Why Are Things As They Are?

We Say Fight Back!

Every beginning is difficult, holds in all sciences. (Marx)

Congratulations on the publication of

and the new edition of

The Little Red Schoolhouse

Capitalist Schooling Works!   Eighty-one percent of Michigan’s low-income 4th graders and 69 percent of all students are not reading proficiently, according to the Kids Count report issued Tuesday by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
Officials with the foundation say proficiency is a key predictor of a student’s educational and economic success.
The report “Early Reading Proficiency in the United States” found Michigan is one of just six states that did not make progress in reading over the past decade. The report concludes that if the reading trend continues, the country will not have enough skilled workers for an increasingly competitive global economy by the end of this decade.
“With almost half of Michigan’s children living in low-income families, these are truly alarming findings,’’ said Jane Zehnder-Merrell, Kids Count in Michigan project director at the Michigan League for Public Policy. “We’ve disinvested in education over the past decade, and we can connect the dots from the lack of spending to these stagnating reading scores.’’ From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20140128/SCHOOLS/301280063#ixzz2rrGskEmp

Culture of cheating’ at Corona del Mar High  
The mother of a Corona del Mar High School student expelled in a grade-hacking scandal warned district officials of a widespread “culture of cheating” at the high-performing school.
Newport-Mesa Unified School District trustees announced early Wednesday they had voted to expel 11 students after they allegedly hacked into the district’s computer system to change grades and access exams.
Some parents warned that as many as 150 students could be implicated in the cheating, but haven’t been investigated.
“You cannot simply throw a handful of students to the wolves,” said one parent, whose child was expelled. “There are plenty more kids walking around your campus who are as guilty if not more so than any of the kids wrapped up in this scandal.”
The parent suggested the school’s “smartest students” are “getting paid to do assignments, write papers and take online tests for other students.”
“CDM’s atmosphere of cheating goes far beyond the students that you have marginalized,” the parent wrote in a letter.
Last month, the district confirmed that students attached a keylogger — a small device that can be placed in the back of a computer to monitor keystrokes — to several teachers’ computers to swipe logins and passwords, allegedly with the help of a private tutor.
With the recorded information, the students allegedly changed grades and accessed English, science and history exams, some at the honors and Advanced Placement levels.
Out of the 398 students who graduated from Corona del Mar High last year, 99% of them attended college in the fall, with the majority of them enrolling at four-year universities, according to the school profile published by the district.   www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-cheating-scandal-corona-del-mar-20140129,0,6632853.story#ixzz2rrDKtMwO

Half-Wit USD Dean Says, “Adjust, Adjust, Adjust” to the Common Core  (but claims she doesn’t know why capitalist schools have bell schedules)  These are big changes. The teachers are concerned, too. Teachers haven’t been prepared for the Common Core. But you’ve got to invest in them.
I had 19 San Diego Unified teachers in my class this fall. All 19 of them, when I said, “Tell me about the Common Core, how are you feeling about it?” All of them felt (Common Core) had potential. There was a continuum, but nobody said, “Throw it out.” So they all know that it’s good stuff. It’s just that they all don’t know how to implement it. They need help. voiceofsandiego.org/2014/01/27/an-uncommon-challenge/ 

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

Perseus wore a magic cap that the monsters he hunted down might not see him.
We draw the magic cap down over eyes and ears as a make-believe that there are no monsters. (Marx, Capital). 

Karzai Remembers Diem!  President Hamid Karzai has frequently lashed out at the U.S. military for causing civilian casualties in its raids. But behind the scenes, he has been building a far broader case against the Americans, suggesting that they may have aided or conducted shadowy insurgent-style attacks to undermine his government, according to senior Afghan officials.
Karzai has formalized his suspicions with a list of dozens of attacks that he believes the U.S. government may have been involved in, according to one palace official. The list even includes the recent bomb and gun assault on a Lebanese restaurant in Kabul, one of the bloodiest acts targeting the international community in Afghanistan, the official said. The attack, which left 21 people dead, including three Americans, was almost universally attributed to the Taliban  …But Karzai believes it was one of many incidents that may have been planned by Americans to weaken him and foment instability in Afghanistan, according to the senior palace official, who is sympathetic to the president’s view and spoke on the condition of anonymity. He acknowledged that his government had no concrete evidence of U.S. involvement and that the American role had not been formally confirmed.
U.S. officials, who have been informed of some of the claims, have reacted with incredulity and anger to the idea that they are trying to debilitate Afghanistan’s government, which they have supported with hundreds of billions of dollars.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/karzai-suspects-us-is-behind-insurgent-style-attacks-afghan-officials-say/2014/01/27/a70d7568-8779-11e3-a760-a86415d0944d_story.html

