Rouge Forum Dispatch: Press Discovers Capitalist Schooling for the Empire–momentarily
We Say Fight Back!
Photos: Youth Climate Change Demonstrations Across The World
www.npr.org/2019/03/16/704050431/photos-youth-climate-change-demonstrations-across-the-world
Teachers union votes to authorize strike against Sacramento City Unified
The teachers union at Sacramento City Unified School District announced Friday that its members have voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike.
The Sacramento City Teachers Association spent three weeks collecting votes, and said turnout was 70 percent of its 2,500 members. According to the union, 92 percent voted to approve the strike.
The move adds to the challenges faced by the district, which is under the threat of state takeover as it wrestles with a $35 million budget gap.
The teachers union said it will call for a strike if Sacramento City Superintendent Jorge Aguilar, board President Jessie Ryan and the district “persist in their unlawful behavior and avoid taking measure to correct their unlawful behavior,” according to a statement.
‘You made us use our teacher voice.’ Teachers pack Statehouse to rally for better pay
The streets around the Indiana State Capitol Building flowed red Saturday as hundreds of teachers – donning the color of the public school movement – descended upon it to push for better pay.
Organized by the Indiana State Teachers Association, the rally drew more than 1,000 teachers and public school advocates from around the state into the Statehouse. The event was originally scheduled to be held outdoors, but rain moved it into the Statehouse rotunda, where teachers wearing red t-shirts filled the floor and two floors of balconies overlooking it.
And as Teresa Meredith, president of the ISTA, used her “teacher voice” to call on elected officials to make significant investments in teacher pay this legislative session, her voice echoed off the walls of the chambers where those lawmakers will return on Monday. Only a handful of Democratic legislators were on hand for the event, but Meredith said they didn’t need to be there to hear the teachers’ message.
“This is our day,” she said. www.indystar.com/story/news/education/2019/03/09/teachers-pack-indiana-statehouse-rally-better-pay/3113610002/?fbclid=IwAR2y_a-LXf0TAW2dseg__POv1lVzlTtoJly90khf_89Dtx2ab9S5ivkxP1Q
Oregon teachers plan for walkout if budget deal isn’t reached
After years of negotiations and disappointment with the Oregon State Legislature’s proposed budgets, Oregon educators are saying enough is enough. And if a deal can’t be reached soon, teachers say they plan to hold a walkout.
Tad Shannon, who has been president of the Eugene Education Association for seven years, said they’ve kept steady pressure on lawmakers to get the resources teachers need to best serve students.
In a letter sent out to teachers, Shannon wrote: “No one can do this for us. The time is now. We can’t wait any longer.”
The letter claims Oregon has one of the lowest graduation rates in the nation as well as the third highest class size.
Now, teachers are speaking out about the importance of smaller class sizes.
“I believe education is about relationships, and in general when we have these mega class sizes — when you’re seeing 34 students come in in a 45-minute class period and then another 34 to 35 — you just don’t have time to build those relationships,” said Paul Neiffer, a teacher in the Ione School District in Morrow County.
“We can’t continually cut education and expect the results to continually improve,” Shannon said.
Administrators and teachers alike said students thrive in smaller classrooms and in larger ones they suffer.
Diana Wallace, a learning consultant, said larger classrooms have the ability to create learning gaps. www.kezi.com/content/news/Teachers-plan-walkout-507174851.html?fbclid=IwAR2ju16cRs97S0wcr85zjlxllGryAmjhFTMjAOeIub_kFv4GQXjD5xPFplE
JCPS closed on Wednesday, March 13 due to teacher absences
JCPS
✔ @JCPSKY
Due to approximately a third of teachers being absent and the inability to safely cover a large number of classes with substitute teachers, all @JCPSKY schools will be closed Wed., March 13, 2019.@YMCALouisville CEP “Snow Day” sites will be open: https://goo.gl/7H9q3o. www.14news.com/2019/03/13/jcps-closed-wednesday-march-due-teacher-absences/
A new group aims to unify Tennessee teachers in advocating for public education, following a blueprint that led to teacher strikes that rocked states like Arizona, Kentucky and West Virginia.
The three founders of TN Teachers United, who are current and former teachers union leaders, say their state affiliate, the Tennessee Education Association, is not fighting hard enough for educators.
They plan to circumvent the state teachers union’s leadership to advocate for increased funding and less testing in schools, while bringing more teachers who don’t belong to unions into the process.
