We Say Fight Back!

www.facebook.com/koin6/videos/884625708405007/?t=220

With One Win, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Emerges as a Political Star

One Hand Claps for DSA Win in New York

What’s the problem with DSA and the other imitators of the Second International?

1. No analysis of the system of capital as a form of exploited labor.

2. No analysis of imperialism as the relentless and requisite quest for cheap labor, raw material, markets, and regional control–thus perpetual war.They are social-nationalists.

3. A second tier analysis of racism and sexism, the former a product of the early development of capitalism in the US, and the latter, a centuries old remnant, both useful to divide and rule—hence profitable.

4. No open declaration of class war as, in part, DSA’s operatives work as officers and staff in unions whose existence depends on denying class war. Hence, DSA, et. al, address parts of the props of capital and empire, in isolation.

5. No critique of superstition, mysticism, which serves as a useful explanation for exploitation and war.

6. No analysis of the capitalist state as an executive committee and armed weapon of the rich. Hence, support for it’s institutions and a denial of the reality of fascism–and what that is.

7. All their efforts are designed to remain within the parameters set by capital and empire. Hence, they offer a “way out,” via a dead end. That commonly produces people who insist fundamental, revolutionary, change is impossible–closing the trap.   www.nytimes.com/2018/06/27/nyregion/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-bio-profile.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmU-cQXGVNk

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Congratulations on the re-publication of:

New Issue of the week…..Americans really care about kiddies

The Little Red Schoolhouse

above a Detroit school with Rouger Boyer

Judge dismisses lawsuit against Snyder over Detroit kids’ literacy (Detroit kids have no right to learn to read)

A federal judge dismissed late Friday a headline-grabbing lawsuit that accused Gov. Rick Snyder and other state officials of depriving Detroit kids of their right to literacy.

In a 40-page opinion, Judge Stephen Murphy III wrote that the state is not obligated to provide a minimal level of education by which students can obtain the ability to learn how to read.

The plaintiffs in the 2016 case were students who attended some of the lowest-performing schools in Detroit while the city’s school system was under the control of state-appointed emergency managers.

The children argued through their attorneys that literacy is a right under the U.S. Constitution. They said the state had denied them that through decades of “disinvestment” and “indifference,” with their schools in such poor shape that they hadn’t received even a minimally adequate education.

“The conditions and outcomes of plaintiffs’ schools, as alleged, are nothing short of devastating. When a child who could be taught to read goes untaught, the child suffers a lasting injury — and so does society,” Murphy wrote in his opinion.

“But the Court is faced with a discrete question: Does the Due Process Clause demand that a State affirmatively provide each child with a defined, minimum level of education by which the child can attain literacy? Based on the foregoing analysis, the answer to the question is no.”

The lawsuit documented the low reading and math proficiency rates of Detroit students, as well as classes without teachers and outdated or insufficient classroom materials. It noted poor conditions in school buildings, including vermin and other problems.

The students also argued they were denied access to literacy because of their race. Murphy said there was no evidence of that.

The defendants, in turn, said the state and its officials never operated the children’s schools, that they were immune from being sued under the 11th Amendment and that access to literacy is not a constitutionally protected right.  www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2018/06/29/judge-dismisses-lawsuit-against-snyder-over-detroit-kids-literacy/747732002/

Crowds growing to protest changes to Michigan social studies standards

Sixty-five people attended a public forum in Saginaw Tuesday to voice their concerns about changes to social studies standards that cut references to LGBT individuals, climate change, Roe v. Wade and deletes “democratic” from “core democratic values.” (Bridge photo by Ron French)

…t was the biggest showing yet in a week that has seen an explosion of public concern since an article in Bridge Magazine revealed that proposed changes in statewide social studies standards slashed references to gay rights, Roe v. Wade and climate change, and cut “democratic” from the phrase “core democratic values.”  www.bridgemi.com/talent-education/crowds-growing-protest-changes-michigan-social-studies-standards

Western Illinois University will lay off 24 faculty members, including seven with tenure, in the next year, the university announced on Thursday in a news release.

In making the decision at a special meeting on Thursday, the university’s Board of Trustees cited dips in enrollment and state funding. Two academic-affairs positions are also among the cuts. An additional 62 teaching positions — which either are vacant or will be vacated due to retirements or resignations — won’t be filled, according to the news release.

