Rouge Forum Dispatch: Empire’s Sock Puppet Show is On!
June 30th, 2019 / Author: rgibsonWe Say Fight Back!
Brevard School Board splits 4-1 in favor of district plan for teacher pay; union vows ‘war’
In a tense meeting marked by public jeers and catcalls, the Brevard School Board snubbed a significant teacher pay raise plan recommended by a state-appointed mediator, and instead backed by a 4-1 vote a smaller salary hike proposed by Superintendent Mark Mullins.
The board struggled to maintain order in the district office where a crowd of at least 900 teachers dressed in red, parents and students packed the room in support of the special magistrate’s plan.
“This was a total disgrace that this school [board] chose to vote over the interests of the students as identified by the special magistrate and went with the district’s flawed numbers,” Brevard Federation of Teachers president Anthony Colucci said after the vote.
Mullins’ proposal includes raises of $1,100 and $825 for “highly effective” and “effective” teachers respectively, with a $650 one-time bonus, plus a $500 bonuses for all first-year returning teachers. The union had wanted recurring raises of $2,300 and $1,724 respectively – an approach endorsed by the magistrate last month, following nearly six months of impasse. amp.floridatoday.com/amp/1550316001?fbclid=IwAR3p9MTqtco5KFREGB-UJKuASlmgNL1SFF18qyqgH0D-12CrcEAIDAhtniY
www.facebook.com/BrevardFederationofTeachers/videos/469202630545931/?t=42
‘We’ll keep marching’: Brevard students demand School Board vote to raise teacher pay
Equipped with bullhorns and picket signs, 13-year-old Hayden Mucha and 12-year-old Addisyn Thurn led more than 100 red-clad students, parents, grandparents and teachers Friday morning in a demonstration of support for higher teacher pay.
The crowd departed near The Avenue Viera shopping complex at 9.a.m and marched down Lake Andrews Drive to the Brevard County School Board building to demand they vote in favor of a plan to raise teacher pay.
That plan, endorsed by an impartial special magistrate in May, was rejected by school district superintendent Mark Mullins last week, which prompted Mucha and Thurn to organize the demonstration by posting on social media and through word-of-mouth.
“I feel that it went really well, we had an awesome turnout,” Mucha said.
The pair expected just 50 people to show up, but by their estimation the crowd numbered at least 100, if not several hundred. www.floridatoday.com/story/news/2019/06/14/brevard-students-lead-march-teacher-pay/1456444001/?fbclid=IwAR0TfQu4lVJiHKirBlz5mCzPSK_giEWwlLEzuUdEoOlCX3WYBOKnYQMSoVU
Huck
From Commune to Capitalism: How China’s Peasants Lost Collective Farming and Gained Urban Poverty
$20.00 – $95.00
In the early 1980s, China undertook a massive reform that dismantled its socialist rural collectives and divided the land among millions of small peasant families. Known as the decollectivization campaign, it is one of the most significant reforms in China’s transition to a market economy. From the beginning, the official Chinese accounts, and many academic writings, uncritically portray this campaign as a huge success, both for the peasants and the economy as a whole. This mainstream history argues that the rural communes, suffering from inefficiency, greatly improved agricultural productivity under the decollectivization reform. It also describes how the peasants, due to their dissatisfaction with the rural regime, spontaneously organized and collectively dismantled the collective system. monthlyreview.org/product/from-commune-to-capitalism-how-chinas-peasants-lost-collective-farming-and-gained-urban-poverty/?fbclid=IwAR2rXWk5u9QcP_haB70fQn22gC4NFMiMtFXqZ
Wayfair’s Wayward Walkout-WSJ Critique
One depressing sign of our times is the politicization of every corner of American life, and the latest outrage overkill involves, well, furniture sales. A classic example of progressives losing the plot is this week’s walkout at Wayfair.
The trouble started when some 500 employees at the popular online furniture retailer complained in a letter that Wayfair had been selling beds and mattresses to a group that runs detention centers at the border. “We believe that the current actions of the United States and their contractors at the Southern border do not represent an ethical business partnership Wayfair should choose to be part of,” the letter said. Employees staged a walkout on Wednesday and protested in Boston. www.wsj.com/articles/wayfairs-wayward-walkout-11561676480
California Grocery Workers just Authorized a Strike. Here is how they got sold out last time.
The California Grocery Strike
by Rich Gibson, May, 2004
“The greatest productive force is the understanding, wisdom, of the revolutionary class itself.” (Marx)
- The southern California grocery strike involving 70,000 United Food And Commercial Workers members from October 2003 to March 2004 was one of the most significant actions the U.S. labor movement took in the last twenty years.