“They’re not listening to the members, and the members are ready for action,” Memphis Shelby County United Education Association President Tikeila Rucker said, acknowledging her part in the new group puts her in a “tough place. www.tennessean.com/story/news/education/2019/03/12/tn-teachers-united-public-education-funding-school-testing-union/3131729002/?fbclid=IwAR3WOWyAujuBalVzKR8X60RzZYLspkaSiovou3L-A0Ne8ODdUa9aO6AO_Vc
How Teacher Strikes Are Changing
When West Virginia teachers walked out of their classrooms last month and swarmed the state Capitol in protest, it almost felt like déjà vu.
The two-day statewide strike was nearly a year to the day after teachers from the Mountain State staged their initial walkout over low pay—and lit the match for what became a wildfire of teacher activism.
But this time, teachers’ demands were different, a reflection of the changing flavor of strikes nationwide. While last year’s teacher walkouts were focused primarily on stagnant wages and crumbling classrooms, the strike demands now are more far-reaching www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2019/03/06/how-teacher-strikes-are-changing.html?cmp=eml-enl-eu-news1&M=58768983&U=1563936&UUID=46048324bb29698793cb0230d913a743&fbclid=IwAR1BWBnvcuDD98fBaVYQH_2znr0J8UU5yv46RDhwffMAidyxtTS5OG5bLO8
Thousands of Maryland teachers to rally in Annapolis Monday for more school funding
Thousands of Maryland teachers and education advocates are expected to pour into Annapolis for a march and rally to push for more school funding Monday night.
The “March for Our Schools” will lead to road closures and traffic delays.
The Maryland State Education Association is bussing in thousands of participants. Annapolis officials expect at least 7,500 participants, which would make it one of the largest rallies in the state’s capital city in the past decade.
Prince George’s County Public Schools are dismissing two hours early to allow teachers and students more time to get to Annapolis. www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/education/k-12/bs-md-teacher-rally-annapolis-20190310-story.html?fbclid=IwAR386I7f-J9LkJ_luZNcdxIbj4rIFS9s-BRCzNpsM7iOPuO6LkZF-HdQfHM
CSO musicians picket in front of Orchestra Hall after announcing strike
For the first time since 2012, the musicians of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra went on strike on Sunday evening.
“We have been clear from the beginning that we will not accept a contract that diminishes the well-being of members or imperils the future of the orchestra,” said Stephen Lester, CSO bassist and chair of the musicians’ negotiating committee, in a statement.
“As of today, the musicians of the CSO are on strike. Beginning at 8 a.m. Monday morning, March 11, picket lines will stretch across all of the doors of Orchestra Hall through 8 p.m. daily until a contract that is fair to the musicians is reached. It is requested that no orchestra, performer or patron cross the line.”
At issue is orchestra management’s proposal to alter the musicians’ pension from a defined benefit plan to a direct contribution plan, as well as a salary dispute. www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/music/reich/ct-ent-cso-musicians-union-0311-story.html?fbclid=IwAR2uLapcra8PQh2TLxZzgbIpzG9QxpQbkmNu4S8XTzqy2MPPA8sQPtaB4LY
The Little Red Schoolhouse
College Admissions: Vulnerable, Exploitable, and to Many Americans, Broken
Standardized test scores are manufactured. Transcripts are made up. High-stakes admissions decisions are issued based on fabricated extracurricular activities, ghostwritten personal essays and the size of the check written by the parents of the applicant.
American universities are often cast as the envy of the world, august institutions that select the best and the brightest young people after an objective and rigorous selection process.
But the bribery scandal unveiled by the Justice Department this week — and a number of other high-profile cases that have captured the headlines in recent months — has shown the admissions system to be something else entirely: exploitable, arbitrary, broken.
At the heart of the scandal is a persistent adulation of highly selective universities. “Elite colleges have become a status symbol with the legitimacy of meritocracy attached to them, because getting in sanctifies you as meritorious,” said Jerome Karabel, a sociologist at the University of California, Berkeley, and a historian of college admissions. www.nytimes.com/2019/03/15/us/college-admissions-problems.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Feducation&action=click&contentCollection=education®ion=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront
Another Admissions Advantage for the Affluent: Just Pay Full Price
We’ve learned a lot this week about some of the advantages that rich people have in the college admissions process.
A small number of people in the 1 percent have always been able to buy a building for a campus, and with it a spot for their child. And now we know that a few others in the lower rungs of the 1 percent might be tempted to break a law or two with a well-placed bribe to a coach or a test proctor.
But there is another admissions edge at many prestigious private colleges and universities that isn’t readily apparent, and it’s open even to those who are merely upper middle class. You may tilt the scales in your favor if you can pay four years of tuition, room and board — up to $300,000 or so — without needing financial aid.
