Rouge Forum Dispatch: Reason vs Black Pills
We Say Fight Back!
Chinese protesters sing anthem The Internationale
Teacher Strike: New Haven Unified plans to calculate students’ final grades, not teachers
UNION CITY, Calif. (KGO) — Joe Ku’e Angeles, president of the New Haven Teachers Association, made it clear on Monday that the strike won’t stop until teachers get what they want.
“We said when we started this, we knew that it was not an easy path,” Ku’e Angeles said. “But, we knew we had to stay in solidarity.”
The union is calling for a 6 percent raise, 3 percent each year. The number is down from the 10 percent they initially asked for. https://abc7news.com/education/new-haven-unified-plans-to-calculate-students-final-grades-not-teachers/5328691/?fbclid=IwAR0VMI2RrWyB2qs_vF1DSmurckPTOXyFQmeWDJSiNJ0iiLjFoJ8ML306uco/arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-sltrib.s3.amazonaws.com/public/YUGCVWQZEFFMDI24KKPWC5ZP4I.jpg)
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Some of their signs were made from used manila folders. A few were written in pencil on pieces of lined paper. One was laminated. Another was covered in gold star stickers.
But nearly all of them had the same message: “6%.”
That’s the raise roughly 200 teachers asked for Tuesday night as they filled every seat in front of the Salt Lake City board of education. They weren’t allowed to speak at the public meeting. So with their signs, they made their opinions known as best they could.
“Teachers are doing more than ever before,” Chelsie Acosta, a teacher at Glendale Middle School, said afterward. “And we’re done. We’re done being disrespected as far as finances go. This is our silent protest.” www.sltrib.com/news/education/2019/06/05/nearly-teachers-salt/?fbclid=IwAR3nZQf5VhbWN8o1-h83q0Gq158E_qCeI3xtpCqHmVEGpTZu1TNaHf82DtU
The Little Red Schoolhouse
Biggest Offender in Outsize Debt: Graduate Schools
The signs are hard to miss in downtown San Francisco: two stylized A’s inside a red circle, symbolizing the Academy of Art University. The for-profit school occupies more than 40 buildings throughout the city and has made its family owners very rich.
Where does the Academy of Art’s money come from? About $100 million per year arrives as tuition and fees financed by federal student loans. The full scope of the borrowing was revealed May 21, when, for the first time, the Department of Education released information about how much debt students are taking on to earn degrees from various academic programs at American colleges and universities.
The data shows one sector in particular with outsize debt: graduate school. And while the Academy of Art fosters unusually high burdens, many public universities and nonprofit schools have also gotten into the debt-fueled graduate school business.
In releasing the college loan data, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos described it as part of President Trump’s executive order to address the student debt crisis. Access to the loan amounts, she said, will allow students to make informed decisions about choosing colleges. At the same time, the department is preparing to uproot the Obama administration’s approach to the debt crisis, by repealing regulations that cut college programs out of the federal financial aid system if students don’t earn enough money to pay their loans back. www.nytimes.com/2019/06/03/upshot/student-debt-big-culprit-graduate-school.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
Moores and minions grab no-bid Aztec Stadium deal (capitalist schools riddled with corruption everywhere)
Naming rights hawked by L.A.’s Legends
Above, former Padres owner John Moores who got the city to pay for part of Petco Park, promising a winner, then sold the team.
..SDSU’s rough and tumble campaign, one of costliest in city history, drew backing from money men with prospective financial interests in the Mission Valley deal, including Moores, who four days before the election personally kicked in $98,500.
The same day, Kara M. Kratzer, whose husband John is CEO of Moores-owned JMI Realty, gave an equal sum, city campaign disclosure records show. JMI itself earlier gave a total of $122,000.
Inside observers note the SDSU project would have been dead on arrival without backing and behind-the-scenes direction from Moores and his minions.
Topping the list is ex-city manager and former Moores executive Jack McGrory, now a California State University trustee who was head cheerleader and behind-the-scenes money mover for SDSU’s takeover of the roughly 132-acre Mission Valley site.
