-crowded-report-says.html

In the United States, the figure was roughly a third.

These figures were “shocking,” Michael Davidson, head of the schools division at the O.E.C.D., a policy consortium for developed countries that is based in Paris. If teachers felt undervalued, Mr. Davidson said at a media briefing, the best candidates would be less likely to enter the profession or stay in the job.  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/30/world/europe/many-teachers-feel-undervalued-survey-finds.html?ref=education

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

Roberts: The US War Against Russia Is Already Underway  Well, I think, perhaps, Americans are catching on to all of the lies. There are now other sources of information, other than the English-speaking Western media. And the account that the US gives, for example, of Ukraine is clearly a lie. And it takes a while before people catch on to the lies. I don’t think the majority will ever catch on, but enough will.

And then many Americans who are dissatisfied would be dissatisfied for domestic economic reasons. They would want the resources wasted on wars to be allocated to domestic needs and not used to pay for more wars. For example, the Iraq crisis has come back and there is so much talk about sending troops to the Baltics, eastern Europe in order to guard against the “Russian threat.”

So, this alarms people who’ve had no income growth, who can’t find a job, suffer from heavy debts from borrowed money to attend the universities, cut backs of unemployment compensation, the threats to the social security system, the threats to the public medical system (which is not much of a system, but still some people rely on it). So, most Americans, when they see more trouble abroad involving more wars, understand that the wars mean more economic hardship for them. The US has been in war for 13 years. It’s wasted trillions of dollars and achieved no result. And so, this is probably the main reason that people are dissatisfied, because they are suffering here for the sake of wars in which they no longer believe.    http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-us-war-against-russia-is-already-underway/5389354

NATO chief to move forces from U.S. to Europe to respond to Russia in Ukraine  NATO’s top military commander said Monday that American troops from the United States will be dispatched to Europe starting in October to help respond to Russian aggression in Ukraine.

Air Force Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, supreme allied commander of the Western military alliance, said the U.S.-based troops will buttress American forces that have already been moved in recent months from Germany, Italy and elsewhere in Europe for stepped-up ground and air patrols in the three Baltic countries of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, plus Poland and Romania.

“It’s a very momentous time in Europe, probably the most since the end of the Cold War, especially because of the recent changes wrought by Russia,” Breedlove told reporters at the Pentagon.

Breedlove said Moscow has supplied pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine with tanks, armored personnel carriers, anti-aircraft artillery and other heavy weapons.  Read more here: www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/07/01/231970/nato-chief-to-move-forces-from.html#emlnl=Most_Popular_This_Week#storylink=cpy

Obamagogue To Spend Another $500 Mil on Loser Strategy/Tactics—and no Grand Strategy at all    The seizing of large parts of Iraq by Sunni militants — an offensive hastened by the collapse of the American-trained Iraqi Army — stunned the White House and has laid bare the limitations of a policy that depends on the cooperation of often balky and overmatched partners.

While the militants from ISIS have moved swiftly to establish a caliphate from eastern Syria to central Iraq, the White House is struggling to repel them with measures that administration officials concede will take months or longer to be effective.

At West Point, Mr. Obama spoke hopefully of a “network of partnerships from South Asia to the Sahel.” The reality, on chaotic display in Iraq, is likely to be far messier. The United States, constrained by a war-weary public, will have to rely on a constantly shifting cast of surrogates to confront the threats it once took on largely by itself — a trade-off that will require patience as well as a new determination at the White House to arm and train local forces.

Last week, Mr. Obama announced a plan to spend $500 million to train and equip rebels in Syria. But the Pentagon has only begun detailed planning for the program, and officials said it would be months, or even more than a year, before the fighters would be battle-ready.

“The Islamic State’s resources are increasing faster than the appropriations process back in Washington,” said Robert S. Ford, a former American ambassador to Syria who is now a resident scholar at the Middle East Institute. “The administration is going to have to think of some things to do in the short term.”    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/04/world/obamas-no-war-plan-for-fighting-terrorism-meets-reality-in-iraq.html

Ahmed Rashid: The New Taliban  In the days since the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) took control of much of northern Iraq, Western leaders and analysts have expressed alarm at what they have called a powerful new form of jihadism. Some have likened ISIS to a new al-Qaeda. Both assessments are wrong. In its rapid advance toward Baghdad, ISIS has already eliminated national boundaries between Iraq and Syria, captured significant arms and weapons caches, caused a spike in global oil prices, reinvigorated ethnic and sectarian conflict across the Arab world, and given Islamic extremism a dramatic new source of appeal among many young Muslims.