Schools don’t talk about this much. It’s not a great look, at least at first glance, and broadcasting it runs the risk of scaring lower-income applicants away from applying. www.nytimes.com/2019/03/15/your-money/college-admissions-wealth.html
USC’s central role in college admissions scandal brings anger and dismay
Professor Homayoun Zadeh was an institution at USC’s dental school, rising over a four-decade academic career from student to lab director to the chair of the periodontology department.
But when it came time for his own daughter to apply to USC, Zadeh allegedly turned to an off-campus connection to make sure she got in. As laid out in an FBI affidavit filed in court this week, the 57-year-old agreed to pay a shady college consultant from Newport Beach $100,000 to bribe a corrupt athletic department administrator. His daughter was admitted as a star recruit in lacrosse, a sport she did not play, according to federal prosecutors.
“I have not shared anything about our arrangement but she somehow senses it,” he wrote of the teenager in a 2017 text to the counselor quoted in the affidavit. “She’s concerned that others may view her differently.”
The largest college admissions scandal in U.S. history stretches from La Jolla to Cape Cod, but its epicenter is Southern California and the private university here coveted by so many children of privilege and their families. www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-usc-culture-college-admissions-scandal-20190313-story.html
Capitalism + Identity politics: I am the Michigan teacher removed from teaching African-American history
In the past two weeks, Birmingham Public Schools has been embroiled in controversy around the teaching of African-American history and the district’s approach to race relations instruction. Bridge Magazine printed two articles about the removal of a white teacher who was teaching African-American history at Groves High School. New Superintendent Mark Dziatczak sent a message to 8,000 members of the community and staff, criticizing the course syllabus and substantially agreeing with the Bridge opinion piece.
I am that teacher. www.bridgemi.com/guest-commentary/i-am-michigan-teacher-removed-teaching-african-american-history
Plan to force out 16 Lemon Grove teachers approved
A plan to essentially force 16 Lemon Grove teachers to resign was approved Tuesday night in a 3-2 vote.
The Lemon Grove School District informed the teachers that it would move in a different direction at the end of this school year. The teachers were at the district for two years, the end of their probationary period. Any more time and they would become permanent.
The district says it will replace those positions with new teachers for next year.
“Our governing board believes that each child deserves the very best,” the district said in a statement. “We will continue to provide that to you in Lemon Grove School District.”
“Why aren’t we maintaining the teachers that have been here and have built relationships with our children? Built relationships with our parents? With our community,” parent Rosa Carney said.
Angela Vento, who has four children in the district, said her 9-year-old son Joshua was upset when he found out his teacher would be let go. www.10news.com/news/local-news/plan-to-force-out-16-teachers-draws-ire?fbclid=IwAR0WfS8r620ci8Ody-KQPII2HaL_oS2KO1Eh1hoIPMPB6D2OvFvGKZPGHMA
Betsy DeVos Eases Rules on Faith-Based Schools Accepting Public Funds
The Department of Education said this week it will allow religious organizations to receive public funds for equitable services, reversing an earlier practice.
The move was in response to a 2017 Supreme Court decision that ruled Missouri was wrong to deny a church-funded preschool a grant to purchase recycled tires that would be used for the school’s playground. The court said Missouri’s denial was unconstitutional.
“The Trinity Lutheran decision reaffirmed the long-understood intent of the First Amendment to not restrict the free exercise of religion,” Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said. “Those seeking to provide high-quality educational services to students and teachers should not be discriminated against simply based on the religious character of their organization.” (Newsmax)
Docs Shed Light on SDSU Mission Valley Spending
(After the faculty voted to end the racist Aztec mascot, an interim president established a secret committee. They voted to keep it. Why? Racism and money).
Documents released by SDSU show one consultant jumped directly from doing work for the university to doing work for the SDSU West campaign. But SDSU officials won’t clarify where the $1.6 million they spent crafting the Mission Valley plans came from.
San Diego State University has spent about $1.6 million crafting its vision for the old Qualcomm Stadium site.
That spending – on architects, real estate and stadium experts, a public relations firm and a veteran political operative – helped boost the university’s Mission Valley expansion plans before last fall’s election. After seeing and hearing from the university about what it could do with the stadium site, voters approved a ballot measure that essentially forces the city to sell land to SDSU.
During the campaign, the university had to dance a fine line. As a general rule, public agencies like SDSU cannot spend public money to urge people to vote for or against a ballot measure, unless the spending is explicitly authorized by law, the California Supreme Court has ruled. There’s no hard and fast rule about what is OK, because the court said that depends on the “style, tenor and timing” of information coming from a public agency.
