Why Are Things As They Are?

 

We Say Fight Back!

Remembering Adam Renner at the Rouge Forum Conference, Denver, 2014

The Storify Account of the Rouge Forum Conference https://storify.com/EWayneRoss/rouge-forum-2014-denver

Keynote From Rouge Forum Conference http://richgibson.com/RF/

Some pics from the RF Conference plus.google.com/photos/115165989850727705944/albums/6025004376438403793

Corporate State Seeks to Smash PA Transit Strike Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett sought emergency action from President Obama to put an end to a workers’ strike that shut down regional rail service around Philadelphia.

More than 400 engineers and electrical workers at the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority on Saturday morning began picketing after demands for pay increases were not met. The action left travelers to turn to long bus trips, taxi rides or their cars. The ride-share service Uber was offering discounts. But by afternoon, Corbett announced he was asking Obama to require the workers to immediately resume their duties for up to 240 days.   http://touch.latimes.com/#section/1780/article/p2p-80506159/

Guns Kept People Alive During the Civil Rights Movement  I’m very much concerned with how the history of the southern freedom movement or civil rights movement is portrayed. And, I’m very conscious of the gaps in the history, and one important gap in the history, in the portrayal of the movement, is the role of guns in the movement. I worked in the South, I lived with families in the South. There was never a family I stayed with that didn’t have a gun. I know from personal experience and the experiences of others, that guns kept people alive, kept communities safe and all you have to do to understand this is simply think of black people as human beings and they’re gonna respond to terrorism the way anybody else would. …The southern freedom movement has become so defined, the narrative of the movement has become so defined by non-violence that anything presented outside that narrative framework really isn’t paid that much attention to. I like the quip that Julian Bond made…that really the way the public understands the civil rights movement can be boiled down to one sentence: Rosa sat down, Martin stood up, then the white folks saw the light and saved the day.

On Martin Luther King Jr.’s attitude about weapons…

If you look at the early period of his leadership in the civil rights movement, particularly the period of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, his household, as one person noted, was an arsenal, with guns all over the place. William Worthy, who was a journalist…tried to sit down in an armchair in Martin King’s house and was warned by Bayard Rustin, who was with him, that he was about to sit down on a couple of guns. King was a man of the South, after all, and he responded to terrorism, he responded to violence the way most people in the South would be inclined to respond. So when the Klan…bombed his house in 1956, he went to the sheriff’s office and applied for a gun permit to carry a concealed weapon. Now, he didn’t get the permit…but Martin King always acknowledged — if you read his writings — the right to self-defense, armed self-defense.  http://www.npr.org/2014/06/05/319072156/guns-kept-people-alive-during-the-civil-rights-movement

Brit Columbia School Workers to Walk out  Over 80 per cent of union members, or 33,387 teachers, cast votes, which BCTF President Jim Iker called “one of the highest turnouts we’ve ever had in [union] history.” In total, 86 per cent voted in favour of walking out of schools to strike.

Almost as many teachers voted in favour of this strike as bothered to vote at all during the union’s initial three-phase strike vote in March.  http://thetyee.ca/News/2014/06/11/Teacher-Vote/?utm_source=daily

The Little Red Schoolhouse

Missionaries for Capitalism not Unhappy with NCLB  (do me, beat me, make me write bad checks!)  Several recent studies have examined the impacts of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) on school operations and student achievement. We complement that work by investigating the law’s impacts on teachers’ perceptions of their work environments and related job attitudes, including satisfaction and commitment to remain in teaching. Using four waves of the nationally representative Schools and Staffing Survey, which cover the period from 1994 to 2008, we document overall trends in teacher attitudes across this time period and take advantage of differences in the presence and strength of prior state accountability systems and differences in likely impacts on high- and low-poverty schools to isolate NCLB effects. Perhaps surprisingly, we show positive trends in many work environment measures, job satisfaction, and commitment across the time period coinciding with the implementation of NCLB. We find, however, relatively modest evidence of an impact of NCLB accountability itself. There is some evidence that the law has negatively affected perceptions of teacher cooperation but positively affected feelings of classroom control and administrator support. We find little evidence that teacher job satisfaction or commitment has changed in response to NCLB .www.aera.net/Newsroom/RecentAERAResearch/EstimatingtheEffectsofNoChildLeftBehindonTeachersandTheirWorkEnvironment/tabid/15549/Default.aspx