Obamagogue to Afghans: Mind if I keep my Drone bases when the Taliban takes over?   The risk that President Obama may be forced to pull all American troops out of Afghanistan by the end of the year has set off concerns inside the American intelligence agencies that they could lose their air bases used for drone strikes against Al Qaeda in Pakistan and for responding to a nuclear crisis in the region.
Until now, the debate here and in Kabul about the size and duration of an American-led allied force in Afghanistan after 2014 had focused on that country’s long-term security. But these new concerns also reflect how troop levels in Afghanistan directly affect long-term American security interests in neighboring Pakistan, according to administration, military and intelligence officials.  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/27/world/asia/afghanistan-exit-is-seen-as-peril-to-drone-mission.html?_r=0

US’ Outstanding work in Libya Spills into Egypt–in hands of Islamists Islamist militants shot down an Egyptian military helicopter in the Sinai Peninsula with a surface-to-air missile over the weekend, raising new alarms about the terrorist insurgency that developed there in response to the military takeover last summer.
The attack — described by witnesses, documented in a video released by the militants, and confirmed by three people briefed on the Egyptian government’s investigation — validated longstanding fears that such weapons would spill into Egypt and beyond after the Libyan civil war tore open Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s fearsome arsenals.
Known as manpads, for man-portable air defense systems, the missiles can bring down commercial airliners if they are flying at low altitude, as during takeoff and landing. They also strengthen Sinai-based militants’ hand against the Egyptian Army, and there is concern that the militants might seek to use the missiles on the Egyptian mainland, where terrorist attacks have become more frequent. On Saturday, four bombings killed six people in greater Cairo.  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/27/world/middleeast/militants-down-egyptian-helicopter-killing-5-soldiers.html

Veterans dying because of health care delays  – U.S. veterans are dying because of delays in diagnosis and treatment at VA hospitals.
At least 19 veterans have died because of delays in simple medical screenings like colonoscopies or endoscopies, at various VA hospitals or clinics, CNN has learned.
That’s according to an internal document from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, obtained exclusively by CNN, that deals with patients diagnosed with cancer in 2010 and 2011. The veterans were part of 82 vets who have died or are dying or have suffered serious injuries as a result of delayed diagnosis or treatment for colonoscopies or endoscopies.  http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/30/health/veterans-dying-health-care-delays/

Why does the US keep losing wars? Maybe it is toxic leadership?  There are miserable bosses, and then there are toxic military commanders.
Air Force Maj. Gen. Stephen D. Schmidt was unquestionably among the latter in the view of some staff members under his thumb. A profane screamer, he ran through six executive officers and aide-de-camps in a year. He retired this month after an Air Force inquiry concluded that he was “cruel and oppressive” and mistreated subordinates.  …“It’s very important that you have somebody who can lead you into a firefight who is not going to get you killed,” said Air Force Maj. Gen. Michael S. Stough, a senior official on the Joint Staff www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/pentagon-investigations-point-to-military-system-that-promotes-abusive-leaders/2014/01/28/3e1be1f0-8799-11e3-916e-e01534b1e132_story.html?hpid=z5

(These) “serious people who govern us know of no solutions to the paradoxes of the Middle East and Europe, the Far East and Africa except the landing of Marines. Being baffled, and also being very tired of being baffled, they have come to believe that there is no way out–except war–which would remove all the bewildering paradoxes of their tedious and now misguided attempts to construct peace. In place of these paradoxes they prefer the bright, clear problems of war–as they used to be. For they still believe that ‘winning’ means something, although they never tell us what.”
–C. Wright Mills (sociologist), The Causes of World War Three, 1958

News From the Syrian Side  USA are funding terrorists on mis-information and the lies spread by Al Jazeera. With all the intelligence the USA are said to have, they are now intent on starting a World War over fake stories they see on their television. What is the world coming to, when the world’s power brokers are basing life and death decision on a video that has been posted on YouTube, without even checking the validity of the film.
They then try to say that Al Jazeera new is true yet the Syrian television news is lies. Even though the Al Jazeera news is based on YouTube films and the Syrian news is filming live. Every news story on Al Jazeera and the BBC starts with “this film cannot be verified” when it comes to the numbers of deaths, they always say “up to” before the figure. They can say as many as they want, when they put the words up to before. On days when 5 people have been killed and these are Syrian soldiers. Al Jazeera would say that government troops have killed “up to 100″ people. It is a lie but because it has “up to” in front of it, they can say it. The damage is done, people watching the program only listen to the number and of course after the statement they would say this cannot be verified as we are not allowed in the country.
Once they have shown the fake Youtube film they will then go to a reporter, “live” for the inside story. Only the reporter is not in Syria at all; they are in either Lebanon, Turkey even Israel.  http://friendsofsyria.co/enemies-of-syria/usa-admit-to-funding-terrorists/

US $ Fosters Afghan Barbarism A $200 million program financed by the United States to bolster literacy rates among security forces has been plagued by weak oversight and accountability, according to a report by federal inspectors. The report, published Tuesday, suggests that half of Afghan police officers and soldiers still might not be able to read or write. The NATO-led coalition had set a goal of having 100 percent of Afghan military and police forces reach the equivalent of first-grade-level literacy, and for at least half to reach third-grade level, by the end of 2014. The Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction said some command officials estimated that half of the security forces were illiterate as of February 2013 and believed that the literacy targets might be “unrealistic” or “unattainable.” The report also challenged NATO’s assertion that the program has been successful, saying the coalition’s ability to measure improved literacy rates is “limited.”  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/29/world/asia/afghanistan-literacy-effort-stalls.html