On June 30, the first day of Ramadan, ISIS also declared that it was reestablishing the “Caliphate,” long an aspiration of other jihadist groups. Yet despite these accomplishments, ISIS may not be as unusual as it has been described. Nor does it seem primarily interested in global jihad. In many ways, what the group is doing to Syria and Iraq resembles what the Taliban did in Afghanistan and Pakistan in the early 1990s. Like the Taliban, ISIS’s war so far has been about conquering territory rather than launching an al-Qaeda-style global jihad or issuing fatwas to bomb New York or London. Although it has attracted some three thousand foreigners to fight for it, ISIS’s real war is with fellow Muslims, and in particular Shias, against whom it has called for a genocidal campaign. Just as the Taliban changed the contours of Islam in south and central Asia so ISIS intends to do the same in the Middle East. ISIS is also seeking territorial control of the central Middle East region.

Interactive Map of Regions under ISIS Control (nice work, Obamagogue/Bush/Rummie, Dick, et al)   http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/07/03/world/middleeast/syria-iraq-isis-rogue-state-along-two-rivers.html

The U.S. Re-militarization of Central America and Mexico  In a letter sent to Obama and the region’s other presidents last year, over 145 civil society organizations called out U.S. policies that “promote militarization to address organized crime.” These policies, the letter states, have only resulted in a “dramatic surge in violent crime, often reportedly perpetrated by security forces themselves. Human rights abuses against our families and communities are, in many cases, directly attributable to failed and counterproductive security policies that have militarized our societies in the name of the ‘war on drugs.’”…Under President Obama, the U.S. government has renewed and expanded Mérida and, in 2011, created the Central American Regional Security Initiative (CARSI). From 2008 to 2013, these programs have received over $2 billion and $574 million respectively, according to a 2014 report by the Igarapé Institute. Though administration spokespeople emphasize investments made in judicial reform and drug prevention programs, most funds have been spent on supporting increasingly warlike drug interdiction and law     nacla.org/article/us-re-militarization-central-america-and-mexico enforcement.

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

Sobering report: 20% of Detroiters could lose homes to tax foreclosure this year  An alarming number of Detroiters are at risk of losing their homes because of delinquent property taxes at a time when the city is desperately trying to stem the flood of departures.

Property taxes are at least a year delinquent on a startling 37% of homes and businesses, and nearly 100,000 properties are facing foreclosure this year – a 23.7% increase over 2013, according to eye-opening tax data analyzed by Loveland Technologies and made available on their website, Why Don’t We Own This?.  Alex Alsup, the chief product officer at Loveland Technologies, estimates that 145,000 people – or 21% of the city’s 688,000 residents – could lose their homes because of delinquent property taxes this year, further depleting the population.    http://motorcitymuckraker.com/blog/2014/07/03/sobering-report-20-of-detroiters-could-lose-homes-to-tax-foreclosure-this-year/

The Dow Jones index has soared through the 17,000 barrier to a record high after US data showed a bigger-than-expected surge in job creation last month.    http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/jul/03/dow-jones-index-soars-through-17000?CMP=ema_565

The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement

Confidence in government has reached historic lows, 7 percent now have trust in Congress (and still no legitimacy crisis?)      according to a new Gallup survey, as 7 percent say they’re have confidence in Congress and 29 percent feel that way about the White House.

The Supreme Court, at 30 percent, and Congress hit record lows, while the presidential rating was a six-year low.

Congress has historically trailed the other two branches, as the White House and Supreme Court have traded places as the most trusted branch.

“But on a relative basis, Americans’ confidence in all three is eroding,” a Gallup analysis reported. Over the past year, confidence has fallen four points for the Supreme Court, seven for the presidency and three for the White House.

Gallup has been asking about confidence in the White House for 23 years. At that time, as the Gulf War was ending, the office garnered 72 percent confidence, as President George H. W. Bush had a 89 percent approval rating.