Incompetence and Corruption Reign in Detroit’s Capitalist Schools   DPS blames technical difficulties after failing to apply for $4M in Head Start funds  …On Tuesday, DPS spokeswoman Michelle Zdrodowski said the application problem stemmed from “technical difficulties with uploading the information.” When faced with the loss, the district regrouped and focused on finding a solution to the funding gap, she said. “We understand that we are in error,” she said. “We admit our mistake, but have put plans into place to ensure that no qualified student will be excluded from receiving a quality pre-K education.”

In a news release issued late Monday, the district said it was expanding the number of preschool spots in the district this fall. It did not mention the loss of Head Start funding, saying only that “DPS will no longer be including Head Start, which qualifies children based solely on their meeting poverty level requirements, in its early childhood education program offerings.” From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20140610/SCHOOLS/306100103#ixzz34JBZndcO\

Rouge Forum Steering Committee Member and Detroiter Bill Boyer in Stripped Detroit School

Stealing from the Poor in Detroit Schools  A former high-level Detroit Public Schools administrator who started her own tutoring company to serve low-income students has been accused of federal program fraud and money laundering in an alleged scheme involving $6.17 million in federal funds for students in DPS and Highland Park schools.

The FBI seized multiple bank accounts belonging to Carolyn Starkey-Darden and her husband, Anthony Darden, after launching an investigation in 2011 into the couple and three of their businesses. The companies were formed to provide after-school tutoring to students who attended schools targeted for improvement on federal progress goals.

In the 39-page civilcomplaintfiled in U.S. District Court, federal prosecutors allege Starkey-Darden ordered the falsification of documents, including inputting false pre-test scores, creating fake individualized learning plans for students, forging parental signatures on monthly attendance records and submitting inflated invoices for unperformed services.

Student progress reports were doctored, FBI agents allege, and Starkey-Darden’s company billed for students who weren’t in class, according to the complaint.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office filed a forfeiture action in April after seizing more than $282,800 in accounts that belonged to Starkey-Darden, her husband and their companies.  From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20140612/METRO01/306120042#ixzz34SJ2JKUj

above, recently refurbished Detroit school abandoned and stripped.

Vultures In Detoit schools  keep spending thousands per month on travel, new records show  The cash-strapped Education Achievement Authority continues to spend tens of thousands of dollars per month on travel, using money that could be spent on computers or hiring teachers, newly released documents show.  In March and April, the EAA spent $52,000 sending school administrators and teachers to conferences in a number of cities, including San Francisco; Atlanta; Los Angeles; New Orleans; Washington, D.C.; Austin, Texas; and Portland, Ore. That’s atop $178,000 charged on credit cards for travel since the authority was formed in 2012 to take over Detroit’s 15 lowest performing schools.

The latest figures follow a Detroit News investigation into EAA spending in May and were obtained using the Freedom of Information Act to secure credit card bills issued to Chancellor John Covington and high school principals. Combined with $56,000 in checks written to hotels and airlines since 2012, the new charges push the travel tally to at least $286,000 in two years. From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20140613/SCHOOLS/306130081#ixzz34atob8nb

John Covington, a Failure (but enriched) in KC, takes his Money and prepares to flee ruined Detroit PS  John Covington is in talks to leave as chancellor of the embattled Education Achievement Authority. Covington, who is less than three years into his tenure as head of the turnaround school district, has told Gov. Rick Snyder he will be resigning, according to two sources familiar with his plans. Although the departure deal is not finalized, the announcement is expected to come this month.

A source close to the governor said Covington is leaving voluntarily to take another job, and is not being forced out. EAA spokesman Bob Berg would not discuss the matter, and Covington couldn’t be reached.  From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20140614/SCHOOLS/306140026#ixzz34asbq8mM

Led by the Vacillating Reactionary’s (Ravitch) Fave Boss, SD Schools ordered to dump one teacher–each  Days before most San Diego schools close for summer, principals are scrambling to cut their teaching staffs under a surprise district budget amendment announced this week.