Officials: 92 Air Force officers assigned to nuclear arsenal involved in cheating scandal  The number of nuclear missile launch officers under investigation for allegations of cheating has ballooned to 92, the Air Force said Thursday.
The new total is nearly three times the initial 34 officers who were implicated in the scandal and nearly one-fifth of the force. The officers have been taken off their missile wing duties during the investigation into the cheating, which happened during a key proficiency exam, Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James said at a Pentagon news briefing.   usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2014/01/30/22508088-92-nuclear-missile-officers-implicated-in-cheating-scandal-air-force-says?lite

China Making Air Force, Navy Upgrades  China’s air force is fielding new precision-guided cruise missiles, long-range bombers and drones as its Navy expands its long-range punch, according to U.S. military intelligence officials.
“While we would not characterize the modernization as accelerated,” it’s “progressing at a steady pace” and is significant, Lee Fuell, a director at the Air Force’s National Air and Space Intelligence Center, said in a presentation released today.
Fuell’s presentation and one prepared by the Office of Naval Intelligence for a hearing of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission in Washington are the most detailed new public assessments of the Chinese air force’s and navy’s growing military capabilities.
China is improving its air and naval power to blunt U.S. military power in the Pacific, project force farther from Chinese shores, and even blockade or invade Taiwan, the island democracy whose territory it claims.
“Given the pace” of China’s naval modernization, “the gap in military capability between the mainland and Taiwan will continue to widen in China’s favor,”   www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-30/china-making-air-force-upgrades-u-s-official-says.html

Godfather of Camp Pendelton Pleads Guilty  Natividad “Nate” Lara Cervantes, who reportedly referred to himself as the “Godfather of Camp Pendleton,” pleaded guilty on January 21 to a kickback scheme in the awarding of construction and service contracts at the Marine base. lso pleading guilty for their parts in the scheme were Hugo Hernandez Alonso and Bayani Yabut Abueg Jr. and their companies, Hugo Alonso, Inc., and MBR Associates, respectively.
The federal court accepted guilty pleas to bribery charges from Cervantes involving the awarding of at least six government construction and service contracts from 2008 to 2011.
According to court records, Cervantes received cash payments from Alonso and Abueg and remodeling work on “the Godfather’s” condominium. Cervantes admitted to accepting a bribe of $25,000 to assist Alonso in getting a $3.5-million flooring job at Pendleton.  www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2014/jan/24/ticker-guilty-pleas-widening-defense-bribery-cases/

Top Brass Cleans Up in Retirement While Grunt Pay is Cut  A Pentagon commission on military compensation will review a 2007 increase in pensions for three- and four-star officers that made the retirement pay of some officers higher than what they made on active duty, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told a Senate panel Tuesday.
Navy Adm. James Winnefeld said the commission will examine the change as it examines all compensation issues.
The pension change, largely unremarked on at the time, was first reported on by USA Today in 2012 and again this year in light of the cost-of-living cuts.  http://mobile.armytimes.com/article/20140129/NEWS05/301290016

Convicted War Criminal Sgt Wants a New Lawyer (why are no generals charged?)  A U.S. Marine whose war crimes conviction was overturned on appeal wants a defense attorney from outside the U.S. Marine Corps.
Sgt. Lawrence Hutchins III was scheduled to be re-arraigned Wednesday on charges he led an eight-man squad accused of kidnapping and killing a retired Iraqi policeman from his home in April 2006.
That scheduled re-arraignment was delayed after Hutchins raised an issue of a conflict with his appointed Marine defense attorney. Hutchins claims Marine Corps defense attorneys are all tainted because they work for the USMC command which has “unduly influenced” the case against him.
He will be back in court in two weeks for another hearing on this conflict issue.
Hutchins and his squad were accused of marching the man into a ditch and fatally shooting him in Hamdania, and then staging the body to look like the man had been planting bombs.
After a previous court martial, Hutchins was sentenced to 11 years in prison.
He was freed from the Miramar Brig in July after Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces ruled that his constitutional rights had been violated at the time of his arrest.
At the time, he told NBC 7, “I am afraid that any future retrial will be tainted with the unlawful command influence that was a result of Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus’ comments back in 2009.”
Source: www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/Lawrence-Hutchins-Marine-Camp-Pendleton-Oceanside-War-Crimes-Trial-242602661.html#ixzz2s70NKtDP

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

“I passed by his garden, and marked, with one eye,
How the Owl and the Panter were sharing a pie:
The Panther took pie-crust, and gravy, and meat,
While the Old had the dish as its share of the treat.
When the pie was all finished, the Owl, as a boon,
Was kindly permitted to pocket the spoon:
While the Panther received knife and fork with a growl,
And concluded the banquet by [eating the owl.]
Lewis Carroll