McGrory, chief rainmaker for the university’s campaign, run by an ostensibly independent political fund calling itself Friends of SDSU, personally kicked in $170,000. That represents a significant chunk of the total $204,922 that McGrory has come up with for city political campaigns over the last decade. …
…Founded in 2006 as JMI Sports, the Moores affiliate now running the stadium show at SDSU has had a scandal-fraught relationshipwith the school. In 2011, the firm made fallen SDSU athletics director Jeff Schemmel head of its operations.
“I’m thrilled to be part of a company that provides a much-needed array of services on this ever-changing intercollegiate athletics landscape,” Schemmel said in a September 26, 2011 statement.
“I’m equally thrilled to be working alongside people I respect as much as I do Erik Judson and John Moores, and the advisors on our JMI Sports team.”
Tagged for traveling on the taxpayers’ tab to see his Mississippi mistress, Schemmel had departed his SDSU job after being paid a $116,000 settlement fee and other deal sweeteners. He later exited JMI to found his own sports management venture, College Sports Solutions.
Below, wrapped in red hubris for her “inauguration” which few students attended, even though they were allowed to skip classes, SDSU’s De La Torre celebrates herself
A student of Universal Academy, a charter school in Detroit managed by Hamadeh Educational Services, used her graduation speech to call for change in her “unlawful” school before administrators censored her.
Tuhfa Kasem, a 17-year-old from Detroit who graduated salutatorian, alleged Hamadeh Educational Services showed “favoritism and clear biases” toward UA’s sister school, Star Academy. She said she noticed this from the first time she stepped into the school.
Though she said she and her classmates tolerated the school’s treatment, when students would speak out on occasion, they would be shut down.
“Thinking we’d just stay quiet and accept it as first-generation Yemeni and Iraqi students, I can honestly say it’s partially our faults since we’ve tolerated it for a majority of the time. The few times we would speak out we’d quickly be shut down and excuses would be shoved down our throats and we’d be given no option but to accept them,” Kasem said. “I’ll give this administration props for the one thing they’re good at, which is switching the problems back on the students.”
The mic volume was cut during Kasem’s speech, but the whole speech was posted in text form below a video that Phil Leslie, one of Kasem’s former teachers, posted on YouTube. After the mic was cut, the crowd began yelling to “higher the volume,” so Kasem stepped to the front of the stage to continue her speech. Then Nawal Hamadeh — president, superintendent, and CEO of Hamadeh Educational Services, according to her LinkedIn — can be heard saying, “We need someone to escort her,” into a microphone, and also noting that it’s Ramadan and calling for “respect.” www.metrotimes.com/news-hits/archives/2019/06/05/student-criticizes-charter-school-during-her-salutatorian-speech-at-graduation?fbclid=IwAR2SKZqqFgmiLDGLSXiwZ-wfWZA9VePN-CI1vNF7jSxzlxs3xsS5A3QghsE
Video below:
Parents, teachers, students of defrauded schools grapple with uncertainty
A court order last week that shut down a network of charter schools allegedly used to siphon $50 million in state funds has left students, parents and teachers anxious and adrift.
The San Diego County District Attorney’s Office last week announced a 67-count indictment alleging that 11 defendants conspired to enroll thousands of students, often without their knowledge, into a statewide network of 19 online charter schools and then billed the state.
The document named Sean McManus, 46, an Australian who operated charter schools in California, Jason Schrock, 44, another charter school operator, and nine other defendants.
They are accused of collecting millions in state funds from 2016 to February of this year using student information obtained from private schools and youth athletic groups, then providing little or no educational services.
Eight of the 11 co-defendants have pleaded not guilty and denied the allegations. Two more are expected to be arraigned Thursday. McManus, believed in be in Australia, remains at large.
During a hearing Monday, San Diego Superior Court Judge Lorna Alksne appointed a receiver to manage the frozen bank accounts and assets associated with the charter schools which, attorneys indicated, may be more than $100 million.
Alksne also authorized release of $500,000 in scheduled withdrawals to cover existing operating expenses, including payroll, through the end of May. She said no further disbursements were authorized.