The San Diego Unified School District has not called for layoffs at this late date. Rather it has directed schools to eliminate one position from their staff to help save money and keep the teaching force manageable.

Schools have been told to fill any vacant classroom teaching positions with a qualified employee from their support staff — literacy and math specialists among them. Superintendent Cindy Marten asked schools to submit faculty plans by Friday.

Some teachers have complained about the short notice and the impact the cuts will have at their schools.

Shane Parmely, a teacher at Garfield and Twain high schools, said the move is disruptive and will leave more “excessed” teachers unable to prepare for next year’s classes over the summer because they don’t know their assignment.  http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2014/jun/11/san-diego-schools-to-cut-teachers/

Colorado Education Association to appeal dismissal of tenure lawsuit  The Colorado Education Association says it plans to appeal the Denver District Court’s dismissal of its lawsuit challenging Denver Public Schools’ tenure policies.

On Friday, Judge Michael A. Martinez ruled that the CEA failed to prove that the change in the way teachers are evaluated and awarded tenure violated their due-process rights as well as state laws on the firing of teachers.

“CEA members are highly disappointed by the Denver District Court ruling,” CEA president Kerrie Dallman said in a news release.  http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_25919294/colorado-education-association-appeal-dismissal-tenure-lawsuit

 

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

Who Lost iraq? Sunni militants consolidated and extended their control over northern Iraq on Wednesday, seizing Tikrit, the hometown of Saddam Hussein, threatening the strategic oil refining town of Baiji and pushing south toward Baghdad, their ultimate target, Iraqi sources said.

As the dimensions of the assault began to become clear, it was evident that a number of militant groups had joined forces, including Baathist military commanders from the Hussein era, whose goal is to rout the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. One of the Baathists, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, was a top military commander and a vice president in the Hussein government and one of the few prominent Baathists to evade capture by the Americans throughout the occupation.
“These groups were unified by the same goal, which is getting rid of this sectarian government, ending this corrupt army and negotiating to form the Sunni Region,” said Abu Karam, a senior Baathist leader and a former high-ranking army officer, who said planning for the offensive had begun two years ago. “The decisive battle will be in northern Baghdad. These groups will not stop in Tikrit and will keep moving toward Baghdad.”  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/12/world/middleeast/iraq.html?hp

Vets watch as insurgents undo sacrifices in Iraq  At VFW halls, kitchen tables and rehabilitation clinics around the country, this week’s stunning advance into Mosul left many U.S. veterans reflecting with bitterness and sadness on the sacrifices of a war that lasted for more than eight years and killed nearly 4,500 Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis. “In many ways, it just feels like a waste – a waste of many lives, a waste of many years,” retired Army Col. Barry Johnson said from his home in Potlatch, Idaho.

On the broad stage of Middle East affairs, the unraveling highlights the resilience of extremists and the risks of weakened central authority. It also raises wider questions about the future of Afghanistan after international forces withdraw later this year and about the growing influence of militant Islamic factions among Syrian rebels.   http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_289563/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=2Lda4sxj

Who Won in Iraq?

Cheney’s Halliburton Made $39.5 Billion on Iraq War  he accounting of the financial cost of the nearly decade-long Iraq War will go on for years, but a recent analysis has shed light on the companies that made money off the war by providing support services as the privatization of what were former U.S. military operations rose to unprecedented levels.Private or publicly listed firms received at least $138 billion of U.S. taxpayer money for government contracts for services that included providing private security, building infrastructure and feeding the troops.

Ten contractors received 52 percent of the funds, according to an analysis by the Financial Times that was published Tuesday.

The No. 1 recipient?

Houston-based energy-focused engineering and construction firm KBR, Inc. (NYSE:KBR), which was spun off from its parent, oilfield services provider Halliburton Co. (NYSE:HAL), in 2007.

The company was given $39.5 billion in Iraq-related contracts over the past decade, with many of the deals given without any bidding from competing firms, such as a $568-million contract renewal in 2010 to provide housing, meals, water and bathroom services to soldiers, a deal that led to a Justice Department lawsuit over alleged kickbacks, as reported by Bloomberg.