Capital’s Bulldog, Krugman, worries about inequality  40 hedge fund guys made as much as 300,000, that’s three hundred thousand, school teachers — almost a third of all high school teachers in America.
OK, teachers get benefits, so their total compensation cost is higher than their wage, so maybe it’s only 200,000.
But you should keep numbers like these in mind whenever anyone tries to shift attention from the one percent (and the .001 percent) to Americans who aren’t even upper-middle class.  http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/

Rolling Stone –27 Shocking Numbers That Reveal the True State of the Union
1. New income generated since 2009 that has gone to the top 1 percent: 95 percent
2. Financial wealth controlled by the bottom 60 percent of all Americans: 2.3 percent
3. Record combined wealth of the top 400 richest Americans: $2,000,000,000,000
4. Real decline in median middle-class incomes since 1999: $5,000
5. Percentage of Hispanic and African-American children living in poverty, respectively: 33.8 percent; 36.7 percent
6. Amount that food stamps will be cut in 2014: $5 billion
7. Federal minimum wage: $7.25
8. What the minimum wage would be if it had kept pace with gains in worker productivity since 1968: $21.72
9. Number of U.S. workers laboring at or below minimum wage: 3.6 million – the near equivalent of the population of Los Angeles.
10.Stealth taxpayer subsidy to the fast-food industry, paid out as safety-net benefits to McWorkers earning poverty wages: $7 billion  Read more: www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/27-shocking-numbers-that-reveal-the-true-state-of-the-union-20140128#ixzz2rrICP6ai
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above, Rouger Bill Boyer in Detroit School

Barbarized By Capital and Racism, Detroit is the Deadliest City for kids (would you rather raise a child in Detroit or Havana?)  Children are dying in Detroit at a greater rate than in any U.S. city its size or larger, a Detroit News study shows.
Mostly, they die of conditions resulting from prematurity — the top killer of Detroit kids — and violence, which ranks second.
“This is a public health emergency in the city of Detroit,” said Dr. Herman Gray, executive vice president of pediatric health services for the Detroit Medical Center and former president of DMC Children’s Hospital of Michigan. “We are losing our future in really socially unacceptable ways.”
All told, Detroit kids through age 18 died at a rate of 120 per 100,000 children in 2010, the most recent year for which complete data is available. Detroit was the only city whose death rate among children topped 100 per 100,000; Philadelphia, at 95.7, was a distant second.  From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20140130/LIFESTYLE03/301300007#ixzz2rvnirNTp

Why are we not rioting yet?   House passes $100-billion-a-year farm bill that cuts food stamps but preserves crop subsidies      After more than two years of partisan squabbles over food and farm policy, the House passed and sent to the Senate Wednesday an almost $100 billion-a-year, compromise farm bill containing a small cut in food stamps and preserving most crop subsidies.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said shortly after the vote that President Barack Obama would sign the bill if it reaches his desk.  Read more: www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/house-passes-100-billion-a-year-farm-bill-cuts-food-stamps-preserves-crop-subsidies-article-1.1595313#ixzz2rvsU7eTE 

US Fed Moves Roil International Markets   India central bank Governor Raghuram Rajan warned of a breakdown in global policy coordination after the Federal Reserve further cut stimulus, weakening emerging-market currencies from the rupee to the Turkish lira.
Rajan, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, called for greater cooperation among policy makers weeks before finance chiefs from the world’s top developed and emerging markets gather in Sydney. The Fed’s Jan. 29 statement made no mention of developing economies.
“International monetary cooperation has broken down,” Rajan, 50, said yesterday in an interview in Mumbai with Bloomberg TV India, noting how emerging markets helped pull the global economy out of crisis starting in late 2008. “Industrial countries have to play a part in restoring that, and they can’t at this point wash their hands off and say we’ll do what we need to and you do the adjustment.”
Rajan raised interest rates this week along with central bankers from Turkey to South Africa as the Fed pressed on with a reduction in monthly bond purchases put in place to speed a recovery from the worst recession since the Great Depression. Emerging-market stocks have had the worst start to a year since 2008 as currencies from Argentina to Russia tumbled.  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-30/rajan-warns-of-global-policy-breakdown-as-emerging-markets-slide.html

The Bogus New Industrial Revolution  Breathless headlines in recent months about a “new industrial revolution” and “the promise of a ‘Made in America’ era” suggest it’s a renaissance. This week, when President Obama gives his State of the Union address, he will most likely yet again stress his plans to strengthen our manufacturing base.
But we need to get real about the so-called renaissance, which has in reality been a trickle of jobs, often dependent on huge public subsidies. Most important, in order to compete with China and other low-wage countries, these new jobs offer less in health care, pension and benefits than industrial workers historically received.  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/26/opinion/sunday/rattner-the-myth-of-industrial-rebound.html?hp&rref=opinion