An attorney representing the interests of some of the charter school entities told the court Monday that 11,699 students need to be un-enrolled from the charter schools. www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/watchdog/story/2019-06-04/sd-me-charter-hearings
How New York’s Elite Public Schools
Lost Their Black and Hispanic Students
“All of New York City was new to me,” she said, remembering that she was exposed to loft parties in SoHo and friends’ luxurious apartments near Washington Square Park’s grand marble arch. At Stuyvesant, Ms. Morales, now the chief executive of a nonprofit, said she “learned there was so much more out there for me.”
In interviews, more than a dozen black and Hispanic students who graduated from New York City’s specialized high schools from 1975 to 1995 described the schools as oases for smart children from troubled neighborhoods. But the alumni said they were anguished that the schools have since lost nearly all of their black and Hispanic students. www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/03/nyregion/nyc-public-schools-black-hispanic-students.html
College admissions scam: Ex-USC soccer coach to plead guilty and cooperate in investigation
A former USC soccer coach will plead guilty and cooperate with the investigation that implicated him in a college admissions scheme that sneaked the children of wealthy families into top universities by using fake athletic credentials and bribes, according to court documents filed Monday.
Ali Khosroshahin, who led USC’s women’s soccer program from 2007 to 2013, will plead guilty to racketeering conspiracy by June 30.
Khosroshahin and his assistant coach at USC, Laura Janke, were paid more than $350,000 to designate as recruited soccer players four children whose parents were clients of Newport Beach college consultant William “Rick” Singer, according to an indictment charging Khosroshahin, Janke and 10 others with racketeering conspiracy in March. Singer is the admitted mastermind of the scheme.
None of the four recruits played soccer competitively, prosecutors said. www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-college-admissions-scandal-ali-khosroshahin-plea-20190603-story.html
Instagram account spewing hate found linked to Point Loma High students
POINT LOMA —
Extra police will be stationed at Point Loma High School for the remainder of the school year, and school officials will talk to junior ROTC cadets about tolerance and cyberbullying after hate speech was found posted on an Instagram account linked to students.
The account, which was created in March, was closed after it was brought it to the attention of school officials, the FBI and the anti-Defamation League of San Diego last weekend. A second, “copycat” account was created by another student this week before it, too, was shut down.
Some Point Loma residents, already on edge after three homes were tagged with swastikas in late May, were alarmed to learn of the accounts, which included memes of guns and ammunition, talk of a school militia, as well as anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim messages.
The troubling social media posts were discovered less than two weeks after retaining walls on three homes on Santa Barbara Street in the Point Loma Heights area were tagged with swastikas drawn in blue chalk. www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/public-safety/story/2019-06-06/residents-concerned-after-instagram-account-linked-to-point-loma-high-spews-hate-speech
UCSD chancellor sued for allegedly discriminating against female executive
A former fundraising executive at UC San Diego alleges in a lawsuit that Chancellor Pradeep Khosla sabotaged her career, wrongfully firing her after she said she had raised hundreds of millions of dollars for the fast-growing campus.
Jean E. Ford said in a suit filed Monday in San Diego County Superior Court that Khosla was verbally abusive to her and other female administrators at UCSD, and regularly treated women more harshly than men.
She included the University of California Board of Regents as a co-defendant in the lawsuit, claiming that the board was aware that Khosla had acted unprofessionally but had done little to rectify matters. www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/education/story/2019-06-06/uc-san-diego-sued-for-alleged-gender-and-age-discrimination
Opinion: New social studies standards bungle history
Michigan’s K-12 social studies standards are enormously important — they will guide student learning about history, civics, geography and economics. As such, they are the foundation upon which our state and republic will flourish — or suffer.
On June 11, the State Board of Education will be reviewing a set of proposed revisions to the standards recommended by the Department of Education. A prior draft was released in March. Although there are some modest improvements from the March version, they continue to fall short of what our teachers, students and citizens deserve….
Other First Principles have been slighted. The right to alter or abolish an oppressive government is hardly mentioned; the Social Compact has been replaced with the Social Contract — a French term that helped propel the guillotine.