Americans do still trust some institutions. “At this point, Americans place much greater faith in the military and the police than in any of the three branches of government,” Gallup found. Read more here: www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/06/30/231889/americans-confidence-in-government.html

Norm Pollack on American Fascism Every day under Obama the US moves closer to an irreversible trajectory of military provocation which can readily culminate in nuclear war. And official Washington, all three branches of government, seems not to care. Indeed, it is only when POTUS is most saber-rattling, most aggressive in his hostility toward Russia and China, most comfortable in defending secrecy in government, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with NSA in providing massive surveillance of the American people, and with CIA in conducting covert operations toward regime change and armed-drone assassinations, that his ratings go up and his critics hold back. It is as though a political-cultural-ideological predisposition to fascistic assumptions of force and superiority (together, Exceptionalism) holds sway even before the execution of policy. Obama perfectly embodies the requirements of leadership in this historical context and structural framework. He is at once the figurehead for such a systemic configuration that possesses the aura of liberalism (the skillful employment of race to keep liberals in line while muting Rightist attacks that otherwise, had he in fact been radical, would be harsher) yet conjoins militarism to market fundamentalism as an expansionist dynamic to maintain world supremacy.

A figurehead? Only in the sense that he fronts a stage of advanced capitalism which itself, to reach that point, presupposes a tightly organized ruling stratum. I use “stratum” rather than “class” so as to signify the accommodation by upper groups, economic, social, political, of diverse others useful to purposes of social control at home, hegemony abroad—i.e., leaders of the military and intelligence communities as both stabilizing/conservative influences and resources for enforcing group dominance. No longer can one speak of a mere economic elite pulling strings from Olympian heights. The ruling stratum of course is a class anyway; nonetheless it is in need of auxiliaries to firm up support for its protection, increasingly in the form of military power and the technological means of repression. Therefore, welcome to the club, on condition of loyalty to the top—even though personal property and wealth are yet inadequate.  …The liberal mask Obama presents in justification for the Democratic party’s proclivity toward war, intervention, and sacrifice of the class interests of working people and minorities at home, is just that, a mask that covers inner moral emptiness as well as fools the constituency to be addressed and the public at large.    http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/07/03/the-efflorescence-of-american-fascism/

Protesters in Murrieta block detainees’ buses in tense standoff  A crowd of 200 to 300 people in downtown Murrieta surrounded three buses carrying immigrant detainees Tuesday afternoon, causing the buses to turn around before they reached a Border Patrol station in the Riverside County city.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=kapK0VKCndQ

Waving Americans flags and protest signs, the crowd refused to give way when the buses arrived with some 140 detainees from Texas, which has seen a flood of Central American immigrants cross the border in recent weeks without legal permission.

More News On Blacwater Murders in Iraq Just weeks before Blackwater guards fatally shot 17 civilians at Baghdad’s Nisour Square in 2007, the State Department began investigating the security contractor’s operations in Iraq. But the inquiry was abandoned after Blackwater’s top manager there issued a threat: “that he could kill” the government’s chief investigator and “no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq,” according to department reports.

American Embassy officials in Baghdad sided with Blackwater rather than the State Department investigators as a dispute over the probe escalated in August 2007, the previously undisclosed documents show. The officials told the investigators that they had disrupted the embassy’s relationship with the security contractor and ordered them to leave the country, according to the reports.

After returning to Washington, the chief investigator wrote a scathing report to State Department officials documenting misconduct by Blackwater employees and warning that lax oversight of the company, which had a contract worth more than $1 billion to protect American diplomats, had created “an environment full of liability and negligence.”    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/30/us/before-shooting-in-iraq-warning-on-blackwater.html

Solidarity for Never

NEA Rep Assembly TED Talk Speaker Makes a Familiar Gesture during her “Raise your Hand!” Rally

NEA Representative Assembly Update as of July 4th: NEA’s delegates, about 7,000 school workers (down from more than 10 thousand a few years ago–reflecting ongoing membership losses) passed a resolution from the California delegation calling on Education Secretary Arne Duncan to resign. The crowd went wild. This was a stage managed top down ruse led by the people who betrayed UTLA members by the thousands, and the NEA tops who serve on the boards of all the groups that helped create the high stakes exams, the Common Core, merit pay, etc. Note there is nor critique of, even, Obama, the demagogic puppeteer behind Duncan, let alone a critique of the structural causes of all the educational measures–capital in rapid decay, empire’s failing wars, and the corporate state that controls the school agenda.