The NYTimes United States of Subsidies (clickable research tool by state) Michigan spends at least $6.65 billion per year on incentive programs, according to the most recent data available. That is roughly:  672 dollars, per-capita, and 1/3 of the state budget  http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/12/01/us/government-incentives.html#MI

Sub Zero in Michigan? They’ll shut off your utilities anway…Nathan Blair was at home with his pregnant wife and 10-month-old daughter earlier this month when someone knocked on his door.
A few minutes later, a utility worker cut the electricity to Blair’s Lincoln Park home because of an overdue DTE Energy bill, even as the temperatures that day dipped to 4 below. Blair, whose 7-year-old daughter was at school that morning, knew about the bill, but he did not expect his power — and his heat — to be cut during the same week the polar vortex gripped Michigan.  … In fact, gas and electric service for more than 25,000 DTE and Consumers Energy accounts was disconnected for nonpayment in January 2013, and through September, the latest figures available, the number of DTE accounts alone that were cut for nonpayment — 169,407 — was higher than for the entire previous year, according to the Michigan Public Service Commission.  http://www.freep.com/article/20140127/NEWS06/301270015/

Companies Fleeing Taxes Pay CEOs Extra as Law Backfires   Ten years ago, Congress passed a law intended to penalize chief executive officers whose companies shift their legal addresses to tax havens.
It hasn’t worked out as planned. Companies have found ways around the law that create new rewards for executives. When Actavis Inc. (ACT) changed its incorporation to Ireland in October, the New Jersey-based drugmaker helped CEO Paul Bisaro avoid the law’s bite by handing him more than $40 million of stock as much as three years ahead of its schedule, then promising him an additional $5 million to remain with the company.
The payouts to executives highlight the ineffectiveness of the 2004 law, which contained a series of provisions aimed at reducing the tax benefits of reincorporating overseas. In the past two years, a fresh wave of companies has fled the U.S. system to avoid hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes.
The 2004 law has “clearly been a failure” in halting the tax exodus, said Edward Kleinbard, a professor at University of Southern California’s Gould School of Law. “And it now has the perverse result of putting money into executives’ pockets sooner.”  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-27/companies-fleeing-taxes-pay-ceos-extra-as-law-backfires.html

Detroit: Subsidies for the Corporate/Attacks on Pensions  The city has provided significant tax subsidies to a large number of enterprises as incentives to engage in development projects in downtown Detroit. In some years, the city handed out as much as $20 million to private interests. To the extent that the development would have occurred without these tax subsidies, or with less subsidies, the program was a burden on city revenues at a time when it was particularly damaging. In any event, the subsidies that have not yet been received should be treated as obligations of the city, in the same category as debt service and funding of future employee benefits, subject to readjustment to help resolve the cash flow crisis to the extent revenue is not increased to cover the demands on cash.   www.demos.org/publication/detroit-bankruptcy

US Department of Labor: Books that Shaped work  http://www.dol.gov/100/books-shaped-work/title.htm

And you can suggest some faves too www.dol.gov/100/books-shaped-work/form.htm

Obamagogue–ette’s Guest at State of the Union: Government Motors Boss New General Motors CEO Mary Barra plans to attend President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address as a guest of first lady Michelle Obama — a month after the company shed its government ownership and two weeks after Barra became the first female CEO of a major automaker.
Barra’s attendance marks a reversal of GM’s strategy of avoiding the political spotlight while the automaker was still fending off the derisive “Government Motors” moniker in recent years.  …While it’s not clear whether Obama will mention Barra or GM during the speech, the president has consistently trumpeted the government’s $49.5-billion bailout of GM as a success.
Barra — who gave Vice President Joe Biden a tour of GM’s exhibit at the Detroit auto show earlier this month — will sit in Michelle Obama’s box in the U.S. House balcony along with Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett and Dr. Jill Biden, wife of the vice president and at least 15 other invited guests  http://www.freep.com/article/20140128/BUSINESS01/301280027/Mary-Barra-State-of-the-Union

Tie me up! Beat me! Make me pay my Maid a fair wage!!!! A few years ago, the Indian filmmaker Nishtha Jain set up a camera in her apartment. She wanted to tell a story about a relationship between unequals.
Lakshmi, her 21-year-old housemaid, crawls across the floor with a rag, polishing the marble, while Ms. Jain, reading at a table, lifts up her feet and sets them down without a glance. Lakshmi prepares two cups of tea and gives one to Ms. Jain, who is seated in a chair, then, though a second chair is empty, sits on the floor to drink her own. Asked to join Ms. Jain and her friends at a lunch table, Lakshmi dissolves into helpless giggles. “See, they are sitting together like white people,” she tells her sister later. “And I am one black person amongst them.”  …“We really look like jerks,” Ms. Jain said. “This film was a damn bold and really tiring thing to do, because we look like creeps, and this is what we are. We cannot wash our hands of this. We are accepting a certain inequity.”  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/29/world/asia/a-maids-pay-and-choices-of-morality.html?hp