This critique was raised and ignored. Why? We cannot preserve our liberties without understanding their foundation.
Second, they do not require the teaching of vital content. Brown v. Board of Education is optional. Taxation without representation is entirely omitted. Socrates, Plato, Alexander the Great, all the Caesars, Jesus, Muhammad, Christopher Columbus, Adam Smith, James Madison, Napoleon, Lenin, Stalin, and other towering historical figures — just left on the cutting room floor as optional examples or entirely omitted. www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/2019/06/07/opinion-new-social-studies-standards-bungle-history/1366395001/
The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor
How US “good guys” wiped out an Afghan family
It was 4am when Masih Ur-Rahman Mubarez’s wife Amina called, an unusually early time for their daily chat. When he picked up the phone, he could hear the panic in her voice.
Amina was calling from the Afghan province of Wardak, where she brought up their children while he worked over the border in Iran to support them. She told him that soldiers were raiding their village. Some of them were speaking English. Amina was told to turn off her phone but Masih asked her not to – how would he know they were ok?
The call ended with Masih saying he would call again when things had calmed. But at 9am, when he dialled his wife’s number, her phone was off. He tried again at 9.30am. Still off. Through the whole of that day and the next, he repeatedly called. But Amina’s phone remained off.
It took another day for him to the learn the truth. Relatives avoided his calls or gave vague replies to his questions, until finally his brother broke the news. “He tried to avoid telling me the whole story, but I insisted that he tell me the truth,” Masih recalled in a wavering voice. “He told me to have patience in God – no one is left.”
An airstrike on Masih’s house had killed his wife and all his seven children, alongside four young cousins. His youngest child was just four years old.
In the following weeks, as grief consumed Masih, so did an intense need for answers. Who had killed his family and why? www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2019-06-03/us-bomb-kills-afghan-family
Families blast decision not to punish higher-ranking officers in Niger ambush
Family members of some of the special operations soldiers killed in a 2017 ambush in Niger reacted angrily Wednesday after being handed a 289-page report by Army officers and learning that no further disciplinary action was required beyond the letters of reprimand that have already been issued.
“I’m angry as hell,” Debra Gannon, the mother of Sgt. 1st Class Jeremiah Johnson, told ABC News, as she sat inside a popular Fort Bragg bar, next to a photo of her son on a memorial wall.
Arnold Wright, the father of Green Beret Staff Sgt. Dustin Wright, said, “I don’t see how people in the direct chain of command are being promoted when it was their decision to override the ground commander (who) was instrumental in my son’s death.” abcnews.go.com/Politics/families-blast-decision-punish-higher-ranking-officers-niger/story?id=63504679
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90,000 ‘blue water’ Vietnam veterans in line for disability benefits after Justice officials drop appeal
The Department of Justice will drop its appeal of a federal court decision awarding disability benefits to tens of thousands of veterans who claim exposure to cancer-causing chemical defoliants while serving in the seas near Vietnam, handing advocates what appears to be a final legal victory.
In a filing with the Supreme Court Tuesday, Justice Department officials said they will not argue for overturning the Procopio vs. Wilkie decision from January which undid years of Veterans Affairs policy denying benefits to about 90,000 “blue water” Navy veterans.
Congressional Budget Office officials had estimated that awarding the benefits to the blue water veterans could total about $1.1 billion over 10 years, but VA officials in the past have estimated the total could rise to more than $5.5 billion.
Justice lawyers had twice asked for deadline extensions to file an appeal, even as VA officials publicly said they believed the lower court decision should stand. Congressional leaders and outside advocates had also argued against an appeal. www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2019/06/05/90000-blue-water-vietnam-veterans-in-line-for-disability-benefits-after-justice-officials-drop-appeal/
Raiders, SEALs planned sexual assault in Green Beret hazing that led to homicide, Marine says
The story of how an Army Green Beret staff sergeant died at the hands of four fellow special operators while on a tour in Bamako, Mali two years ago has evolved over time as leaked information and finally official charges and a guilty plea from one of the defendants laid out details of the man’s death.