Documents released by the university in response to a public records request by Voice of San Diego drive home just how close to the line SDSU went – one political consultant did work for SDSU right up until he joined a campaign trying to get land for the university. And though the records shed light on how the university spent $1.6 million creating the plans, officials will not clarify where the money came from. www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/education/docs-shed-light-on-sdsu-mission-valley-spending/
Students loot Art Institute of Seattle classrooms as school suddenly shuts down
Hundreds of students are scrambling as the Art Institute of Seattle shut its doors for good on Friday.
Now, as other universities in the area try to step up and help, some frustrated students are showing their anger by looting classrooms.
Art Institute students found out about the closure a couple of days ago — two weeks before the end of the quarter. www.kiro7.com/news/local/students-loot-art-institute-of-seattle-classrooms-as-school-suddenly-shuts-down/928844678?fbclid=IwAR2jiVx47QjOzZaP91VrGdl-ISPJkK8h286tb67S5eH3UYEC8KtcpC74io0
Tuition at USD rises above $50K
Tuition at the University of San Diego has risen above $50,000 a year for the first time, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.
The private Catholic university increased tuition by $1,700 for the 2019-2020 academic year, bringing the annual cost of attending the school to $50,450, the U-T reported. With the addition of room and board and other related expenses, the cost of a year at USD is now $67,211.
Only about 100 other private colleges and universities in the country charge $50,000 a year or more. California schools in that category include University of Southern California, Stanford and Pomona College. fox5sandiego.com/2019/03/11/tuition-at-usd-rises-above-50k/
The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor
‘Combat Obscura’ is a brutally honest look at the blurred morality of the war in Afghanistan
Marines from 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment stand around a gaggle of Afghan villagers in Kajaki, rifles alert to the dirt, as an officer flips through a canary yellow “Wanted” pamphlet featuring the faces of high-value Taliban targets.
A few villagers are aggressively pulled from the circle, fingerprinted and photographed, while young Marines, many who cannot yet legally buy beer in the U.S., speculate on the guilt or innocence of those in their presence.
“I don’t know. I’m jaded,” one Marine says.
“I think these guys are always just hanging out. I don’t think they’re bad guys, but when we kill them, we see the same dudes in same clothes, so who knows?”
By that night, the Marines realize they apprehended innocent men…
“You join the Marine Corps and you think the Marine Corps is a bunch of perfect people, you know? They don’t do anything bad, don’t curse and they’re really just squared away killers.
“And the Marine Corps is filled up with the most f–ked up individuals I’ve ever met. Just like me, you know?” www.militarytimes.com/off-duty/military-culture/2019/03/15/combat-obscura-is-a-brutally-honest-look-at-the-blurred-morality-of-the-war-in-afghanistan/?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=Socialflow+MAR&fbclid=IwAR0i7g3ZBuLj4mjE_SzTwbivEVRFiaAjARHMpvoTqssaHuYjUKT1sm0rS9k
above, Bill Mauldin
The new MEU: How the Corps is changing missions for grunts
The Marine Expeditionary Unit is floating force in readiness — hauling grunts, aircraft and tactical vehicles to rapidly respond around the globe.
But for the past 20 years the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been a major dumping ground for the roughly 2,000 Marines and their floating armada of combat power aboard the MEU.
It has sapped the Corps’ primary mission to fight from sea and secure contested beach heads.
As the Corps prepares to face down rival tech-adept forces like Russia and China, the Navy-Marine team will need to be more dynamic, unpredictable and able to spread across farther swaths of geography.
If you’ve blinked, you probably missed the signs.
But the Marine MEUs are once again at a major inflection point as they prepare for war with rising powers, a position the MEU has not been in since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2019/03/13/the-new-meu-how-the-corps-is-changing-missions-for-grunts/?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=Socialflow+MAR&fbclid=IwAR2i7EnA8lPc59jxcYYk4pp8C5Umq3eV3Mo58emu6DKdf-XOE3zKkWYygaE
Watchdog: Pentagon doesn’t know where $2.1B was spent on F-35 parts
Pentagon officials did not account for and manage $2.1 billion worth of F-35 Joint Strike Fighter parts and must now rely on the aircraft’s maker, Lockheed Martin, to tell them where and when it spent the funds, according to a new watchdog report.
The scathing report from the Defense Department’s (DOD) Office of Inspector General found that Pentagon officials “failed to implement procedures, and failed to appoint and hold officials responsible, to account for and manage government property for more than 16 years.”
As a result of major oversights, “the DoD does not know the actual value of the F‑35 property and does not have an independent record to verify the contractor‑valued government property of $2.1 billion for the F‑35 Program,” the report states.