Who were Nos. 2 and 3?

Agility Logistics (KSE:AGLTY) of Kuwait and the state-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corp. Together, these firms garnered $13.5 billion of U.S. contracts.

As private enterprise entered the war zone at unprecedented levels, the amount of corruption ballooned, even if most contractors performed their duties as expected.

According to the bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, the level of corruption by defense contractors may be as high as $60 billion. Disciplined soldiers that would traditionally do many of the tasks are commissioned by private and publicly listed companies.   http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/308-12/16561-focus-cheneys-halliburton-made-395-billion-on-iraq-war

Rashid on “The Wrong Enemy” by Gall: Now in The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan, 2001–2014, Carlotta Gall, the New York Times reporter in Afghanistan and Pakistan for more than a decade, has gone one step further. She places the entire onus of the West’s failure in Afghanistan and the Taliban’s successes on the Pakistani military and the Taliban groups associated with it.
Her book has aroused considerable controversy, not least in Pakistan. Its thesis is quite simple:
The [Afghan] war has been a tragedy costing untold thousands of lives and lasting far too long. The Afghans were
never advocates of terrorism yet they bore the brunt of the punishment for 9/11. Pakistan, supposedly an ally, has
proved to be perfidious, driving the violence in Afghanistan for its own cynical, hegemonic reasons. Pakistan’s
generals and mullahs have done great harm to their own people as well as their Afghan neighbors and NATO allies.
Pakistan, not Afghanistan, has been the true enemy.
Dogged, curious, insistent on uncovering hidden facts, Gall’s reporting over the years has been a nightmare for the
American, Pakistani, and other foreign powers involved in Afghanistan, while it has been welcomed by many Afghans.
She quickly emerged as the leading Western reporter living in Kabul. She made her reputation by reporting on the
terrible loss of innocent Afghan lives as American aircraft continued to bomb the Pashtun areas in southern
Afghanistan even after the war of 2001 had ended. The bombing of civilians was said to be accidental, supposedly
based on faulty intelligence; but it continued for years and helped the Taliban turn the population against the
Americans.
Before human rights groups or police arrived in remote, bombed villages, Gall was often there first. Thus in July 2002,
she writes of driving ―for three days over dusty and rutted roads‖ to reach a village in Uruzgan province that had
been bombed during a wedding. Fifty-four wedding guests were killed, including thirteen children from one
household, and over one hundred people were wounded. The survivors of this massacre ―were collecting body parts in
a bucket‖—Gall’s quote of the provincial governor that haunted reporters and other observers in Kabul. She
continued:
Sahib Jan, a twenty-five-year-old neighbor, was one of the first to reach the groom’s house after the bombardment.
Bodies were lying all over the two courtyards and in the adjoining orchard, some of them in pieces. Human flesh hung
in the trees. A woman’s torso was lodged in an almond sapling. . . . Bodies lay in the dust and rubble of the room…” (read all of this, it is worth it: www.ahmedrashid.com/wp-content/archives/pakistan/articles/pdf/pakistanworsethenweknew.pdf)

They’re Back: More US drone Strikes on Pakistan  The US has resumed its drones programme in Pakistan, with two strikes on militant strongholds in the North Waziristan tribal region overnight. Officials say at least three militants were killed with reports of 16 dead. It come days after militants attacked Karachi international airport, killing 39 people, including 10 attackers.

Washington agreed to suspend its drones programme in December to allow Islamabad to pursue peace talks with the Pakistani Taliban (TTP).  But pressure has been mounting on the Pakistani authorities to launch a ground offensive on the region amid a breakdown in peace talks.  http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-27807123

The Run-up to WW3: Separatists Down Military Transport Jet, Killing 49 in Eastern Ukraine  Separatists in Ukraine used a shoulder-fired missile to shoot down a large Ukrainian military transport jet as it was trying to land at an airport in this eastern city on Saturday, killing all 49 people on board, the military said. The attack was the deadliest episode for the Ukrainian military since the unrest began in the country’s east.

“On approach to the Luhansk airport a Ukrainian armed forces military transport Il-76 airplane was shot down with an antiaircraft rocket system,” the military wing of the prosecutor general’s office said in a statement. “In addition to the nine crew members, 40 paratroopers were on board. All of them died.”