One of the remaining three co-defendants, a Marine Raider, is set to plead guilty to charges connected to what lead to the strangulation death of Staff Sgt. Logan Melgar. But documents obtained by The Washington Post add new details that were not previously revealed.
The Post reported Wednesday that through a stipulation of facts document it obtained and verified that not only were the two Navy SEALs and two Marine Raiders going to assault, duct tape and video record the illegal hazing of Melgar, but that they also planned to have a Malian man who was present sexually assault the 34-year-old staff sergeant on video. www.militarytimes.com/news/your-army/2019/06/05/raiders-seals-planned-sexual-assault-in-green-beret-hazing-that-led-to-homicide/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ebb%2006.06.19&utm_term=Editorial%20-%20Military%20-%20Early%20Bird%20Brief
Michael Klare, Fighting the Next War, Not the Last
The Navy’s War vs. Bolton’s War
The Pentagon’s Spoiling for a Fight — But With China, Not Iran
By Michael T. KlareThe recent White House decision to speed the deployment of an aircraft carrier battle group and other military assets to the Persian Gulf has led many in Washington and elsewhere to assume that the U.S. is gearing up for war with Iran. As in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, U.S. officials have cited suspect intelligence data to justify elaborate war preparations. On May 13th, acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan even presented top White House officials with plans to send as many as 120,000 troops to the Middle East for possible future combat with Iran and its proxies. Later reports indicated that the Pentagon might be making plans to send even more soldiers than that.
Hawks in the White House, led by National Security Advisor John Bolton, see a war aimed at eliminating Iran’s clerical leadership as a potentially big win for Washington. Many top officials in the U.S. military, however, see the matter quite differently — as potentially a giant step backward into exactly the kind of low-tech ground war they’ve been unsuccessfully enmeshed in across the Greater Middle East and northern Africa for years and would prefer to leave behind.
Make no mistake: if President Trump ordered the U.S. military to attack Iran, it would do so and, were that to happen, there can be little doubt about the ultimate negative outcome for Iran. Its moth-eaten military machine is simply no match for the American one. Almost 18 years after Washington’s war on terror was launched, however, there can be little doubt that any U.S. assault on Iran would also stir up yet more chaos across the region, displace more people, create more refugees, and leave behind more dead civilians, more ruined cities and infrastructure, and more angry souls ready to join the next terror group to pop up. www.tomdispatch.com/post/176570/tomgram%3A_michael_klare%2C_fighting_the_next_war%2C_not_the_last/
The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor
Huck
Audio: No BS News Hour – Who Rules Detroit and what of that bogus “comeback”?
www.nobsnewshour.com/?powerpress_pinw=648-podcast
Homelessness jumps 12% in L.A. County and 16% in the city; officials ‘stunned’
And as in past years, most — about 75% — were living outside, fueling speculation of a growing public health crisis of rats and trash near homeless encampments downtown.
The findings in L.A. follow a string of similarly dire point-in-time counts from across California, as government officials struggle to respond more forcefully to the state’s abject lack of affordable housing. The shortage is driving up rental prices, forcing people onto the streets at a rapid pace. www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-homeless-count-encampment-affordable-housing-2019-results-20190604-story.html
The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement and The War on Reason
ALERT: @detroitpolice Chief James Craig said the serial killer they announced today is NOT connected to rumors circulating on social media last month about an alleged serial killer dumping bodies in dumpsters. t.co/UKmnHyedpL pic.twitter.com/jwyr5MhZ9g
— WXYZ Detroit (@wxyzdetroit) June 5, 2019
Police said there wasn’t a serial killer in Detroit. Now there’s a serial killer in Detroit
There appears to be a serial killer targeting women in Detroit after all.
On Wednesday, police revealed that three female sex workers had been found dead on the city’s east side by “a serial killer and rapist,” their bodies all dumped in vacant buildings in the past three months.
The news comes several weeks after the department brushed off social media posts about a serial killer as unsubstantiated rumor. The posts followed the discovery of a woman’s body in a dumpster on the east side. They alleged the Detroit Police Department was trying to hide what was happening.