Taibbi: Obamagogue Still Hugging Fave Bankster Jamie Dimon  When the board of JP Morgan Chase gave its blowdried, tirelessly self-regarding CEO a whopping 74 percent raise – after a year in which the Justice Department blasted the bank with $20 billion in sanctions – it was one of those rare instances where Main Street and Wall Street were mostly in agreement.
Everyone from the Financial Times to Forbes.com to the Huffington Post decried the move. The Wall Street pundits mostly thought it was a dumb play by the Chase board from a self-interest perspective, one guaranteed to inspire further investigations by the government. Meanwhile, the non-financial press generally denounced the raise as a moral obscenity, yet another example of the serial coddling of Wall Street’s habitually overcompensated executive class.
Both groups were right. But to me the biggest news was how brutal an indictment Jamie’s raise was of the Obama/Holder Justice Department, which continues to profoundly misunderstand the mindset of the finance villains they claim to be regulating. read more: www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/jamie-dimons-raise-proves-u-s-regulatory-strategy-is-a-joke-20140130#ixzz2rvmSAW3E
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What Obamagogue forgot in the State of the Union  You didn’t hear about expanding Social Security, a sensible plan supported by Sen. Elizabeth Warren and others. You didn’t hear about getting to full employment (but you did hear some conservative rhetoric about how unemployment is really about workers not having the right skills, which has been repeatedly debunked). You didn’t hear about bringing justice to criminal bankers who prey on hard-working Americas. You didn’t hear about asking the rich to pay their fair share in taxes, or putting a financial transaction tax on Wall Street, or backing off the grotesque Trans-Pacific Partnership, or ending too-big-to-fail, or taking real action to get the money out of politics.
Instead of tapping into the full power of the federal government to tackle our most urgent problems, Obama meekly suggested that government might, in certain cases, be obligated to do something. A little something. At some point.   ….Meanwhile, half the entire population is living at or near the poverty line, while the rich have never had it so good in America. But no biggie.
Obama’s theme tonight was America as the Land of Opportunity. “Opportunity is who we are. And the defining project of our generation is to restore that promise.”
OK, maybe not big opportunity. How about small opportunity? For some folks. Um, not really. Well, what did you want, a pony?   www.alternet.org/economy/state-union-america-land-small-opportunity?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

PIGS, BRICS, and now the Fragile Five (fizzle, fizzle)  The new name, as coined by a little known research analyst at Morgan Stanley last summer, identifies Turkey, Brazil, India, South Africa and Indonesia as economies that have become too dependent on skittish foreign investment to finance their growth ambitions.
The term has caught on in large degree because it highlights the strains that occur when countries place too much emphasis on stoking fast rates of economic growth. The new catchphrase also raises pressing questions about not just the BRICs but about emerging markets in general.  http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2014-01-30/news/46829513_1_brics-foreign-investors-turkey

The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement 

Meet the New Boss of NSA (still watching you)   In nominating Vice Adm. Michael S. Rogers as the new director of the National Security Agency on Thursday, President Obama chose a recognized expert in the new art of designing cyberweapons, but someone with no public track record in addressing the kinds of privacy concerns that have put the agency under a harsh spotlight.
Mr. Obama’s decision to pick a military officer, rather than a civilian versed in civil liberties issues, was made weeks ago, when he rejected his own advisory panel’s recommendation that the N.S.A. and the United States Cyber Command have separate leaders. By law the command, the Pentagon’s four-year-old cyberwarfare organization, must be headed by a military officer.
The result is that Admiral Rogers, now the head of Fleet Cyber Command, the Navy’s fast-growing cyberunit, will find himself in the public cross hairs in a way he has never been during a 33-year military career. Starting with his confirmation hearings, expected to begin as soon as next month, the admiral will be pressed on how he would carry out a series of changes that Mr. Obama announced two weeks ago.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJvfdV5G3GI

Solidarity for Never

Sold out Steelworkers Stabbed by Supremes  The U.S. Supreme Court handed a victory to employers on Monday by ruling that a group of unionized steel workers does not have to be paid for the time they spend “donning and doffing” safety gear before and after their shifts.
The unanimous ruling came in a case involving workers at a U.S. Steel Corp plant that was closely watched by industries that employ workers who wear safety clothing.
The decision will make it harder for unionized workers to seek pay for time spent changing clothes before and after work if it is not specifically addressed during labor negotiations. Such claims have been the subject of widespread litigation nationwide.
Federal labor law excludes “changing clothes” from the time for which unionized employees must be paid, unless they have negotiated otherwise. The Supreme Court clarified on Monday that safety gear generally fits within that definition, resolving a question that had split lower courts.
“A good bit of the uncertainty was cleared away,” said Lawrence DiNardo, an attorney for U.S. Steel.
The workers’ lawyer, Eric Schnapper, said there will now be litigation over how the ruling applies in other cases involving different types of equipment, particularly those arising in the meatpacking and poultry-processing industries.   www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/27/usa-court-labor-idUSL2N0L10RM20140127