The statement said the office had opened an investigation into what it called a terrorist act. Separatists from the self-declared People’s Republic of Luhansk confirmed that they had shot down the jet and said that all military airplanes in the area, which is near the border with Russia, were targets  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/15/world/europe/ukraine.html?hp&_r=0

Pravda Video Of Plane Shot Down http://www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2014/06/14/7028993/

Memo On Delays in the VA—from 2010 http://www.legion.org/documents/pdf/gamingthesysystem2010%20memo.pdf

 

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

Ruling Class Think Tank Council on Foreign Relations Worries About Income Inequality  According to the Congressional Budget Office (PDF), income inequality in the United States has been rising for decades, with the top echelon of earners rapidly outpacing the rest of the population. The average real after-tax household income of the top 1 percent rose 275 percent from 1979 to 2007. Meanwhile, income for the remainder of the top quintile (81st to 99th percentile) grew 65 percent. Income for the majority of the population in the middle of the scale (21st through 80th percentiles) grew just 37 percent for the same period. And the bottom quintile experienced the least growth income at just 18 percent….Furthermore, in 1965, a typical corporate CEO earned more than twenty times a typical worker; by 2011, the ratio was 383:1, according to the Economic Policy Institute.  While many of the suspected drivers of rising income inequality—globalization, technological change and the rising value of education—affect other nations as well, few have seen as stark a rise in inequality as the United States. From 1968 to 2010, the share of national income earned by the top 20 percent rose from 42.6 to 50.2 percent, with gains concentrated at the very top. Meanwhile, the “middle class,” the middle 60 percent, saw its share decline from 53.2 to 46.5 percent. This increasing income inequality is captured by the steady rise in the U.S. Gini coefficient, from 0.316 in the mid-1970s to 0.378 in the late 2000s. Today, the U.S. income distribution is one of the most uneven among major developed nations … Many Americans take pride in the belief that everyone has a chance to “make it big,” and rags-to-riches stories are almost legends. But today, more than 40 percent of those born into the lowest income quintile will stay there, and less than 30 percent will make an above-average income.    www.cfr.org/united-states/income-inequality-debate/p29052

Stagnation! Stagnation! We ain’t never, never, never gonna work again! Slip the fluid to us Louie! Recessions are always painful, but the Great Recession that ran from late 2007 to the middle of 2009 may have inflicted a new kind of pain: an era of slower growth.It has been five years since the official end of that severe economic downturn. The nation’s total annual output has moved substantially above the prerecession peak, but economic growth has averaged only about 2 percent a year, well below its historical average. Household incomes continue to stagnate, and millions of Americans still can’t find jobs. And a growing number of experts see evidence that the economy will never rebound completely.
For more than a century, the pace of growth was reliably resilient, bouncing back after recessions like a car returning to its cruising speed after a roadblock. Even after the prolonged Great Depression of the 1930s, growth eventually returned to an average pace of more than 3 percent a year. But Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew, citing the Congressional Budget Office, said on Wednesday that the government now expected annual growth to average just 2.1 percent, about two-thirds of the previous pace.  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/12/business/economy/us-economic-recovery-looks-distant-as-growth-lingers.html?hp

GM Lied. Innocents Died Families of two girls killed in crashes involving General Motors’ defective ignition switches protested outside the automaker’s Detroit headquarters this afternoon — a day before GM shareholders gather for their annual meeting. “We need to make this as expensive as possible because apparently that’s the only thing GM pays attention to,” said Laura Christian, whose 16-year-old daughter Amber Rose was killed in 2005 in Maryland. “The only thing GM seems to listen to is their bottom line.”

Ken Rimer, stepfather of Natasha Weigel, an 18-year-old killed in a 2006 accident in Wisconsin, said GM was shamed into making changes after engineers, lawyers and safety officials failed to respond to research showing the defect was deadly. Weigel and 15-year-old Amy Rademaker were killed in the accident, while then-17-year-old Megan Phillips suffered serious injuries.  http://www.freep.com/article/20140609/BUSINESS0101/306090165/GM-General-Motors-ignition-switch-recall-protest

Recession ‘led to 10,000 suicides’  The economic crisis in Europe and North America led to more than 10,000 extra suicides, according to figures from UK researchers. A study, published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, showed “suicides have risen markedly”.