Police Chief James Craig maintained Wednesday that those early fears were unsubstantiated.
Those “rumors,” he told reporters, spoke to “a serial killer dumping bodies in dumpsters. That was found not to be true. This has no connection to that, this is very different.” www.deadlinedetroit.com/articles/22511/police_said_there_wasn_t_a_serial_killer_in_detroit_now_there_s_a_serial_killer_in_detroit?fbclid=IwAR0G4xNht0IwlxkQYMxL6O2odN2id4tcqQ3uUFi4CnJgzWvkRaK2x1nJkVI
Ex-Detroit Mayor Kilpatrick Pleads for Trump’s Help in Gushing Letter Praising His ‘Unprecedented Success
Ex-Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick has fired off a letter to President Donald Trump, profusely praising his bold presidency while asking him for a commutation to set him free.
“I first want to congratulate you for the overwhelming and stunning victories of your Presidential campaign, and also the unprecedented success of your first two-years in office. You have shaken up the entire world…and that is a great thing to behold,” Kilpatrick, a lifelong Democrat wrote in an April 16 letter obtained by Deadline Detroit. “I pray your success daily!”
The two-page cover letter includes a 20-page attachment in which Kilpatrick questions the feds’ case against him, point by point, and accuses the judge and his trial attorney of having a conflict of interest.
“I applaud your boldness and tenacity in confronting the traditional and sometimes deformed politics of our country. You have vociferously exposed the treacherous and calculating schemes of our media and government that have worked to crush families, communities, and even Truth itself. Thank you for standing up, speaking out, and exposing this wickedness.”
Kilpatrick, 48, who is serving a 28-year prison sentence for public corruption, not only questions the feds’ case, but the severity of his sentence, and asks for a commutation
Migrant arrests at U.S.-Mexico border surge to largest monthly total in more than a decade
The U.S. Border Patrol says a new record was set in May for the number of migrant families apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Agents apprehended 132,887 people in May, the largest figure in more than a decade. It set a record with 84,542 adults and children apprehended. Another 11,507 people were children traveling alone, and 36,838 were single adults. www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-border-patrol-migrant-apprehensions-20190605-story.html
Australian Police Raids Target News Media Over Leaked Documents
The Australian Federal Police raided the Sydney offices of Australia’s public broadcaster on Wednesday, apparently in connection with an article published in 2017 about Australian special forces being investigated over possible war crimes in Afghanistan.
The raid of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s offices came a day after the same agency searched the home, computer and cellphone of a journalist who reported on secret correspondence between government ministries over a plan to expand intelligence agencies’ surveillance powers. The police said the two raids were not related.
John Lyons, the executive editor of ABC News and the head of its investigative journalism unit, said on Twitter that the police had arrived at ABC’s headquarters with a search warrant that named three journalists. “We’ll be taking material with us. It will be sealed,” he quoted one of the officers as saying.
The federal police said the raid was connected to allegations of publishing classified material, saying they had received a referral on July 11, 2017, from the Australian military and the then-defense secretary. On that date, ABC published “The Afghan Files,” an article based on leaked military documents that detailed clandestine Australian operations in Afghanistan, including cases in which children and unarmed men were killed. www.nytimes.com/2019/06/04/world/australia/journalist-raid-annika-smethurst.html
From ‘Chicano blowout’ to blowup: Turmoil over MEChA name change was decades in coming (so long reconquista)
Joe Rodriguez was a teenager when he first embraced the slur. For years, Mexican Americans of low social status like him were called Chicanos.
In March 1968, the 15-year-old sophomore joined hundreds of other Garfield High School students in a protest against discrimination and unequal conditions at Los Angeles schools in what came to be known as the “Chicano blowouts.”
Soon Rodriguez, a fourth-generation Mexican American, declared, “I am Chicano.”