The layoff notices, which will be sent to faculty members on Friday, give a one-year warning, as stipulated by the university’s contract with the union, the University Professionals of Illinois. Cathy Early, chair of the Board of Trustees, said in the news release that more cuts may follow, although the university’s president promised growth in other areas.  www.chronicle.com/article/Western-Illinois-Will-Lay-Off/243790/#.WzY_2mkdDE4.facebook

Mao 101: Inside a Chinese Classroom Training the Communists of Tomorrow

Democracy. Is it effective or flawed? Would it work in China?

Debate.

Those were the teacher’s instructions on a recent Sunday morning when 17 college students met at Tsinghua University in Beijing for “Mao Zedong Thought and the Theoretical System of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics,” a mouthful of a course that is part of a government-mandated regimen of ideological education in China.

The students were sporting dragon tattoos and irreverent shirts — one had “Obsessive Compulsive Disorder” emblazoned on its back — and playing bloody shoot-’em-up video games on their phones before class.

But inside classroom 106-B, they echoed the party line.

“We’ve learned democracy just can’t last long here,” said Zhang Tingkai, a 19-year-old architecture major, describing the upheaval of the Cultural Revolution under Mao.

“It can easily turn into populism,” said Mao Quanwu, 20, a mechanical engineering student, “like what’s happening in Taiwan.”  www.nytimes.com/2018/06/28/world/asia/chinese-classrooms-education-communists.html

Fifteen other disqualified districts. Incompetence!

Flawed applications cost other San Diego County school districts homeless funding

Records inewsource obtained from the California Department of Education show two elementary school districts — South Bay Union and La Mesa-Spring Valley — also submitted incomplete applications. In all, 15 districts and county education offices in the state had their applications disqualified because of missing signatures, copies or documents.  inewsource.org/2018/06/15/san-diego-county-school-districts-homeless-funding/

CALIFORNIA AG ACCUSES NAVIENT OF MISLEADING BORROWERS: California Attorney General Xavier Becerra is suing Navient, accusing the student loan giant of misleading borrowers and other illegal practices. Michael has the full story.

— The lawsuit in state court accuses Navient of a range of violations of California consumer protection laws in how the company collected and managed the payments of federal student loan borrowers, including alleging the company steered borrowers into more expensive repayment plans and failed to adequately tell them how to remain enrolled in income-based repayment programs. The suit also says that Navient failed to properly discharge the federal loans of borrowers with a “total and permanent” disability.

— Navient is one of the four major companies that collect and manage federal student loan payments on behalf of the Education Department. The department also has separate contracts with two Navient subsidiaries, Pioneer and General Revenue Corporation, to collect defaulted loans. The lawsuit includes those subsidiaries as defendants, accusing them of misrepresenting the benefits and collection fees associated with a federal program to rehabilitate defaulted loans.

— Navient president and CEO Jack Remondi said in a statement that the company would “vigorously defend” itself. “The allegations are unfounded, and the lawsuit is another attempt to blame a single servicer for the failures of the higher education system and the federal student loan program to deliver desired outcomes,” he said.

— The California lawsuit comes after Remondi earlier this month met with a top official at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as the company ramps up pressure to get the bureau to drop a separate suit against it. According to an official familiar with the meeting, Remondi met with Eric Blankenstein, the top political appointee for the CFPB’s enforcement division and other career staffers. Michael first reported the meeting here. Politico

MORE BAD NEWS FROM MOODY’S: Revenue growth has slowed at public universities for the second year in a row — and now also trails expense growth for the first time since fiscal 2014, according to Moody’s Investors Service. Nearly a quarter of public universities reported declining revenue and more than 60 percent reported revenue growth below higher education inflation, the new report says.

— It won’t get much better, either, the firm predicted. “Revenue growth will remain muted as public universities face tuition affordability concerns and ongoing state funding constraints, putting continued pressure on universities to curtail expense growth to maintain margins,” Jared Brewster, the lead author of the report, said in a statement. Politico

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

This combo of artillery and missile tech could solve the military’s extended range problems

Here’s how the Army is trying to catch up to Russia and China on missiles, artillery

Navy Boss calls it quits: Sudden retirement comes amid ongoing investigation

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

www.facebook.com/294441424220638/videos/625060467825397/?t=62

The Red Zone: Inside Detroit’s deadly gang wars

Chapter 1: The Seven Mile Bloods’ turf is part pharmacy, part killing field and part launching pad for a bloody gang war

Federal prosecutors are piecing together a rare death penalty prosecution against members of the Seven Mile Bloods, a notorious east-side Detroit gang blamed for terrorizing neighbors, fueling the opioid epidemic and assassinating rivals targeted on Instagram hit lists.