- What happened? The workers lost, betrayed by their union leaders. This defeat was devastating, setting up a spiral of attacks on the lives of people who must work to live, particularly on the minimal health benefits that a few working people still have. The old labor saw, AAn injury to one just goes before an injury to all,@ is already felt in teacher-union contract negotiations.
- Could this have been won? Yes, it could, but not within the confines of the law, and not in the confines of the structures of the unions, not within the philosophy of the “labor movement@ (i.e., the AFL-CIO with the independent National Education Association tossed in for good measure), not without preparationCand most importantly, not without organization and wise action.
- What were the issues? The 70,000 plus grocery workers in Southern California, most but not all of them check-out clerks, struck to protect their wages, health benefits, pension funds, the hours and nature of the hours at work, and their union itself. Grocery clerks are not known as impatient militants. The workers fought because they had to fight. Cornered, they engaged in a battle that few of them fully understood. The sole thing that was retained after the end of a five month strike was the right of their United Food and Commercial Workers Union directors to collect dues from the members.
- The grocery owners, Vons, Ralphs, and Albertsons, claimed they had to have massive concessions from the union in order to stave off competition from Walmart, now invading their turf. The grocery bosses rightly said that Walmart=s edge was not only in its ability to buy in bulk, but its cheap labor costs. Walmart, the largest corporation in the world, pays health benefits to less than 2 of its work force, and often pays only the minimum wage to part-timers. In addition, Walmart sometimes just does not pay at all, having been sued repeatedly by employees who were unpaid for work done.
- On the other side, grocery workers were trapped. Because their circumstances demanded it, grocery clerks led the biggest fight-back of the working class in the U.S. in two decades.
The Little Red Schoolhouse
California college demands student newspaper hand over video of public meeting
Intrepid student reporters regularly use open records laws to request information from public colleges. But in a bizarre reversal, Southwestern College in California is trying to use the law to demand its student newspaper turn over videos taken at a student government meeting. Today, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education wrote to the college’s administration to combat this affront to student press freedom.
“This is man-bites-dog stuff — usually it’s the student newspaper that FOIAs the college, not the other way around,” said Adam Steinbaugh, author of FIRE’s letter. “This alarming move should concern anyone who supports a free press, student or otherwise.”
Gloria Chavez, Southwestern College’s Title IX director, contacted the temporary faculty adviser to The Southwestern College Sun on May 23 requesting any “[v]ideo footage, including audio, taken during” a May 2 student government meeting. The adviser responded that The Sun would not produce the requested records, if they existed at all, because they were protected by California’s shield law.
Less than a week later, the administration hand-delivered a second letter to the permanent adviser, now back from medical leave, incorrectly alleging that the newspaper was a government actor and thus subject to the California Public Records Act. Further, the Title IX director claimed that not producing the records was “subversion of the public’s right to access” in violation of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics.
The story that disgraced UCD Chancellor Linda Katehi didn’t want you to read
An investigative piece focusing on the relationship between Beverly Hills agribusiness tycoons Stewart and Lynda Resnick and the UC system that I wrote in March definitely got UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi’s attention.
According to an investigation by the Sacramento Bee, I was one of the journalists being monitored by a private firm, hired by Katehi and funded by our tax dollars: www.sacbee.com/…
The documents released to the Bee “illustrate the efforts the university undertook to monitor its reputation nationwide, including analysis of Twitter accounts of journalists and lawmakers.”
“The online reputation management companies were paid at least $175,000 to bury and counterbalance negative online references about the university and Katehi following a November 2011 incident in which campus police pepper-sprayed students during a peaceful demonstration,” the Bee stated.
The firm was monitoring posts from Assemblyman Kevin McCarty, D-Sacramento, “who called on Katehi to resign and held an oversight hearing on outside compensation for university leaders.”
“Idmloco also was monitoring online posts from journalists such as Dan Bacher, editor of ‘Fish Sniffer’ magazine, and Deborah Anderluh, the Sacramento Bee’s investigations editor, who tweeted a link to a Bee story on the controversy,” the Bee said.
Here’s a link on the Sacramento Bee website to the “listening reports” by Idmloco. It it wasn’t so creepy, it would be funny: www.sacbee.com/…
My article is one of the articles and tweets featured in the March 7 “listening report” prepared by Idmloco.
The good news is that Katehi is now on administrative leave. The bad news is that Stewart and Lynda Resnick, along with Riley Bechtel and other corporate interests, continue to wield enormous influence over the UC system. www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/5/21/1529480/-The-story-that-disgraced-UCD-Chancellor-Linda-Katehi-didn-t-want-you-to-read?fbclid=IwAR3NuewAC4-ENsik9cQcucBFFiKjL-7lKQEbVhDAh_IgGljp5E01_VqZBi4
Above, Adela De La Torre, celebrating her sparsely attended “inauguration” as President of San Diego State. She was Kathei’s protege. She will over see a near billion dollar land deal as SDSU seeks to take over a huge complex at the former football Chargers stadium. Most of the negotiating is done in secret.