Today, however, many of the children and grandchildren of those who marched half a century ago find themselves in a debate over the role of words like “Chicano” in the fight for rights in the age of Trump. www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-mecha-chicano-controversy-20190603-story.html
CounterPunch on Stage: The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda
My real purpose for traveling to the East in January was to attend the showing of a two hour and forty-five-minute film that Steve Cannon, Walter Cotton and I produced in 1980, “81,” that was scheduled to be shown Washington’s National Gallery. Since Kino Lorber restored the film, it has been shown at museums and theaters throughout the country. Art Forum magazine was among the film publications that have called it one of the best movies of 2018.
Then came the government shut down, and the postponement of the showing. I had bought plane tickets and booked a hotel. Only Amtrak offered me a refund. To make use of my time, I decided to have Rome Neal, who has directed eight of my plays at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, round up some of the actors who had appeared in my 2017 play, ”Life Among The Aryans,” to read from a script I was working on entitled “The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda.” Like The Star Spangled Banner, “Hamilton, The Revolution” is some noisy, brassy state art, which pushes the creation myth that Alexander Hamilton and others were abolitionists. When, like the writer of The Star Spangled Banner, they were hypocrites. Next time you sing the lines, ” …and the land of the free,” remember that those lines were penned by Francis Scott Keyes, a wealthy slave owner. www.counterpunch.org/2019/04/12/counterpunch-on-stage-the-haunting-of-lin-manuel-miranda/
Solidarity for Never
Combined, the NEA, AFT, CTA, and UTLA spent more than one million dollars on the idiot proposition EE, which went down to an overwhelming defeat, as anyone with any grasp of taxation in California would have easily predicted.
If that money had been spent preparing a statewide strike, linking the many California strikes this year, or planning a nationwide school worker strike in the fall, it would have been well spent. But it would not take a million dollars to have planned, or plan, those solidarity strikes. It would cost nearly nothing beyond what NEA spends now. Direct action gets the goods. Trying to vote our way out of exploitation will never work. Don’t be fooled again.
A political disaster: How Measure EE, L.A. schools tax hike, failed so badly
Backers of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s proposed parcel tax always knew they had an uphill battle and that defeat was a possibility.
They needed a two-thirds majority for the measure to pass. They thought they could eke out a win.
After the ballots were counted, though, the tax earned only 45% of the vote — a stunning defeat for school leaders and Mayor Eric Garcetti, who campaigned hard for the measure.
Here is a look at what went wrong: www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-property-tax-lausd-explainer-20190605-story.html
Teacher unions were big contributors:
United Teachers Los Angeles – $500,000
American Federation of Teachers – $300,000
National Education Association – $250,000
California Teachers Association – $25,000
California Federation of Teachers – $10,000
New Haven Teacher Hardship Fund (With a million wasted on electoral work, the striking members are left with “Go Fund Me.”
NHTA is committed to our members and the students of New Haven. We want to ensure that the learning conditions of our students are the best they could be: their learning conditions are our working conditions. We knew that there would be a financial cost to this strike. Every day we are losing wages, but we are firmly convinced we are fighting for our students, their classrooms, and this community. However, some of our members are making this sacrifice in the face of a multitude of hardships. There are those with life-saving medical costs, family emergencies, and extraordinary financial hardship.
We are asking for donations to help those who are standing up for students and education, but who have greater financial need. New Haven teachers will pay it forward in the classroom. We’re asking for help to those in greatest need. www.gofundme.com/nhta-needy-teacher-fund?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=fb_dn_cpgntopstickysmall_r&fbclid=IwAR3C2-dLDfLlnjrqRKYj0o2iqkGhX2B2wcrHLYm2xQa090h3sX7vv62Qre4
Former Failed FEA union boss Joanne McCall takes job in Pinellas
Joanne McCall, former president of Florida’s teachers union, will arrive in Pinellas County Tuesday as the new executive director of the local union.
The position at Pinellas Classroom Teachers Association has been vacant since 2016, when former director Bruce Proud retired. Its duties since have been handled by Mike Gandolfo, the union’s president, who said the burden of dual responsibilities finally became too much.