Obamagogue Double Crosses Union Bosses (but mainly the ranks)  Labor leaders who have spent months lobbying unsuccessfully for special protections under the Affordable Care Act warned this week that the White House’s continued refusal to help is dampening union support for Democratic candidates in this year’s midterm elections.
Leaders of two major unions, including the first to endorse Obama in 2008, said they have been betrayed by an administration that wooed their support for the 2009 legislation with promises to later address the peculiar needs of union-negotiated insurance plans that cover millions of workers.  Their complaints reflect a broad sense of disappointment among many labor leaders, who say the Affordable Care Act has subjected union health plans to new taxes and mandates while not allowing them to share in the subsidies that have gone to private insurance companies competing on the newly created exchanges.
After dozens of frustrating meetings with White House officials over the past year, including one with Obama, a number of angry labor officials say their members are far less likely to campaign and turn out for Democratic candidates in the midterm elections.
“We want to hold the president to his word: If you like your health-care coverage, you can keep it, and that just hasn’t been the case,” said Donald “D.” Taylor, president of Unite Here, the union that represents about 400,000 hotel and restaurant workers and provided a crucial boost to Obama by endorsing him just after his rival Hillary Rodham Clinton had won the New Hampshire primary.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/labor-union-officials-say-obama-betrayed-them-in-health-care-rollout/2014/01/31/2cda6afc-8789-11e3-833c-33098f9e5267_story.html?hpid=z1

It’s easy to be for Empire, Yet Against the Common Core (new methods, old lies)  The state’s largest and most powerful teacher’s union on Saturday issued a declaration of “no confidence” in state Education Commissioner John King, a symbolic but unprecedented gesture calling for King’s removal from his post by the state Board of Regents.
New York State United Teachers’ 80-member board of directors unanimously approved the resolution Saturday during the board’s regular meeting.
The resolution states that the board declares “no confidence in the policies of the Commissioner of Education.” Earlier this month, NYSUT president Richard Iannuzzi announced that he would seek the action in an interview on Time Warner’s “Capital Tonight” program.
NYSUT’s board also withdrew its support for the state’s new Common Core learning standards “as implemented and interpreted in New York” until the State Education Department “makes major course corrections” and “supports a three-year moratorium on high-stakes consequences from standardized testing.” blog.timesunion.com/schools/2484/2484/

Spy versus Spy

Yes, Virginia, the US Does Do Industrial Espionage: Snowden  There is “no doubt” the U.S. engages in industrial espionage, Edward Snowden said in an interview in which he also asserted that he worked alone in disclosing mass surveillance by the National Security Agency.The former U.S. government contractor, now a fugitive in Russia, told a German television station that if a company such as Germany’s Siemens AG were found to have information useful to the U.S. government, the NSA would use it, he said.Snowden dismissed accusations from members of Congress that he acted as a foreign agent. www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-27/snowden-says-no-doubt-nsa-engages-in-industrial-spying.html

Spy Agencies Scour Phone Apps for Personal Data  When a smartphone user opens Angry Birds, the popular game application, and starts slinging birds at chortling green pigs, spies may be lurking in the background to snatch data revealing the player’s location, age, sex and other personal information, according to secret British intelligence documents.
In their globe-spanning surveillance for terrorism suspects and other targets, the National Security Agency and its British counterpart have been trying to exploit a basic byproduct of modern telecommunications: With each new generation of mobile phone technology, ever greater amounts of personal data pour onto networks where spies can pick it up.
According to dozens of previously undisclosed classified documents, among the most valuable of those unintended intelligence tools are so-called leaky apps that spew everything from users’ smartphone identification codes to where they have been that day.  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/28/world/spy-agencies-scour-phone-apps-for-personal-data.html?hp

The Magical Mystery Tour

Soldiers of Superstition Split a Nation (likely to work out as well as Afghanistan) The Philippine government and the country’s largest Muslim insurgency group negotiated the final details of a peace accord on Saturday that many hope will end more than 40 years of violence that has killed tens of thousands of people and helped nurture Islamic extremism in Southeast Asia.
The agreement will create an autonomous Muslim-dominated region in the restive south of the predominantly Christian country, handing much of the responsibility for security there to local authorities as well as a large share of revenues from the region’s wealth of natural resources. The militants have agreed to disarm, with many expected to join Philippine security forces.   Although many challenges to sustained peace remain — notably that some militant groups have refused to join the agreement — the deal with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front is considered a signature achievement for President Benigno S. Aquino III. Mr. Aquino has vowed to end the conflicts on the island of Mindanao that have bedeviled the Philippines for more than a century and that would eventually hinder the nation’s ability to expand its economy and catch up with more prosperous neighbors.
“The agreement represents the culmination of decades of excruciating diplomatic efforts aimed at ending the conflict in Mindanao,” said Richard Javad Heydarian, a political science lecturer at Ateneo de Manila University. “This provides an unprecedented opportunity to end one of the world’s longest-running intrastate conflicts.”
The groups left out of the agreement are the most violent in the southern Philippines, including the Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf, which has carried out kidnappings, bombings and beheadings for more than a decade and says it wants to set up a strict Islamic state.           http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/26/world/asia/philippines-and-rebels-agree-on-peace-accord-to-end-insurgency.html?hp&_r=0