The implications are significant, the inspector general noted, since without accurate records, F‑35 program officials have no metrics to hold Lockheed accountable for how it managed 3.45 million pieces of government property. thehill.com/policy/defense/434280-watchdog-pentagon-doesnt-know-where-21b-was-spent-on-f-35-parts?amp&fbclid=IwAR0JOe6jd30ZW-nUzj7Fday1I54RUUTPHknv6AlX4E54DH6oW5ZagSsD-Zk
The Drugs That Built a Super Soldier
During the Vietnam War, the U.S. military plied its servicemen with speed, steroids, and painkillers to help them handle extended combat.
Some historians call Vietnam the “last modern war,” others the “first postmodern war.” Either way, it was irregular: Vietnam was not a conventional war with the frontlines, rears, enemy mobilizing its forces for an attack, or a territory to be conquered and occupied. Instead, it was a formless conflict in which former strategic and tactical principles did not apply. The Vietcong were fighting in an unexpected, surprising, and deceptive way to negate Americans’ strengths and exploit their weaknesses, making the Vietnam War perhaps the best example of asymmetrical warfare of the 20th century.
The conflict was distinct in another way, too—over time, it came to be known as the first “pharmacological war,” so called because the level of consumption of psychoactive substances by military personnel was unprecedented in American history. The British philosopher Nick Land aptly described the Vietnam War as “a decisive point of intersection between pharmacology and the technology of violence.” www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/04/the-drugs-that-built-a-super-soldier/477183/?fbclid=IwAR1kvbewZwwQlAmhGq78-NsM16L63TLRERlWy0c5E8LAG6nIZlaJeJyjB2M&utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_content=5c8cc9384b73850001583d00_ta&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook
My Lai Massacre
The My Lai massacre was one of the most horrific incidents of violence committed against unarmed civilians during the Vietnam War. A company of American soldiers brutally killed most of the people—women, children and old men—in the village of My Lai on March 16, 1968. More than 500 people were slaughtered in the My Lai massacre, including young girls and women who were raped and mutilated before being killed www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/my-lai-massacre-1
Even the head of $6M liver study doesn’t know what’s going on at San Diego VA
When seeking answers, it makes sense to go to the source.
So we went straight to the top in our ongoing investigation of the San Diego VA — to Dr. Ramon Bataller. He’s leading a huge, international project looking into alcoholic liver disease, and the San Diego VA has been collecting samples from sick veterans and sending them to his storage facility as part of that study.
The problem, as we’ve reported, is that the patients in San Diego weren’t told the study could compromise their health even further, an ethical violation that an internal review called “serious noncompliance” and has sparked a call for a congressional hearing.
So far, our investigation has led us to contradictory government reports, confusing timelines and disagreements on basic facts. We hoped talking to Bataller would give us the answers we’ve been looking for: How did these violations occur and what’s being done about them?
But Bataller, who said he’s been in “constant communication” with the San Diego VA and the National Institutes of Health about the study’s flaws, left us more confused than when we started.
The San Diego VA hasn’t helped us, either — not responding since March 1 to more than a dozen emails and phone calls about Bataller’s claims inewsource.org/2019/03/14/ramon-bataller-liver-san-diego/?fbclid=IwAR3DJI8_XW0gdXu-Uotpd-Bw5XbQrScssaxAQ0l6hkywnPDclNt8CqVwwDk
The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor
China’s Slowdown Already Hit Its Factories. Now Its Offices Are Hurting, Too.
White-collar workers face job cuts and shrinking paychecks even in go-go industries like technology, suggesting the economic pain is broader than official figures show.
The job fair in the Chinese boomtown of Shenzhen offered a white-collar future for a country that rose to economic greatness on the strength of its assembly lines, bulldozers and cranes. Technology, financial and real estate companies pitched jobs in sales, engineering, accounting and logistics. A $150,000-a-year salary, said one poster, “isn’t just a dream.”
But for many job seekers, it still seemed like one. At one end of the event hall, two dozen candidates sat dejectedly under a banner that read, “Hope you find a good job soon.”
“Job hunting,” said Hou Hao, a 28-year-old accountant who could not find a position that matched her previous $2,700-per-month salary, “now feels like being constantly slapped in the face.”
China’s slowdown, which has idled factories and construction sites, is rippling through its offices. Educated, white-collar workers are being hit with job cuts and shrinking paychecks. Even big technology companies like JD.com, the online retailer, and Didi Chuxing, China’s answer to Uber and one of the world’s most valuable start-ups, have not been spared. www.nytimes.com/2019/03/14/business/china-economy-slowdown-white-collar-workers.html
Wells Fargo CEO Got a 5% Pay Raise to $18.4 Million in Spite of Scandals
In spite of the scandals upon scandals that Wells Fargo dealt with last year—and continues to deal with—the bank submitted a security filing Wednesday which revealed that CEO Tim Sloan received a 5% pay raise between 2017 and 2018, totaling to an $18.4 million salary.