The research group said some deaths may have been avoidable as some countries showed no increase in suicide rate. Campaign groups said the findings showed how important good mental health services were. The study by the University of Oxford and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine analysed data from 24 EU countries, the US and Canada.
Unemployment, repossessions and debt It said suicides had been declining in Europe until 2007. By 2009 there was a 6.5% increase, a level that was sustained until 2011.

It was the equivalent of 7,950 more suicides than would have been expected if previous trends continued, the research group said.  http://www.bbc.com/news/health-27796628

The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement

The Militarized Corporate State Unlike the recruiting poster of old, Uncle Sam doesn’t want you anymore — he already has you. You’ve been drafted into the American national security state. That much is evident from Edward Snowden’s revelations. Your email? It can be read. Your phone calls? Metadata about them is being gathered. Your smartphone? It’s a perfect tracking device if the government needs to find you. Your computer? Hackable and trackable. Your server? It’s at their service, not yours.

Many of the college students I’ve taught recently take such a loss of privacy for granted. They have no idea what’s gone missing from their lives and so don’t value what they’ve lost or, if they fret about it at all, console themselves with magical thinking — incantations like “I’ve done nothing wrong, so I’ve got nothing to hide.” They have little sense of how capricious governments can be about the definition of “wrong.”

Consider us all recruits, more or less, in the new version of Fortress America, of an ever more militarized, securitized country. Renting a movie? Why not opt for the first Captain America and watch him vanquish the Nazis yet again, a reminder of the last war we truly won? Did you head for a baseball park on Memorial Day? What could be more American or more innocent? So I hope you paid no attention to all those camouflaged caps and uniforms your favorite players were wearing in just another of an endless stream of tributes to our troops and veterans.   http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175855/tomgram%3A_william_astore%2C_drafted_by_the_national_security_state/#more

US pushing local cops to stay mum on surveillance   The Obama administration has been quietly advising local police not to disclose details about surveillance technology they are using to sweep up basic cellphone data from entire neighborhoods, The Associated Press has learned.

Citing security reasons, the U.S. has intervened in routine state public records cases and criminal trials regarding use of the technology. This has resulted in police departments withholding materials or heavily censoring documents in rare instances when they disclose any about the purchase and use of such powerful surveillance equipment.

Federal involvement in local open records proceedings is unusual. It comes at a time when President Barack Obama has said he welcomes a debate on government surveillance and called for more transparency about spying in the wake of disclosures about classified federal surveillance programs.

One well-known type of this surveillance equipment is known as a Stingray, an innovative way for law enforcement to track cellphones used by suspects and gather evidence. The equipment tricks cellphones into identifying some of their owners’ account information, like a unique subscriber number, and transmitting data to police as if it were a phone company’s tower. That allows police to obtain cellphone information without having to ask for help from service providers, such as Verizon or AT&T, and can locate a phone without the user even making a call or sending a text message.  http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_289563/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=cQf17MK6

Detroit: HomoPhobic Mob Attacks Gay May After Pride Parade

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z316NvHBFRc

Christin Howard said he’s still in shock two days after he was beaten outside the Motor City Pride festival by a group of men who he believes targeted him because he’s gay. Detroit police are investigating what Chief James Craig on Tuesday called a hate crime.

Howard, 22, of Detroit said the beating occurred Sunday near Hart Plaza where the annual event was being held over the weekend. He said he stopped on the RiverWalk to pose for a picture with a girl who recognized him from the social media website Instagram.