Rougers Doomed:  

Birds attack peace doves freed from pope’s window     Two white doves that were released by children standing alongside Pope Francis as a peace gesture have been attacked by other birds. As tens of thousands of people watched in St. Peter’s Square on Sunday, a seagull and a large black crow swept down on the doves right after they were set free from an open window of the Apostolic Palace. One dove lost some feathers as it broke free from the gull. But the crow pecked repeatedly at the other dove. It was not clear what happened to the doves as they flew off. While speaking at the window beforehand, Francis had appealed for peace in Ukraine, where anti-government protesters have died. From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20140126/RELIGION/301260030#ixzz2rYw5wgW3

Ireland’s Abusing Priests Cost the Religious State  The European Court of Human Rights ruled on Tuesday that a 49-year-old Irish woman was entitled to compensation for the government’s failure to protect her from sexual abuse as a child when she attended a publicly financed Roman Catholic primary school in the 1970s.
The ruling overturned a series of legal decisions by Irish courts over the past decade, which all found that the state could not be held responsible for inhuman and degrading treatment suffered by children in state-funded schools.
The Irish government had argued that despite its having underwritten the school, its liability did not extend to the school’s management or the actions of its personnel. But the court found that there was an “inherent obligation of a government to protect children from ill-treatment, especially in primary education when they are under the exclusive control of school authorities, by adopting special measures and safeguards.”
It noted further that Ireland “had to have been aware of the level of sexual crime against minors through its prosecution of such crimes at a significant rate prior to the 1970s.”
Legal commentators said the judgment not only opened the door for hundreds of similar cases in Ireland but could pave the way for actions in other European nations where the education systems rely on similar managerial structures.  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/29/world/europe/court-faults-ireland-in-abuse-case.html?hp&_r=1

How Crazy is Your Hometown?  The Most and Least Bible-Minded Cities in America  http://www.americanbible.org/features/americas-most-bible-minded-cities

 

The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World

Superbowl Schmooperbowl—Abolish the NFL   Last fall, the National Football League scored a huge victory in California, helping push through a new law barring most professional athletes from filing workers’ compensation claims in the state.
But that win has come at a cost.
Publicity from a high-profile battle over the legislation prompted players from around the country to file more than 1,000 injury claims just prior to a September deadline — a huge influx that could cost the nation’s top professional sports leagues hundreds of millions of dollars to resolve.  In the first two weeks of September, current and retired players filed 569 claims against NFL franchises, 283 claims against Major League Baseball clubs, 113 against National Hockey League teams and 79 against NBA squads, a Los Angeles Times analysis of state workers’ compensation data found.
Nearly 70% of the filings include allegations of head or brain injuries caused by repetitive trauma. Most of these athletes appeared to have never played for a California team; they filed claims based on repetitive injuries they say were sustained in part during road games played in the state. It is those claims that are now barred under the new California law.
Among the athletes rushing to beat the deadline were sports legends such as Miami Dolphins quarterback Dan Marino, Baltimore Orioles pitcher Jim Palmer and Houston Rockets center Hakeem Olajuwon, as well as many lesser-known retirees, some suffering serious physical impairment. A number of active players, including San Francisco 49ers standouts Michael Crabtree and Frank Gore, also filed claims.
www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-nfl-claims-20140201-dto,0,6484587.htmlstory#ixzz2s8NQld93

Bob Dylan to Hustle for Chrysler (of bailout and Buy American Fame)   Chrysler Group LLC has tapped legendary folk singer Bob Dylan to star in its main Super Bowl ad this year, according to a report in Billboard magazine.
“Dylan will star in a new commercial for Chrysler, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the campaign, as the latest in the automaker’s series of cinematic Super Bowl ads that have starred Eminem, Clint Eastwood and Berry Gordy in recent years,” the music industry magazine reported Wednesday. “An as-yet-unidentified track from Dylan’s catalog will provide the soundtrack for the commercial.”
From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20140129/AUTO0101/301290118#ixzz2rvnJQ7PW

The 1st Bookless Library the nation’s first bookless library so far appears to be a success.
BiblioTech, the nation’s first – and only – bookless public library recently opened in San Antonio.  Stocked with 20,000 e-books, 600 e-readers for adults and 200 for children, 48 computers, and 10 laptops and 40 tablets, the $2.3 million library has been compared countless times to an Apple Store with its rows of glossy devices.  http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2014/0128/America-s-first-bookless-public-library-appears-to-be-a-success-video

So Long

Unlike Carole Feraci and Earth Kitt, Pete Seeger sang for the demagogue Obama. news.yahoo.com/us-folk-singer-pete-seeger-dead-94-080222388.html   comcast.rayconniff.info/media/nixon.html