Four Wayne State board members sue the other four
In a move rarely seen in higher education, half of the Wayne State University governing board sued the other half Thursday as tensions heightened between the two factions.
“As part of a pattern of undemocratic, questionable and nontransparent behavior, actions were taken that could impact Wayne State University, our students, faculty, staff, alumni, and donors as well as our sister public institutions,” WSU Governors Sandra Hughes O’Brien, Michael Busuito, Anil Kumar and Dana Thompson said in a joint statement.
“Today, in our continuing efforts to protect WSU and our community, we’ve asked the courts to stop the implementation of the items purportedly approved at a meeting where there was no quorum of the elected, voting members of the governing board.”
But WSU Board Chair Kim Trent — who was among the board members named in a lawsuit filed in Ingham County Circuit Court that alleges violations of the state’s Open Meetings Act — said the move was, “very unfortunate.” www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/2019/06/27/four-wayne-state-board-members-sue-other-four/1588744001/
DeVos Repeals Obama-Era Rule Cracking Down on For-Profit Colleges
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Friday officially repealed an Obama-era regulation that sought to crack down on for-profit colleges and universities that produced graduates with no meaningful job prospects and mountains of student debt they could not hope to repay.
The so-called gainful employment rule was issued by the Obama administration in 2014, right before huge for-profit chains collapsed, leaving students stranded with debt and worthless degrees. Under the new standards, career and certificate programs, many of which operate in the for-profit sector, would have to prove their graduates could find gainful employment to maintain access to federal financial aid. It also would have required schools to disclose in advertisements a comparison of the student debt load of their graduates and their career earnings.
In her first two years in office, Ms. DeVos has delayed critical parts of the rule, and last year, she sought to repeal it entirely, siding with for-profit industry leaders and congressional conservatives who have contended that the Obama administration unfairly targeted for-profit schools. www.nytimes.com/2019/06/28/us/politics/betsy-devos-for-profit-colleges.html
Surfing executive bribed son’s way into USC for $250,000 in new admissions scandal charges, U.S. attorney says
A Southern California father has admitted to paying $250,000 to get his son into USC as a bogus volleyball player and will plead guilty to fraud conspiracy, his attorney and prosecutors say, as the list of wealthy and powerful parents charged in a federal investigation into college admissions fraud grew for the first time Friday since William “Rick” Singer’s decadelong scheme was uncovered in March.
Jeffrey Bizzack of Solana Beach will plead guilty to one count of fraud conspiracy, the U.S. attorney in Massachusetts said Friday. Prosecutors will recommend Bizzack, 59, be imprisoned for nine months, fined $75,000 and given one year of supervised release. www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-college-admissions-scandal-solana-parent-20190628-story.html
San Francisco Will Spend $600,000 to Erase History
The school board has voted to destroy public murals by a New Deal-era Communist.
More than $8,000. That was the amount John Ashcroft’s Justice Department spent on blue curtains to cover up the busty Spirit of Justice statue and her bare-chested male equivalent, the Majesty of Law, in the department’s Great Hall in 2002. The Victorian move against the Art Deco sculptures spurred a thousand lampoons. “A blue burqa for justice,” my colleague Maureen Dowd memorably called it. In The Harvard Crimson, a young Pete Buttigieg wrote, “It seems odd that an infant is supposed to feed on them, and a grown man is expected at some point to behold them, but for a period in between we feel the need to see to it that no child ever sees a breast.”
I wonder, then, what Mr. Buttigieg, now on the presidential campaign trail, would make of the San Francisco school board’s unanimous decision on Tuesday night to spend at least $600,000 of taxpayer money not just to shroud a historic work of art but to destroy it.
By now stories of progressive Puritanism (or perhaps the better word is Philistinism) are so commonplace — snowflakes seek safe space! — that it can feel tedious to track the details of the latest outrage. But this case is so absurd that it’s worth reviewing the specifics. www.nytimes.com/2019/06/28/opinion/sunday/san-francisco-life-of-washington-murals.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor
Senate fails to limit Trump war powers amid Iran tensions
Political unease over the White House’s tough talk against Iran is reviving questions about President Donald Trump’s ability to order military strikes without approval from Congress.
The Senate fell short Friday, in a 50-40 vote, on an amendment to a sweeping Defense bill that would require congressional support before Trump acts. It didn’t reach the 60-vote threshold needed for passage. But lawmakers said the majority showing sent a strong message that Trump cannot continue relying on the nearly two-decade-old war authorizations Congress approved in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The House is expected to take up the issue next month.