Howard, an aspiring hair stylist, said he’s well-known on social media and goes by the name Chong Lee. “She wanted to take a picture with me. As we were posing for the picture this guy started saying, ‘Look at this (slur).’ I knew he was talking to me and I just tried to ignore it and not think about it. After that, that’s when he started to walk behind me.”  Howard said the man continued to linger around him and yelled more slurs.  http://www.freep.com/article/20140610/NEWS05/306100143/Pride-Festival-Detroit-beating-gay

Interactive Map–Major Crimes in Detroit www.detroitnews.com/article/99999999/SPECIAL01/120606001

above, the Detroit Ravendale neighborhood, one of 8 featured by the Motor City Muckraker MORE here http://motorcitymuckraker.com/blog/2014/06/06/up-close-8-most-abandoned-neighborhoods-in-detroit/

Man killed after beating, hit by car outside Detroit gas station  A 38-year-old man was found dead outside a gas station near Seven Mile Road and Pierson Street on Detroit’s west side. A witness had told FOX 2 a group of 10 – 14 people beat up Eric Miles, but after a thorough investigation Detroit Police have concluded and confirmed the fight was between the victim and one suspect.

The fight is believed to have started after a verbal argument took place between the two men. Police say when the fight ended the victim tried to walk   away, but the suspect got in his car and struck Miles, pinning him against another vehicle.Miles sustained fatal injuries.  http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/story/25186114/man-killed-after-beating-hit-by-car-outside-detroit-gas-station

Detroit police record 36 shootings, four homicides in five days  It was a bloody five-day stretch in Detroit from Thursday through Tuesday. Detroit police recorded 36 shootings, four of them homicides. Detroit Police Sgt. Michael Woody noted it was the first warm weekend and a holiday, which tend to be contributors to a spike in violence, but called it “an anomaly.”

There was an “overwhelming amount of young people partaking in some alcohol and maybe some bad decision making,” Woody said. We believe “one homicide is one too many, but when you have four of them in a five-day period, it’s a bit excessive.” Woody said it can “:make you dizzy” trying to dissect exactly why spates of violence like this occur. It’s not the first time.  http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB8QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mlive.com%2Fnews%2Fdetroit%2Findex.ssf%2F2014%2F05%2Fdetroit_police_record_36_shoot.html&ei=HfmXU6uSF8-QqAa01YGYCg&usg=AFQjCNGWFY30TXYXJQpnTTiCSpR66n-cPw&bvm=bv.68693194,d.b2k

WaPos Detroit Ruin Porn Photos www.washingtonpost.com/national/detroits-eyesores/2014/06/06/cac7db46-eda5-11e3-92b8-52344c12e8a1_gallery.html?tid=carousel_ts#item0

Chicago Shootings–Poor on Poor from Jan to June this year=904. 2013? 2185 Interactive Map of Barbarism is here   http://crime.chicagotribune.com/chicago/shootings

Cuckold’s Daughter Chelsea Clinton reportedly made $600,000 for a year’s work at NBC. And Twitter went wild. 

Bill and Hillary aren’t the only Clintons who know how to make a dollar. According to a report at Politico, Chelsea Clinton was paid $600,000 by NBC to act as a special correspondent for the network, including on the now-cancelled show “Rock Center with Brian Williams.” A spokesperson for Clinton reached by the Post didn’t confirm the figure, referring questions to NBC. But it didn’t take long for the report to ripple online (largely among journalists who probably earn somewhat less), often linked to Hillary Clinton’s remarks earlier this week about the family being “dead broke” in 2001.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/06/13/chelsea-clinton-reportedly-made-600000-for-a-years-work-at-nbc-and-twitter-went-wild/

Solidarity for Never

Judge Rejects Teacher Tenure for California (will CTA prepare for a General Strike—nope–pr, court and a vote) California judge ruled Tuesday that teacher tenure laws deprived students of their right to an education under the State Constitution and violated their civil rights. The decision hands teachers’ unions a major defeat in a landmark case, one that could radically alter how California teachers are hired and fired and prompt challenges to tenure laws in other states.“Substantial evidence presented makes it clear to this court that the challenged statutes disproportionately affect poor and/or minority students,” Judge Rolf M. Treu of Los Angeles Superior Court wrote in the ruling. “The evidence is compelling. Indeed, it shocks the conscience.”   www.nytimes.com/2014/06/11/us/california-teacher-tenure-laws-ruled-unconstitutional.html?hp&_r=0