The indictment of 21 alleged members and associates marks a crackdown on the close-knit Seven Mile Bloods, or SMB, which prosecutors hope to dismantle by using their own rap videos and social media against them.

The charges, however, have not ended the violence. Three recent homicides and the shooting of rapper Phillip Peaks, aka “Team Eastside Peezy,” suggest the years-long FBI investigation has not quelled an ongoing war among east-side gangs.

The violence threatens to unravel progress reducing murders on the east side of Detroit, particularly on turf controlled by what prosecutors consider the strongest gang in one of the deadliest parts of America’s most violent big city.  www.detroitnews.com/story/story-series/death-by-instagram/2018/04/22/detroit-gang-war-red-zone/432776002/

‘We will not back down’: Canada announces $12.6-billion in retaliatory tariffs on U.S. products (Trade wars become hot wars).

 

Inside the White House’s Quiet Campaign to Create a Supreme Court Opening

…they had a connection, one Mr. Trump was quick to note in the moments after his first address to Congress in February 2017. As he made his way out of the chamber, Mr. Trump paused to chat with the justice.

“Say hello to your boy,” Mr. Trump said. “Special guy.”

Mr. Trump was apparently referring to Justice Kennedy’s son, Justin. The younger Mr. Kennedy spent more than a decade at Deutsche Bank, eventually rising to become the bank’s global head of real estate capital markets, and he worked closely with Mr. Trump when he was a real estate developer, according to two people with knowledge of his role.

During Mr. Kennedy’s tenure, Deutsche Bank became Mr. Trump’s most important lender, dispensing well over $1 billion in loans to him for the renovation and construction of skyscrapers in New York and Chicago at a time other mainstream banks were wary of doing business with him because of his troubled business history.  www.nytimes.com/2018/06/28/us/politics/trump-anthony-kennedy-retirement.html

 

 

 

The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement and The War on Reason

“Those who are against fascism without being against capitalism, who lament over the barbarism that comes out of fascism, are like those who wish to eat their veal without slaughtering the calf. They are willing to eat the calf, but they dislike the sight of blood. They are easily satisfied if the butcher washes his hands before weighing the meat. They are not against the property relations which engender barbarism; they are only against the barbarism itself. They raise their voices against barbarism, and they do so in countries where precisely the same property relations prevail, but where the butchers wash their hands before weighing the meat.” – Bertolt Brecht, Writing the Truth: Five Difficulties, 1935.

San Diego County again sued over policy of searching homes of CalWorks applicants

Since the 1990s, San Diego County has reserved the right to search the homes of people who apply for public benefits, with sworn peace officers turning up where applicants live to make sure they are not out to cheat taxpayers.

The fraud-prevention policy, called Project 100% or P100 for short, allows investigators to search through the bedrooms, closets and dressers of families that apply for public-assistance programs like CalWorks.

The county Board of Supervisors has insisted for years that the effort protects taxpayers by making sure benefits are not awarded to people who are not eligible to receive them.

But a team of lawyers is not convinced.

Attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union and the Fish & Richardson law firm this week sued San Diego County over Project 100%, asking a judge to stop the searches and declare the practice illegal and a waste of government resources.

“No other county in California operates a program similar to P100,” the complaint states. “Instead, other counties investigate claims of fraud based on individualized suspicion of applicant fraud rather than conducting indiscriminate home inspections of all applicants.”

CalWorks is the state name for the federal program known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. Also known as welfare, CalWorks provides temporary cash assistance, job-hunting and health insurance to eligible families with children.  www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/watchdog/sd-me-aclu-lawsuit-20180627-story.html

DHS: We need 2,000 beds on military bases in next 45 days

Raphael A. Sanchez, who was chief counsel at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Seattle when he opened credit cards and took out loans using the personal information of vulnerable immigrants, has been sentenced to four years in prison.

He took a plea deal with the Justice Department, which was approved by a judge on Thursday. He has also been ordered to pay more than $190,000 in restitution.

Sanchez — whose responsibilities included overseeing immigration removal cases in several states — stole and exploited the identities of people who prosecutors say were “particularly vulnerable given their status as deported or otherwise excludable.”

He also misreported his earnings in his IRS filings. And, the Justice Department said, Sanchez “claimed three aliens as relative dependents on his tax returns for 2014 through 2016.”

Sanchez, 44, pleaded guilty in February to one count of wire fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft. As part of his plea, he also signed a statement of fact acknowledging his actions.