“A congressional vote is a pretty good signal of what our constituents are telling us — that another war in the Middle East would be a disaster right now, we don’t want the president to just do it on a whim,” said Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., a co-author of the measure with Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M.
“My gut tells me that the White House is realizing this is deeply unpopular with the American public.” www.militarytimes.com/news/2019/06/28/senate-fails-to-limit-trump-war-powers-amid-iran-tensions/
The Military’s Deadliest Helicopter (audio)
On a freezing January morning in 2014, a fire broke out in the cabin of a MH-53E Navy Sea Dragon helicopter on a training mission over the Atlantic. Seconds later it slammed into the ocean. Only two sailors survived.
This week, Reveal partners with Investigative Studios, the production arm of the Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism to find out what caused that crash, and why the 53 is the military’s deadliest aircraft. www.revealnews.org/episodes/the-militarys-deadliest-helicopter-2/
Hypersonic Missiles Are Unstoppable. And They’re Starting a New Global Arms Race.
The new weapons — which could travel at more than 15 times the speed of sound with terrifying accuracy — threaten to change the nature of warfare.
On March 6, 2018, the grand ballroom at the Sphinx Club in Washington was packed with aerospace-industry executives waiting to hear from Michael D. Griffin. Weeks earlier, Secretary of Defense James Mattis named the 69-year-old Maryland native the Pentagon’s under secretary for research and engineering, a job that comes with an annual budget of more than $17 billion. The dark-suited attendees at the McAleese/Credit Suisse Defense Programs Conference were eager to learn what type of work he would favor.
The audience was already familiar with Griffin, an unabashed defender of American military and political supremacy who has bragged about being labeled an “unreconstructed cold warrior.” With five master’s degrees and a doctorate in aerospace engineering, he was the chief technology officer for President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (popularly known as Star Wars), which was supposed to shield the United States against a potential Russian attack by ballistic missiles looping over the North Pole. Over the course of his career that followed, he wrote a book on space vehicle design, ran a technology incubator funded by the C.I.A., directed NASA for four years and was employed as a senior executive at a handful of aerospace firms.
Griffin was known as a scientific optimist who regularly called for “disruptive innovation” and who prized speed above all. He had repeatedly complained about the Pentagon’s sluggish bureaucracy, which he saw as mired in legacy thinking. “This is a country that produced an atom bomb under the stress of wartime in three years from the day we decided to do it,” he told a congressional panel last year. “This is a country that can do anything we need to do that physics allows. We just need to get on with it.” www.nytimes.com/2019/06/19/magazine/hypersonic-missiles.html?em_pos=medium&ref=headline&te=1&nl=tbd&emc=edit_war_20190627?campaign_id=88&instance_id=10495&segment_id=14740&user_id=866760226869c0fb182bc8a27d4ba8c1®i_id=86287712dit_war_20190627
The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor
Distrust pervades Flint over dropped criminal charges in advance of town hall
Jetty Walker wasn’t surprised two weeks ago when state prosecutors dropped criminal charges against eight defendants in the Flint water investigation.
Like many of the residents here in this proud but impoverished city, she had long ago come to believe no one would truly be held criminally accountable in the lead-contaminated water crisis scandal. The crisis also has been linked to a Legionnaires’ disease outbreak that killed 12 individuals in the region.
“I was pissed,” said Walker, 61, as her 85-year-old mother Georgia Walker cringed at her daughter’s answer. “Because they say one thing, they do another. They need to make these people be held accountable for their actions. I didn’t create this problem. They did.”
Many Flint residents said they are chagrined, saddened but not shocked by the bombshell decision by Attorney General Dana Nessel’s team in advance of a Friday town hall.
While prosecutors reserved the right to refile charges as they rebooted the investigation, they also dropped charges of involuntary manslaughter against four officials, including former state Health and Human Services Director Nick Lyon and former Chief Medical Executive Eden Wells. www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2019/06/28/distrust-pervades-flint-over-dropped-criminal-charges/1546553001/
So Who Is Reporting That Trump Sanctions Have Killed Thousands of Venezuelans?
I wrote on June 14 about Reuters burying (for over a month) a study (CEPR, 4/25/19) by prominent economists Jeffrey Sachs and Mark Weisbrot that links economic sanctions President Donald Trump imposed on Venezuela in August 2017 to an estimated 40,000 deaths by the end of 2018. As of January 2019, Trump made the sanctions even more severe.