Detroit Fed of Teachers is Shocked that Concessions did not save jobs nor the district budget! It boggles my mind how DPS can go through nine years of state control, have three emergency managers, and still not get its budget in shape. DPS recently announced that its  deficit is over $100 million. That is in addition to the restructured debt of over $300 million. They
seem to think that closing or giving  away schools will solve the problem. They told us if we took concessions,  the district would be on the path to fiscal solvency. We took a 10 percent pay cut. We pay 20 percent of our health insurance with higher co-pays and deductibles. We have fewer preps for elementary teachers. I could go on and on. Yet the deficit just keeps growing. http://dft231.mi.aft.org/files/june2014.pdf

Famously “Buy American” UAW wants to Collect Dues from Foreign Car Auto Workers (and Fiat’s Chrysler)  The United Auto Workers union said on Thursday it will announce as soon as next week a plan to organize workers at the Daimler AG Mercedes-Benz plant in Alabama.Gary Casteel, the union’s newly elected secretary-treasurer, said the UAW will reveal its plan for workers at the Daimler plant in Tuscaloosa, Alabama “probably in the coming week.”

New UAW President Dennis Williams said Casteel, 56, will lead the union’s efforts to gain membership by organizing foreign automakers, which are primarily located in the South. http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2014/06/05/business/05reuters-autos-uaw-organizing.html?hp&_r=0

Spy versus Spy

Where is CIA asset Raymond Davis today?

NSA is Too Big To Comply with Court Order In an era of too-big-to-fail banks, we should have known it was coming: An intelligence agency too big to rein in — and brazen enough to say so.

In a remarkable legal filing on Friday afternoon, the NSA told a federal court that its spying operations are too massive and technically complex to comply with an order to preserve evidence. The NSA, in other words, now says that it cannot comply with the rules that apply to any other party before a court — the very rules that ensure legal accountability — because it is too big.   http://billmoyers.com/2014/06/11/too-big-to-comply-nsa-says-it’s-too-large-complex-to-comply-with-court-order/

The Magical Mystery Tour

He wants the Church to be poor so stop sending the money.

Al Jazeera: Holy Money (tax the churches)  The Pope is not only the shepherd of a billion faithful. He is also the head of a business empire of global dimensions that employs millions of people. The Holy Roman Church owns hospitals and universities, gold stocks and works of art of inestimable value. It attracts donations from all over the world, owns huge swathes of very expensive real estate both in the USA, in Italy and in some very surprising places. Today, the Catholic Church is the richest religious institution in the world but it also has an extremely high rate of financial crimes. The “affairs” have shaken the confidence of Catholics around the world, and have involved the highest levels of the Vatican as well as small local parishes.

In fact, the money scandals were at the heart of the most anti establishment conclave in nearly 100 years. A cabal of cardinals demanded change. They got Pope Francis and his mission is to clean up the finances of the church, get rid of the rotten apples and prune the trees that bore them. Today, heads are rolling on St. Peter’s square. But the stumbling blocks on the road to Pope Francis’s newly announced reform are considerable and the stakes are sky high for all the parties involved in the Church’s finances.

Led by University College London Historian John Dickie, this documentary goes into the pockets of the Holy Father to reveal the money issues facing the Catholic Church. Through the stories of the most recent scandals, his investigation exposes the Church’s tortuous relationship with money: from the USA where a cardinal has allegedly concealed assets to reduce the compensation of victims of child abuse to a religious congregation that traded real estate for political favour; from a monsignor arrested for money laundering to the embezzling of Sunday donations.

The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World

20 Years Ago: 1994 – The 1994 Stanley Cup riot occurs after the New York Rangers win the Stanley Cup from Vancouver, causing an estimated CA$1.1 million, leading to 200 arrests and injuries.  …Seventeen years later, the Canucks played the Boston Bruins in the Stanley Cup Finals. They again lost in Game 7, on June 15, 2011, resulting in a similar riot. Hockey should not be played in June. It makes Cnadians Crazy.   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_Stanley_Cup_riot

So Long

Gabriel Kolko  ““The New Deal illusion survives because it is a very useful to today’s Democratic Party,” Kolko wrote in 2012. “It needs myths, but if one knows the truth about it then we have the basis for understanding the essentially conservative nature of today’s Democratic Party.”  https://portside.org/2014-06-11/gabriel-kolko-left-leaning-historian-us-policy-dies-81