Sloan’s compensation, which Reuters reports included a $2 million bonus for factors including the bank’s financial performance, was disclosed the day after he was grilled by Congress during his testimony claiming that Wells Fargo has become a better institution following the 2016 revelation that employees had opened more than two million accounts for customers without their consent.
In 2018, the bank was fined $1 billion to settle federal probes into mistreatment of customers, $575 million to settle with state-level claims, and was told by the Federal Reserve to stop growing. fortune.com/2019/03/14/wells-fargo-ceo-tim-sloan-5-percent-raise/?fbclid=IwAR0MufGNMhX5Cx4WZvwQ9a1172y_otoSdFBH_–L-GA6JAZ4ptv4_KcWElU
Hedge fund billionaire Ray Dalio: ‘Capitalism basically is not working for the majority of people’
With just over $18 billion to his name, capitalism has been good to Ray Dalio: He started his hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, out of a two-bedroom New York City apartment in 1975 and it now manages $160 billion in assets and is the largest hedge fund in the world, according to Forbes.
Quite literally, Dalio has built a fortune thanks to capitalism. But he’s also keenly aware that it is a deeply flawed system.
“Capitalism basically is not working for the majority of people. That’s just the reality,” Dalio said at the 2018 Summit conference in Los Angeles in November. Monday, Dalio tweeted a video of his Summit talk. www.cnbc.com/2019/01/16/bridgewaters-ray-dalio-capitalism-is-not-working-for-most-people.html?fbclid=IwAR2ZDT4tuVBANxh2FTfZ8WRToPiWHwIURS2oyR5uu3FPQ-Y3u4k9GyZf8TE
U.S. Health Care Ranked Worst in the Developed World
The U.S. health care system has been subject to heated debate over the past decade, but one thing that has remained consistent is the level of performance, which has been ranked as the worst among industrialized nations for the fifth time, according to the 2014 Commonwealth Fund survey 2014. The U.K. ranked best with Switzerland following a close second.
The Commonwealth Fund report compares the U.S. with 10 other nations: France, Australia, Germany, Canada, Sweden, New Zealand, Norway, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the U.K. were all judged to be superior based on various factors. These include quality of care, access to doctors and equity throughout the country. Results of the study rely on data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Health Organization and interviews from physicians and patients.
Although the U.S. has the most expensive health care system in the world, the nation ranks lowest in terms of “efficiency, equity and outcomes,” according to the report. One of the most piercing revelations is that the high rate of expenditure for insurance is not commensurate to the satisfaction of patients or quality of service. High out-of-pocket costs and gaps in coverage “undermine efforts in the U.S. to improve care coordination,” the report summarized.
A striking take-home from the report was a need for equity throughout the nation. “Disparities in access to services signal the need to expand insurance to cover the uninsured time.com/2888403/u-s-health-care-ranked-worst-in-the-developed-world/?fbclid=IwAR2tu_Ws84Vebz9puuS-Ua9uvFZUbUR6Horu-e5QvAoYskMz_T771M1Z8Pk
The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement and The War on Reason
Two New Zealand Mosques, a Hate-Filled Massacre Designed for Its Time
The wounded tried to crawl away or lie still, while others ran or crouched behind the dead, but the gunman kept pulling the trigger.
He shot fleeing women and girls, and pumped bullet after bullet into piles of motionless men and boys in a house of worship.
The man accused of carrying out the worst mass murder in New Zealand’s modern history, one that left 49 people dead and more than 40 others wounded at two mosques in Christchurch, was identified in court documents on Saturday as Brenton Harrison Tarrant, 28. The suspect, who officials said is an Australian citizen, was charged with one count of murder, and more were expected to come.
Three other people were detained by the police, though one was released hours later. An 18-year-old local man was charged with “intent to excite hostility or ill-will,” but court officials would not elaborate. www.nytimes.com/2019/03/15/world/australia/new-zealand-mosque-shooting.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage
Trump Suggests His Supporters Could Turn to Political Violence If His Opponents ‘Go to a Certain Point’
“You know, the left plays a tougher game, it’s very funny. I actually think that the people on the right are tougher, but they don’t play it tougher. OK? I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump—I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough—until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad. But the left plays it cuter and tougher. Like with all the nonsense that they do in Congress … with all this invest[igations]—that’s all they want to do is —you know, they do things that are nasty. Republicans never played this. www.esquire.com/news-politics/a26827290/bikers-for-trump-military-political-violence-president/
White Nationalism’s Deep American Roots
A long-overdue excavation of the book that Hitler called his “bible,” and the man who wrote it
Robert Bowers wanted everyone to know why he did it.