The study is the clearest evidence of the devastating impact US policy is having on the people of Venezuela. Below is a list of English-language outlets that, according to the Nexis news database, mentioned the study as of June 17. They are overwhelmingly non-US outlets: fair.org/home/so-who-is-reporting-that-trump-sanctions-have-killed-thousands-of-venezuelans/?awt_l=BZB2u&awt_m=hZstaFjjTmOI_TQ
Moores and minions grab no-bid Aztec Stadium deal
Naming rights hawked by L.A.’s Legends
“On behalf of SDSU and in collaboration with SDSU Athletics, JMI Sports and Legends will manage the stadium project as part of the proposed campus expansion at SDSU Mission Valley.,” per a May 17 announcement posted online by the school.
The cost to state taxpayers of the arrangement was not disclosed.
“This is an exciting collaboration, and this joint venture will greatly enhance our capacity to create the types of experiences our students, faculty, staff, regional community and visitors have yet to see,” said SDSU President Adela de la Torre in a statement posted three days later on JMI’s website. www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2019/jun/04/ticker-moores-minions-grab-no-bid-aztec-stadium/
Opinion | Shiny new sports stadiums a loser for Michigan taxpayers
HBO’s Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel recently aired a segment that took a critical look at the unfulfilled promises of “District Detroit,” which is the area surrounding the new Little Caesars Arena. The Ilitch family, who owns the construction company that built the new arena, promised it would lead to the construction of five new neighborhoods, comprised of residential buildings and a hotel, in the 50 blocks surrounding it. As the HBO segment points out, none of this new development has taken place.
For someone who has studied these types of stadium deals for years, it is not surprising that these promises have been broken. The overwhelming consensus amongst economists is that subsidized sports stadiums and arenas provide no meaningful, long-lasting economic benefit. In a Feb. 6, 2017 article for the Mackinac Center, I called taxpayer-subsidized sports arenas just an “expensive psychological boost.”
And this boost is indeed expensive. Taxpayers paid $324 million out of the $863 million cost to construct Little Caesars Arena. www.bridgemi.com/guest-commentary/opinion-shiny-new-sports-stadiums-loser-michigan-taxpayers?fbclid=IwAR1EX6DG-CbkY1FqHv6oYQt16aLc7aKM_Gwe-p8K1bQnng9mg1M_2KmZDNE
White Powder, Red Faces: Cocaine Cargo Aboard Brazil Presidential Plane
President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil has vowed to pursue drug traffickers relentlessly. So he was hard-pressed to explain how a presidential plane ended up carrying 86 pounds of cocaine across the Atlantic during an official trip.
A Brazilian airman on that aircraft was caught with the shipment on Tuesday during a brief stop in Spain en route to the Group of 20 summit in Japan, Brazilian and Spanish officials said Wednesday.
The cocaine bust was bad enough. But it was an extraordinary embarrassment for Mr. Bolsonaro, who has exalted the integrity and professionalism of Brazil’s military.
The president called the incident “unacceptable” and said he had demanded “severe punishment” for the service member. “We won’t tolerate this type of disrespect to our nation!” he said in a message posted on Twitter. www.nytimes.com/2019/06/26/world/americas/bolsonaro-staff-cocaine-bust.html?fbclid=IwAR0C67lPHkKBAvjRdwJvdkN5ffyNFvvDF5j-Htso1_YKMCETAYqaKuPhWFc
Duncan Hunter’s lawyers respond to prosecution’s claims on affairs
Defense lawyers for Rep. Duncan Hunter appeared to concede Friday that he carried on extramarital affairs with several women, but alleged that much of his related spending of campaign funds was legitimate because he was “mixing business with pleasure.”
With Hunter (R-Calif.) facing a federal criminal trial on 60 felony charges that he repeatedly spent campaign money on vacations, meals and even dental bills, Hunter’s attorneys are urging a federal judge to put off-limits any discussion of his intimacy with the women, saying it would risk his right to a fair trial. www.politico.com/story/2019/06/28/duncan-hunter-affairs-funds-1390392
The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement and The War on Reason
Inside a Texas Building Where the Government Is Holding Immigrant Children
Hundreds of immigrant children who have been separated from their parents or family members are being held in dirty, neglectful, and dangerous conditions at Border Patrol facilities in Texas. This week, a team of lawyers interviewed more than fifty children at one of those facilities, in Clint, Texas, in order to monitor government compliance with the Flores settlement, which mandates that children must be held in safe and sanitary conditions and moved out of Border Patrol custody without unnecessary delays. The conditions the lawyers found were shocking: flu and lice outbreaks were going untreated, and children were filthy, sleeping on cold floors, and taking care of one another because of the lack of attention from guards. Some of them had been in the facility for weeks.
To discuss what the attorneys saw and heard, I spoke by phone with one of them, Warren Binford, a law professor at Willamette University and the director of its clinical-law program. She told me that, although Flores is an active court case, some of the lawyers were so disturbed by what they saw that they decided to talk to the media. We discussed the daily lives of the children in custody, the role that the guards are playing at the facility, and what should be done to unite many of the kids with their parents. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity. www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/inside-a-texas-building-where-the-government-is-holding-immigrant-children
Video of Obama-appointed lawyer defending the denial of child detainees soap, toothpaste sparks outrage
Part 1:
This is Sarah Fabian from the DOJ.