That plea came just days after Sanchez resigned in the face of the charges against him.  www.npr.org/2018/06/28/624207450/former-ice-chief-counsel-facing-prison-time-for-stealing-immigrants-identities?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20180628

6 things to know about the trooper overtime fraud case: Boston

Solidarity for Never

Sanders endorses Hillbillary as they laugh at the rubes.

DNC panel adopts rule requiring candidates to run, serve as a Democrat

 

…the workers most directly and immediately affected won’t be teachers or municipal employees, it will be the staffers who work for public sector unions.

The National Staff Organization, which is the umbrella group for unions representing employees of the National Education Association and its state affiliates, is dispensing advice to its members about what to do in case of an adverse Janus ruling.

NSO warns that staff unions will be “under assault as NEA and State Affiliates attempt to cut back and restructure in the face of the Janus threat.”

It tells staff unions “Don’t let managers use these crises to pick and choose staff, allowing them to reshape your union in their image” and to “Keep management’s ability to RIF, Transfer, or Reassign as narrow in scope as possible.”

What I find most interesting is NSO’s lack of trust in NEA’s accounting. It suggests staffers should use “verifiable financial figures (e.g. from the LM Report or the IRS 990) rather than membership reports, since those can be easily manipulated.”

Below, Janus–A ‘Janus word’ is a word that is its own opposite—like ‘fast’, which can refer both to moving very quickly and to staying put

‘Preparing for the worst’: Fake Unions brace for loss of members and fees in wake of Supreme Court ruling

Some of the nation’s largest and most powerful unions are bracing for an exodus of members and a substantial financial hit after a Supreme Court decision that threatens their ability to collect fees, a ruling expected to severely diminish organized labor’s political strength and undermine its capacity to represent worker interests.

The court’s 5-to-4 ruling Wednesday applied to public-employee unions, such as those representing teachers, state workers and police officers. The court said states could no longer compel the payment of union fees by workers who don’t want to join, even if they benefit from the union’s activities, such as contract negotiations. The court ruled that the fees are unconstitutional because they infringe upon workers’ free-speech rights. Across the country, about two dozen states have laws that permit unions to require fees.

The decision could hinder the role of public-sector unions in elections. Organized labor has typically backed Democratic candidates and progressive policies for workers and battled measures such as merit pay for teachers and private-school vouchers….

The National Education Association — the nation’s biggest union, with more than 3 million teachers — said it fears losing about 200,000 members this year and possibly 100,000 more next year. It, along with other public-sector unions, has worked to aggressively recruit and retain members, sometimes by having them sign pledge cards and providing professional development for new teachers.

Lily Eskelsen García, the union’s president, said her union is preparing to cut about $28 million from its budget and about 40 people from its 400-person staff. That has led to in-house tensions: The unionized staff of NEA Today, the union’s newsletter, threatened to strike over stalled negotiations with the association.  www.washingtonpost.com/news/education/wp/2018/06/27/preparing-for-the-worst-unions-brace-for-loss-of-members-and-fees-in-wake-of-supreme-court-ruling/?utm_term=.39395d021883

There is nothing “progressive about forcing workers to pay dues or fees to counterfeit unions whose leaders consider themselves partners with the bosses and who run the unions like protection rackets.

Spare UAW exec’s widow from prison, lawyer says

Monica Morgan-Holiefield, the widow of former United Auto Workers Vice President General Holiefield, should be spared prison time for a tax crime because she has repaid more than $100,000 and is unlikely to offend again, her attorney said Friday.

The request comes two weeks before the 55-year-old Harrison Township resident will be sentenced for filing a false tax return. She pleaded guilty in February in exchange for federal prosecutors dropping a five-year conspiracy charge and other counts stemming from a $1.5 million corruption scandal involving the United Auto Workers and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV.

The ongoing federal investigation has led to criminal charges against seven people, caused upheaval at the top ranks of the auto industry and raised questions about the sanctity of labor negotiations.

Morgan-Holiefield should be held responsible for the tax crime, not the sins of her late husband or conduct that was detailed in a conspiracy charge dropped by prosecutors, defense lawyer Steve Fishman wrote in a sentencing memorandum Friday.