“I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered,” he posted on the social-media network Gab shortly before allegedly entering the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh on October 27 and gunning down 11 worshippers. He “wanted all Jews to die,” he declared while he was being treated for his wounds. Invoking the specter of white Americans facing “genocide,” he singled out HIAS, a Jewish American refugee-support group, and accused it of bringing “invaders in that kill our people.” Then–Attorney General Jeff Sessions, announcing that Bowers would face federal charges, was unequivocal in his condemnation: “These alleged crimes are incomprehensibly evil and utterly repugnant to the values of this nation.”
The pogrom in Pittsburgh, occurring just days before the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht, seemed fundamentally un-American to many. Sessions’s denunciation spoke to the reality that most Jews have found a welcome home in the United States. His message also echoed what has become an insistent refrain in the Donald Trump era. Americans want to believe that the surge in white-supremacist violence and recruitment—the march in Charlottesville, Virginia, where neo-Nazis chanted “Jews will not replace us”; the hate crimes whose perpetrators invoke the president’s name as a battle cry—has no roots in U.S. soil, that it is racist zealotry with a foreign pedigree and marginal allure. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/04/adam-serwer-madison-grant-white-nationalism/583258/
Polish newspaper runs front page list on ‘how to spot a Jew’
www.youtube.com/watch?v=262VEdl0jNE
MP says it is ‘absolute scandal’ such ‘filthy texts, as if taken from Nazi newspapers’ sold in parliament
A right-wing newspaper in Poland has published an article on its front page instructing readers on “how to recognise a Jew”.
The Tylko Polska, or “Only Poland”, ran a list of “names, anthropological features, expressions, appearances, character traits, methods of operation” and “disinformation activities” which it said could be used to identify Jewish people.
“How to defeat them? This cannot go on!” the front page also said, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
The article was printed alongside a headline reading “Attack on Poland at a conference in Paris”, a reference to a Holocaust studies conference last month whose speakers were accused of being anti-Polish.
The newspaper caused an outcry among Polish politicians when it was distributed in the Sejm, the lower house of the Polish parliament. www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/poland-newspaper-how-to-spot-a-jew-antisemitism-front-page-tylko-polska-a8822646.html
Vote Could Free More Than 30 Men Accused of War Crimes in Guatemala
Emma Theissen Álvarez says she will never forget the faces of the three men who came to her Guatemala City house that day in 1981 looking for her daughter, a student leader who had escaped from her military captors. When they did not find their target, they grabbed her 14-year-old son, Marco Antonio, instead.
She never saw her boy again.
For years, the family said nothing, mute in its pain. But when Ms. Theissen and her three daughters finally went to court, helping secure the convictions of retired military commanders of crimes against humanity, they found a sort of healing.
“One feels that one is doing something to bring a little justice to Marco Antonio,” said Ms. Theissen, who is now 84.
Now that justice is in peril.
In a reversal that seemed unimaginable just a few months ago, Guatemalan lawmakers are moving forward with a proposal to grant amnesty for war crimes committed during the country’s brutal 36-year civil war. www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/world/americas/guatemala-military-amnesty-war-crimes.html
LeDuff: Richard Gets His Gun–barbarism rises
“There ain’t no heaven,” he chokes. “There ain’t no such thing.”
The murder of his toddler Christian got more air time than most murders in this city nicknamed for its proclivity for death – because his death was so senseless, because he was so young he had yet to commit sin.
Christian was going downtown to see Sesame Street Live, along with his three-year-old friend and his mother, who was driving. She entered the freeway. That’s when a grown man, Derrick Durham, felt he had been cut off. He felt further disrespected by the mother’s reaction to his displeasure. Durham, a convicted felon, and not one to be disrespected, told his traveling companion to lean back in the passenger seat. Then he fired a bullet past her face and out the window, striking and killing Christian.
The cameras were there again in court, after Durham had turned himself in to face open murder charges. They were there to record the testimony of Durham’s travel companion. www.deadlinedetroit.com/articles/21881/leduff_richard_gets_his_gun?fbclid=IwAR3UXIe4TxCxEAoL4MLDnqdq1Rfd7YKCD1M-Zq_T1gP_HtfNJgs72l85eio
Solidarity for Never
Here is Why the NEA and AFT millionaire bosses seek to divert and demolish the rise of school worker direct action strikes
With respect to nearly anyone who is trying to fight back in our current context, I differ from what most people think about the current state of US unionism.
Of course, none of that can be split away from an analysis of our current circumstances which I believe is an international hot war, and economic war, of the rich on the poor and the rapid emergence of fascism as a popular movement.