Sarah here is arguing in front of the us court of appeals from the 9th that immigrant children in CBP custody do not need toothpaste, toothbrushes, soap and beds. Because all these things have nothing to do with safety and sanitation. pic.twitter.com/KJpsefacL3— ALT-immigration (@ALT_uscis) June 21, 2019
Militia threats just paralyzed Oregon’s legislature. The movement’s roots in Michigan run deep.
Oregon’s legislature grabbed some unwanted national headlines this week, as Republican state senators fled the state to avoid voting on a cap-and-trade carbon emissions bill — issuing a thinly veiled threat of violence against the state police that caused anti-government militia groups to flock to his support.*
“Send bachelors and come heavily armed,” said Oregon state Sen. Brian Boquist. “I’m not going to be a political prisoner in the state of Oregon. It’s just that simple.”
Members of the Oregon 3 Percenters militia group sprang to Boquist’s defense, and the state’s Capitol even closed on Saturday due to a “possible militia threat.”
The ugly scene led to Democrats’ eventual capitulation on the cap-and-trade bill. It was also the second prominent militia incident in just the last few years for Oregon, following the infamous 2016 takeover of a wildlife refuge by anti-government protesters. www.michiganadvance.com/2019/06/28/militia-threats-just-paralyzed-oregons-legislature-the-movements-roots-in-michigan-run-deep/?fbclid=IwAR1CXBoZLWZcMT3-SIk_01BGfqLOHoJeZmo2GYX5VF9LDcvbGWgTtWUOz7k
Social media investigations unearth hundreds of police officers in the US involved in fascist or racist groups
Two separate social media investigations completed within the last month have identified hundreds of police and correctional officers that were or are currently members of right-wing extremist groups on Facebook or who have posted violent, racist or fascistic content on the platform. Screenshots compiled in both investigations show officers posting original racist and fascist content on their personal Facebook walls, in private groups such as the Oath Keepers, Confederate Brotherhood or the “NORTH AMERICAN DEFENCE LEAGUE AGAINST ISLAM,” and also on public news posts.
Each research project positively identified active-duty officers in departments throughout the country, leading to over 50 separate investigations. In St. Louis, Missouri, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, over 100 officers have been either put on paid leave, suspended, or relegated to desk duty, pending internal investigations. However, many more departments have chosen to simply ignore the findings.
The Plain View Project (PVP) was the culmination of a nearly two year investigation beginning in the fall of 2017, and conducted by Philadelphia based attorneys. www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/06/29/fasc-j29.html?fbclid=IwAR3no88rb758kIlm2E0ZGJaiY-_5ZQeGxUp1GT1c0YtJBv_zStBZw9GYWEo
2020 Democratic Party Debates Encircle Sanders with Wall Street’s Political Dogs
Wall Street wants Harris, Buttigieg, and Biden to dominate the floor and shut down Sanders.
“The ‘political revolution’ that Sanders proposes is too left for the ruling class but not left enough for humanity.”
The schedule for the Democratic Party primary debates has been announced. This time around, the debates are split into two separate evenings to account for the large number of candidates in the Democratic primary. The participants in each round were supposedly chosen by way of a Democratic National Committee-led “lottery” system. Bernie Sanders was placed on the debate with Wall Street’s three favorite candidates: Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Pete Buttigieg. Far from a randomized selection process, the debates show that the ruling class is encircling Sanders with its political dogs with the hopes that the trio can collectively weaken his chances for the nomination.
The New York Timesis such an effective mouthpiece of Wall Street that it often gives a play-by-play of its political servants’ electoral behavior. It wasThe New York Times that announced Wall Street’s “Stop Sanders” movement developing among the Democratic Party’s donor class. Just as the first debate lineup was announced for the last week of June, the Times revealed that Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, and Joe Biden were auditioning as Wall Street’s top choices for the nomination. That all three of these candidates are debating on the same night as a result of a “lottery” system is thus no coincidence. Wall Street wants Harris, Buttigieg, and Biden to dominate the floor and shut down Sanders. Whoever does it best will win the hearts and dollars of finance capital. blackagendareport.com/2020-democratic-party-debates-encircle-sanders-wall-streets-political-dogs
Solidarity for Never
Facebook Post to NEA RA delegates coming to Houston to watch the Dems Sock Puppet Show
The following presidential candidates are confirmed to participate in the Strong Public Schools Candidate Forum in Houston at the RA, July 5: Former Vice President Joe Biden, Former Secretary Julián Castro, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Gov. Jay Inslee, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, Sen. Bernie Sanders, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Follow along on Twitter: #StrongPublicSchools.