Florida Education ready to sue over union decertification portion of HB 7055 (More wasted money–fake action)

sunshinestatenews.com/florida-education-association-ready-sue-over-union-decertification-portion-hb-7055-4

Spy versus Spy

Reminder:

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A Spymaster Steps Out of the Shadows

…Brennan’s public feud with the president of the United States, whom Brennan unfailingly refers to as “Mr. Trump.” A few days before, Brennan wrote an op-ed calling Trump “a snake-oil salesman.” The paper’s editors tried to persuade Brennan to use the word “president,” but Brennan refused. “I said no, I’m not going to refer to him as ‘president,’ ” Brennan told me. “Because he doesn’t deserve that, in my mind. Yes, he won the most electoral votes. But I think he has demonstrated, over and over again, that he is unfit to carry out the responsibilities of that office.” Trump fired back at Brennan a few hours after the op-ed was published, tweeting out a quote from a former Secret Service agent who had appeared on “Fox & Friends.” Brennan was both a “liar” and “a liar about being a liar,” the guest said.  www.nytimes.com/2018/06/27/magazine/john-brennan-president-trump-national-security-state.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FCentral%20Intelligence%20Agency&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection

New Charges in Huge C.I.A. Breach Known as Vault 7

Federal prosecutors have charged a former software engineer at the center of a huge C.I.A. breach with stealing classified information, theft of government property and lying to the F.B.I.

The engineer, Joshua A. Schulte, 29, of New York, had been the main suspect in one of the worst losses of classified documents in the spy agency’s history.

Government investigators suspect that he provided WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy organization, with a stolen archive of documents detailing the C.I.A.’s hacking operations, but they had not initially  charged him in that crime.

The breach, known as the Vault 7 leak, was a major embarrassment to the C.I.A. and set off a furious hunt to identify who was behind the 2017 disclosure.

The Magical Mystery Tour

SNAP Annual Conference in Chicago

30 Years Strong

We will be celebrating our 30th anniversary this summer at the 2018 Annual SNAP Conference on July 6-8, 2018 in Chicago, IL. Our conference will be held at the beautiful Palmer House Hilton in the downtown loop district.

Please join us as SNAP celebrates 30 years of support from survivors sexual abuse by religious clergy!

Featured speakers and presenters include: Tom Doyle, Victor Veith, Bishop Accountability, Jodi Hobbs, Ashley Easter, Gustavo Arellano Miranda, Torah Bontrager, Guila Benchimol and Rachel Grant!

We will have a number of workshops over the weekend providing education, healing, and support.

For more information and updates on our speakers and breakouts, click here.

The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World

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Chelsea Manning loses Maryland Democratic primary in a landslide

The Week in Cruelty

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Es una pena pasar este video pero lo hago con el proposito de que seamos justos y cuidadosos y asumamos nuestras responsabilidades. La #tormenta alrededor y #viento hacia esto muy riesgoso Por que lo alzaron ? #parachute #puertovallarta pic.twitter.com/Gv1qzINR1F

— Barrio Vallarta Suites (@barriovallarta) June 9, 2018

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So Long

Daisy Kadibil and a biographical note she wrote. After being taken from their parents under an Australian program to assimilate Indigenous people into the dominant society, she and her sister and a cousin walked hundreds of miles across rough terrain to get back home.

Daisy Kadibil, an Aboriginal Australian, was about 8 years old and living in the vast, sparsely populated Outback in the early 1930s when her country’s government forcibly separated her from her parents and sent her to a resettlement camp hundreds of miles away.

Her removal had been ordered under an Australian assimilation policy that sought to absorb Aboriginal people into the country’s white society by taking children from their families and indoctrinating them in the ways of that dominant culture.

Daisy was taken from her home in Jigalong, an Indigenous community in the Pilbara region in northwestern Australia, where she had grown up. A sister, Molly, and a cousin, Gracie, were also seized, and all three girls were sent to an Indigenous settlement near the Moore River, just north of Perth, the nearest city, about 800 miles to the south.

There, longing for home, they sought to escape. In 1931 they succeeded, embarking on foot on a treacherous nine-week trek north across rough terrain and using as their guide a barbed-wire fence that had been built to keep rabbits away from pastureland — an astonishing feat that inspired a book and the acclaimed 2002 Australian movie “Rabbit-Proof Fence.”  www.nytimes.com/2018/06/27/obituaries/daisy-kadibil-95-whose-australia-trek-inspired-a-film-dies.html

Willie Lee Rose, Historian of Reconstruction, Dies at 91

“She looked at the ground level at how the end of slavery unleashed a tremendous set of conflicts over what should follow,” the Columbia University historian Eric Foner, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book “The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery,” said by email.  www.nytimes.com/2018/06/27/obituaries/willie-lee-rose-historian-of-reconstruction-dies-at-91.html