It does not have to be that way.
Let us hope that another scenario is possible if we take on the hard tasks of the immediate future and connect them to a vision of what can be. One of those tasks is to determine the role of the unions and the relationship of radicals to them.
Labor bosses at all levels are the nearest and most vulnerable of workers’ enemies. Rather than “move unions to the left,” better, “demolish the labor quislings, take their treasuries, seize their buildings, as we build a mass class conscious movement to transcend the system of capital.”
Why does that make better sense?
Since the Industrial Workers of the World (a grand vision but fatally flawed practice) were nearly demolished in the Palmer Raids of 1919, American unionism has been a false flag operation: not what most people think of as unionism. www.counterpunch.org/2013/10/23/counterfeit-unionism-in-the-empire/
Spy versus Spy
Tech Firm in Steele Dossier May Have Been Used by Russian Spies
Aleksej Gubarev is a Russian technology entrepreneur who runs companies in Europe and the United States that provide cut-rate internet service. But he is best known for his appearance in 2016 in a dossier that purported to detail Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election — and the Trump campaign’s complicity.
Mr. Gubarev’s companies, the dossier claimed, used “botnets and porn traffic to transmit viruses, plant bugs, steal data and conduct ‘altering operations’ against the Democratic Party leadership.”
On Thursday, new evidence emerged that indicated that internet service providers owned by Mr. Gubarev appear to have been used to do just that: A report by a former F.B.I. cyberexpert unsealed in a federal court in Miami found evidence that suggests Russian agents used networks operated by Mr. Gubarev to start their hacking operation during the 2016 presidential campaign www.nytimes.com/2019/03/14/us/politics/gubarev-steele-dossier-trump-russia.html
The Magical Mystery Tour
Poland’s Catholic Church: 382 priests abused 625 minors
Poland’s Catholic Church authorities revealed Thursday they have recorded cases of 382 clergymen who have abused 625 victims under the age of 18 since 1990.
The figure includes 198 priests and friars who abused minors under 15 years old and 184 clergy who abused victims between 15 and 18, according to Wojciech Sadlon, head of the church’s Institute of Statistics.
In both confirmed and unconfirmed cases, there were 345 victims under age 15 and 280 victims between 15 to 18. The crimes occurred from 1990 through June of last year, Sadlon told a news conference. More than 58 percent of the victims were male.
WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poland’s Catholic Church authorities revealed Thursday they have recorded cases of 382 clergymen who have abused 625 victims under the age of 18 since 1990.
The figure includes 198 priests and friars who abused minors under 15 years old and 184 clergy who abused victims between 15 and 18, according to Wojciech Sadlon, head of the church’s Institute of Statistics.
In both confirmed and unconfirmed cases, there were 345 victims under age 15 and 280 victims between 15 to 18. The crimes occurred from 1990 through June of last year, Sadlon told a news conference. More than 58 percent of the victims were male.
Archbishop Wojciech Polak, the primate of Poland, expressed “pain, shame and the sense of guilt that such situations took place.”
Authorities said in 25 percent of the cases before church courts, the clergymen were defrocked and in 52 percent of the cases they had their duties limited and were banned from working with children. Acquittals amounted to 10 percent of the cases and 13 percent of the cases were discontinued. www.apnews.com/24bc787f45964b63b7046e08dff8b699
The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World
To Honor Gift, Public Library Will Add Donor’s Name a 6th Time
The generosity of Stephen A. Schwarzman, the Wall Street financier and philanthropist, is evident in many places at the New York Public Library’s flagship building on Fifth Avenue.
Some of them are the five spots on the landmark building’s floor and stone exterior where Mr. Schwarzman’s name is inscribed, courtesy of his $100 million gift to the library system in 2008.
Now the library plans to carve his name onto the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building for a sixth time.
It will go next to a new entrance on West 40th Street, which is in keeping with an agreement the library made at the time of that gift.
Still, when it comes to Mr. Schwarzman and his donations, it’s never quite as simple as just etching in the name. www.nytimes.com/2019/02/28/arts/design/to-honor-gift-public-library-will-add-donors-name-a-6th-time.html
www.facebook.com/bassandguitarlove/videos/1975814079384703/?t=31
So Long
Nazi Twit, Edda Goering, Unrepentant Daughter of Hermann, Dies at 80
Edda Goering in 1940 with her mother, the actress Emmy Sonnemann, and her godfather, Adolf Hitler. As the only daughter of Hermann Goering, Hitler’s right-hand man, Ms. Goering was a national celebrity from the day she was born.CreditCreditVintage Corner/Alamy www.nytimes.com/2019/03/13/obituaries/edda-goering-dies.html