RG comment on NEA RA Facebook Page
I see $512,000+ Garcia plans a sock puppet show of several tweedle-dees–dums–and–dum-dums. Who will Garcia rig for this time—which bootle-bag of lies and shams will we be told holds the soundest truth? Everyone expects politicians to lie, deflect, dissemble, during campaigns. It’s a rule of thumb. Then many, many, forget, listen, and become instruments of their own oppression.
Ms $512,000 + seeks to lure us into the black hole of electoral politics when we should have learned the lessons of the Obama, Duncan, Emanuel, “Hope and Change” years–persistent attacks on education and a reality of perpetual war eating our students alive, our incomes, and reason itself. Think magic curses: gerrymander, earmarks, bribes, voter suppression, more rigging.
The lessons are simple: solidarity and direct action get the goods. The essential NEA boss’ line will be: Vote–Don’t Strike. The Democrat clown circus needs to interrupted with shouts of “On Strike! Nationwide Strike! Shut it Down.” Nobody ever voted their way out of exploitation. Don’t be fooled again.
Spy versus Spy
National Security Higher Education Advisory Board Confirms Seven New Members
| Washington, D.C. October 03, 2007 |
Today the National Security Higher Education Advisory Board (NSHEAB), created in 2005 by FBI Director Robert S. Mueller, III, held its quarterly meeting at FBI Headquarters. During the meeting, seven new Board members were confirmed.
The NSHEAB was designed by Director Mueller as a forum for discussion of national security issues to foster a spirit of cooperation and to promote understanding between higher education and the FBI and other federal agencies, such as the National Science Foundation, the Department of Commerce, and the Department of Defense. The NSHEAB is chaired by The Pennsylvania State University President Graham Spanier and includes university presidents and chancellors from around the U.S. who represent universities with significant research and development programs.
During today’s meeting, members were briefed by Joel F. Brenner, National Counterintelligence Executive, and Steven D. Nixon, the Director of Science and Technology, Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Members also received a briefing regarding the Animal Liberation Front and other extremism groups from FBI Headquarters personnel.
The new members who were confirmed today are as follows:
Association of American Universities President Robert Berdahl
Arizona State University President Michael Crow
Rice University President David Leebron
University of Colorado-Boulder Chancellor G.P. “Bud” Peterson
New York University President John Sexton
Michigan State University President Lou Anna Simon
Cornell University President David Skorton
These new members now join the current Board, which includes:
The Pennsylvania State University President Graham B. Spanier (Chairman)
Carnegie Mellon University President Jared L. Cohon
Iowa State University President Gregory L. Geoffroy
Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Susan Hockfield
The Johns Hopkins University President William R. Brody
University of California – Los Angeles Chancellor Albert Carnesale
University of California – San Diego Chancellor Marye Anne Fox
University of Florida President J. Bernard Machen
University of Maryland – College Park President C. D. Mote, Jr.
University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill Chancellor James (Charles) Moeser
University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann
University of Washington President Mark (Allen) Emmert
University of Wisconsin – Madison Chancellor John D. Wiley
National Security Higher Education Advisory Board
The National Security Higher Education Advisory Board (NSHEAB) was created by Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Robert S. Mueller III on December 15, 2005.[1] Operated by the FBI and paneled by approximately 20 American university presidents and chancellors, the expressed purpose of the board is “to foster outreach and to promote understanding between higher education and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” The board also facilitates communication between universities and federal authorities on “national priorities pertaining to terrorism, counterintelligence, and homeland security.”
Katehi plays a key role in the national security apparatus.
In 2010 Katehi was appointed to the National Security Higher Education Advisory Board, “which promotes discussion and outreach between research universities and the FBI,” according to the UC Davis website. (www.ucdavis.edu/…)
“The board was established in 2005 and includes about 20 presidents and chancellors of major research universities,” Dave Jones reported in the “University News” section of the website. “The chair is Graham Spanier, president of Pennsylvania State University. Because of the nature of some of the material they discuss, board members must hold ‘secret’ security clearances.”
In the spring of 2011, internal UC Davis emails revealed surveillance and infiltration tactics employed by campus officials during campus tuition increase protests.
A Public Records Act request by UC Davis student Bryan Sparks resulted in the release of 280 pages of documents that “disclosed a surveillance and infiltration program by university officials to monitor, and shape the protests, and also the narrative reported by the news media, according to a news release from ACLU of Sacramento County. The documents dated from July 1, 2010 through December 6, 2010.