The same delegates, for years on end, have voted “not to discuss” the empire’s failed wars, most likely because they see themselves as agents of the state–now a corporate state running the school agenda on behalf of capital and imperialism. Without crediting the delegates for thinking too much, on the face of it, this means they believe they benefit from empire–the crux of their opportunism.

Indeed, on a more apparent level, the delegates have all participated in the conduct of the high-stakes exams that so trouble them today–for at least 15 years. Merit pay surprised them–after they were proud to be the first union to endorse Obama and they cheered for, and worked for, and helped pay for, his re-election.

NEA bosses will lead the delegates to endorse Democrats, once again. Then they will pour money and volunteer hours into the November campaigns, easily turning the ranks and delegates into instruments of their own oppression–once more.

At the close of business, NEA delegates stood to hug the flag, cheering on wildly once more. (RG)

NEA, in Lock Step, Moves a New Round of Hacks up the Ladder www.nea.org/grants/59617.htm

NEA Tops Run PR for Rethinking (sic) Schools and Milwaukee Teachers Union Boss Bob Peterson  The day began with a panel dedicated to the development of leadership. “Always ask yourself, ‘Is this good for students?’” advised Iowa State Education Association President Tammy Wawro. (The panel discussion is archived online: www.gpsnetwork.org/welcome/ra2014/2014-nea-ra-live-stream-video-archive/) And it continued through numerous showcases of the outstanding work being done by NEA members, their local and state unions, and their allies.

In Milwaukee, for example, the Milwaukee Teachers’ Association Education (MTEA) has taken charge of members’ professional development through a member-led center of teaching and learning. MTEA has also negotiated with the district to ensure every new teacher has an experienced mentor teacher, and that struggling teachers spend time with master teachers, released from their classroom duties to spend time on teacher development. “We don’t want our children in schools that are ineffective,” said MTEA President Bob Peterson.    http://neatoday.org/2014/07/02/empowered-educators-raise-their-hands-for-student-success/

www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10152256969724226&set=o.325266987556690&type=2&theater

above and below, former NEA treasure and future Prezzie signed a $686,949 Check to Former Prezzie Reg Weaver for one year’s work, representing people who often live in trailers. Below, same, with fave, and vacillating reactionary, Ravitch. Eskelsen served on most of the boards that created the Common Core, the tests, and the NCLB.

Below, NEA has always allowed attacks on Arne, but not Obamagogue, nor capitalism, nor empire

NEA now has 72 Paid Dis-organizers in the field the NEA has also made a major push to recruit and retain members. Two years ago, the Center for Organizing didn’t exist. Now it has 72 employees deployed around the country. Testerman said union leaders who in the past have focused intently on lobbying work are now redirecting their energy to talking with teachers and other school personnel, trying to figure out what they need and how the union can help. That’s led to campaigns to boost reading instruction in Jackson, Miss., to stop school closures in Milwaukee, Wisc., and to press for more resources for English language learners in Clark County, Nev. — all initiatives that have energized teachers and drawn them to the union.    http://www.politico.com/morningeducation/0714/morningeducation14519.html

Spy versus Spy

‘Collect It All’ NSA Targets Those Seeking Web Privacy  Internet users who use online privacy tools or read certain websites may themselves become targets of NSA surveillance, according to a new investigation by public broadcasting outlets in Germany published on Thursday.

Citing documents that refer to “deep packet inspection” rules used by the NSA for its so-called “XKeyscore” program to determine what targets are selected for surveillance and how, the investigation (versions: German | English) reveals that people who seek out or use online privacy tools—including things like TOR, a network tool that provides digital anonymity and minimizes exposure to possible surveillance—may be targeted simply for making those efforts.

Other platforms targeted by the program include the LINUX open source operating system as well as privacy and encryption services such as HotSpotShield, FreeNet, Centurian, FreeProxies.org, MegaProxy, privacy.li and an anonymous email service called MixMinion. According to the reporting, the NSA characterized those who would use such services as “extremists,” which sparked spirited outrage on social media as the story broke.    https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2014/07/03-5

NSA reformers dismayed after privacy board vindicates surveillance dragnet  Civil libertarians saw their hopes for curtailing the National Security Agency’s massive digital surveillance program dimmed in the wake of a report from a US government privacy board vindicating much of the international communications dragnet.