Not only has Katehi profited from her positions with private educational and textbook organizations and has presided over a surveillance and infiltration program at the campus, but she has deepened corporate influence over the UC system by choosing Beverly Hills billionaire Stewart Resnick, a promoter of Governor Jerry Brown’s California Water fix to build the Delta Tunnels and many attacks on laws protecting salmon and Delta fisheries, as one of her Board of Advisors at UC Davis. (chancellor.ucdavis.edu/…)
Resnick serves with other corporate leaders such as Riley P. Bechtel, chairman of the board of the Bechtel Corporation, and John S. Watson, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of the Chevron Corporation, on the Board of Advisors. For the complete list of Katehi’s Board of Advisors, www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/5/21/1529480/-The-story-that-disgraced-UCD-Chancellor-Linda-Katehi-didn-t-want-you-to-read?fbclid=IwAR3NuewAC4-ENsik9cQcucBFFiKjL-7lKQEbVhDAh_IgGljp5E01_VqZBi4
The Magical Mystery Tour
County OKs Chinese Bible Church Over 4S Ranch, Del Sur Resident Objections
Chinese Bible Church is planning to build a nearly 90,000-square-foot facility located off Four Gee Road that will include a sanctuary, fellowship hall, learning center, and meeting and education buildings.
The church will have to comply with several conditions requested by Supervisor Jim Desmond, including ending outdoor events at 8 p.m. every day, prohibiting any outdoor amplified noise and turning off outdoor lighting by 10 p.m.
More than 5,000 residents in 4S Ranch, Del Sur and Santa Fe Valley communities signed a petition in opposition to the project.
Many who spoke during a public hearing that lasted more than an hour cited concerns over increased traffic and noise, and said the project incompatible with the area’s residential character.
The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World
Workingmen
From The WPA Guide to California (1939)
“THERE is no’ state in the Union, no place on earth, where labor is so honored and so well rewarded,” David C. Broderick
told the United States Senate in his maiden speech in 1858, “no time and place since the Almighty doomed the sons of Adam to toil, where the curse, if it be a curse, rests so lightly as now upon the people of California.”
The vigorous independence of the pioneer has persisted until present times as a characteristic of the State’s labor movement. Of the men who had the hardihood to make the long westward trek in Gold Rush days, many were skilled workingmen from trades in which unions were being organized. Among the European-born immigrants were English Chartists, Irish nationalists, French and German political exiles of 1848-men schooled in the labor movement, in struggles for national independence, or for democratic liberties. In the new-born camps and towns of California, they found no feudal tradition to influence social relationships. To people who saw men in overalls win or lose fortunes overnight, there was no place for concepts of the superiority or special privileges of the wealthy.
The State’s labor movement began in its first big city, San Francisco, since early days the trade-union center of California and, until later years, of the whole region west of the Rocky Mountains. The second great metropolitan center, Los Angeles, remained an open-shop stronghold for half a century, the lower labor standards of its competing industries threatening the gains won by labor in the north. But, as Los Angeles outstripped San Francisco in population, the disparity
between labor conditions in the two cities began to diminish, for San Francisco trade unionists came to realize that labor in the north could hold its gains only with the aid of labor in the south. During ti 1930’s the organize4 labor movements of both cities began to pol their strength in an effort to overcome the sharp contrast between urban and rural working conditions and attempted to organize ~ vast numbers of underprivileged migratory workers in the State’s dominant industry, agriculture. richgibson.com/CalifWorkWritersProject.htm
San Diego Sunset
So Long
George Rosenkranz, 102, a Developer of the Birth Control Pill, Is Dead
George Rosenkranz, a chemist who, with two colleagues, altered human reproductive history in a Mexico City lab in 1951 by synthesizing the key ingredient in what became the oral contraceptive known as “the pill,” died on Sunday at his home in Atherton, Calif. He was 102.
His grandson Adrian Rosenkranz confirmed the death.
Besides a seminal contribution to birth-control science, Dr. Rosenkranz’s team achieved the first practical synthesis of cortisone, the drug used to treat rheumatoid arthritis and reduce painful inflammations in muscles and joints. He was also a world-class contract bridge champion whose wife was kidnapped during a tournament in Washington in 1984 and ransomed for $1 million.
A Hungarian Jew and Swiss-trained chemical engineer who fled fascism as World War II engulfed Europe, Dr. Rosenkranz took refuge in Cuba and after the war became the research director of Syntex, a pharmaceutical lab in Mexico. There, in a scientific backwater, he assembled a small group of chemists who laid the groundwork for revolutionary advances in steroid hormone drugs.
Scientists had long known that high levels of estrogen and progesterone effectively inhibited ovulation. But synthesizing those hormones from animal or plant extracts had been too expensive and relatively ineffective for use in commercial oral contraceptives. www.nytimes.com/2019/06/23/obituaries/george-rosenkranz-dies-at-102.html