The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) voted Wednesday to adopt a 200-page report on the NSA’s so-called “702” powers, which include the widespread collection of foreign email, voice and text messages and Americans’ international calls.

While PCLOB chairman David Medine said those efforts walked “right up to the line of constitutionality,” the report largely vindicated the controversial surveillance, the scope of which was disclosed through reporting on documents provided by Edward Snowden, as both effective and legal.

Elisebeth Collins Cook, one of five board members and a Justice Department official in the Bush administration, hailed the digital surveillance as “legal, valuable and subject to intense oversight,” and characterized the PCLOB’s recommendations as “relatively slight changes at the margins of the program.”

In ways both bold and subtle, the long-awaited report blessed the NSA’s large-scale collection of digital data, even as it found elements of it problematic.    http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/02/nsa-surveillance-government-privacy-board-report

German Accused of Passing Secrets, and Fingers Point at U.S.  In the latest turn in the yearlong tensions with Germany over American spying, a 31-year-old German man was arrested this week on suspicion of passing secret documents to a foreign power that appeared to be the United States, and the American ambassador was called in to the Foreign Office here and urged to help with what German officials called a “swift clarification” of the case.

The arrest came just as Washington and Berlin were trying to put to rest a year of strains over the National Security Agency’s monitoring of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cellphone, and just months after an effort by Germany to strike a “no spy” accord with the White House collapsed.

While the White House and American intelligence officials refused to comment on the arrest, one senior American official said that the reports in the German news media that the man under arrest had been working for the United States for at least two years “threaten to undo all the repair work” the two sides have been trying to achieve.    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/05/world/europe/german-arrested-on-suspicion-of-passing-secrets.html

CIA employee’s quest to release information ‘destroyed my entire career’   His CIA career included assignments in Africa, Afghanistan and Iraq, but the most perilous posting for Jeffrey Scudder turned out to be a two-year stint in a sleepy office that looks after the agency’s historical files.

It was there that Scudder discovered a stack of articles, hundreds of histories of long-dormant conflicts and operations that he concluded were still being stored in secret years after they should have been shared with the public.

To get them released, Scudder submitted a request under the Freedom of Information Act — a step that any citizen can take, but one that is highly unusual for a CIA employee. Four years later, the CIA has released some of those articles and withheld others. It also has forced Scudder out.

His request set in motion a harrowing sequence. He was confronted by supervisors and accused of mishandling classified information while assembling his FOIA request. His house was raided by the FBI and his family’s computers seized. Stripped of his job and his security clearance, Scudder said he agreed to retire last year after being told that if he refused, he risked losing much of his pension.    http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cia-employees-quest-to-release-information-destroyed-my-entire-career/2014/07/04/e95f7802-0209-11e4-8572-4b1b969b6322_story.html

The Magical Mystery Tour

Hobby Lobby Fallout: Catholic Soy Milk Mogul Won’t Cover Drugs That ‘Prevent Procreation’  Eden Foods bills itself as the oldest natural foods company in America. Founder Michael Potter started the business as a co-op in 1960s Michigan, long before terms like “macrobiotics” and “clean eating” were commonplace. Potter and his team used to walk rural roads, knocking on doors of farms to seek out farmers willing to grow organic produce for the brand.

Today, Eden Foods is an all-American success story, resisting regular buyout bids and doing over $50 million in annual sales. Its rectangular, aquamarine cartons of soy milk will be familiar to anyone who’s ever set foot in a Whole Foods. Its chickpeas and kidney beans are pantry staples. Now, with U.S. organic food sales growing yearly, Potter has taken on a new mission: blocking his 150-strong workforce from accessing birth control as part of their Eden Foods insurance plan.

In April 2013, devout Catholic (and sole Eden Foods shareholder) Potter sued the Department of Health and Human Services, calling the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate “unconstitutional government overreach.”  …The day after the Justices decided evangelical Hobby Lobby billionaire David Green doesn’t have to cover certain contraceptives for his employees, the Supreme Court vacated the judgment against Eden Foods and sent the case back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit for further consideration    http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2014/07/03/hobby-lobby-fallout-catholic-soy-milk-mogul-wont-cover-drugs-that-prevent-procreation/

The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World