In an announcement Friday, Gandolfo wrote that union members will benefit from McCall’s “vast experience, knowledge, contacts, drive and focus.”…
While in the state role, McCall took some criticism from both Ingram and others. Broward Teachers Union president Anna Fusco told the Miami Herald in October that herself and other local union presidents “basically demanded (Ingram) step up” in McCall’s place.
“She never executes a plan in a timely manner. She doesn’t include her local leaders to execute the plan,” Fusco told the Herald. “We’re always called off at the last minute and left on the back burner.” www.tampabay.com/blogs/gradebook/2019/06/07/former-state-teachers-union-president-joanne-mccall-takes-job-in-pinellas/?fbclid=IwAR2N6Zzp9c9UxEPVuNn8BEpOPWL26Be1JPm6d7CkH8vPiPMrwnPXlAJvrxU
Antonucci: California Teachers Association’s strategic plan — how’s it doing?
Back in 2014, the California Teachers Association generated a long-term strategic plan. Titled “Our Union, Our Future,” it described eight broad goals, including community engagement and coalition building, organizing unrepresented education workers and “transforming our profession.”
In April, CTA assembled a working group of union officers, representatives and staff to assess the progress the union has made in implementing its strategic plan over the last five years. It presented the results to the union’s board of directors in an 18-page report.
You can read the entire report here, but I want to highlight those portions that have more than just a pure parochial interest to union insiders. We also have to allow for the standard amount of self-congratulation that often accompanies union analysis of its own practices.
The working group did note that progress on the union’s goals was “uneven,” blaming this on “the attacks on public education” and the loss of agency fees. However, “CTA responded powerfully against each of these threats and at the end of the five-year period emerged as a stronger, more connected, more diverse and vibrant union,” the report states.
Among its successes CTA lists exposing “school privatizers and Right to Work” and the “agenda of billionaires in supporting corporate charter schools and those who fund anti-education candidates and initiatives.” The union celebrated its political campaign and charter organizing victories, but was most proud that “the public perception of teachers, teachers’ unions, and unions in general, has improved” because “we have changed the narrative from ‘teachers care about salaries’ to ‘teachers care about kids.’” laschoolreport.com/antonucci-california-teachers-associations-strategic-plan-hows-it-doing/
Spy versus Spy
The Magical Mystery Tour
Maryetta Dussourd, 74, Dies; Raised Early Alarm on Abusive Priests
Maryetta Dussourd was a young mother in Boston in the late 1970s, caring for her daughter and three sons as well as a niece’s four sons, when her parish priest took an interest in the boys.
As a devout Roman Catholic, Ms. Dussourd was honored that the priest, the Rev. John J. Geoghan, visited often, taking the boys out for ice cream and going up to their rooms at night to pray with them.
While the priest was upstairs, Ms. Dussourd and her husband, Ralph, watched television. Sometimes they saw as many as three half-hour programs before Father Geoghan came back down. He would make regular visits over two years.
Then the couple learned that the priest had been sexually molesting all seven boys. The oldest was 12, the youngest was 4. www.nytimes.com/2019/06/03/obituaries/maryetta-dussourd-dead.html
Televangelist explains his fleet of private jets: “It’s a biblical thing.”
www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2019/06/04/wealthy-televangelist-explains-his-fleet-private-jets-its-biblical-thing/?fbclid=IwAR3WYR0LgnjhMTO11q8yrC97w8aur1b_k_HR8L0ofRJQf11B2G99Kmt6gE0
Leader of La Luz Del Mundo religious group arrested on suspicion of rape, child porn
A top leader of the La Luz Del Mundo religious organization was arrested on suspicion of human trafficking, production of child pornography, forcible rape of a minor and other felonies, California prosecutors said Tuesday.
Naasón Joaquín García and co-defendants Alondra Ocampo, Azalea Rangel Melendez and Susana Medina Oaxaca — all of whom are affiliated with La Luz Del Mundo — are alleged to have committed 26 felonies in Los Angeles County between 2015 and 2018. www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-la-luz-del-mundo-charges-abuse-20190604-story.html
West Virginia bishop spent church money on liquor, ‘luxury items’ and home renovations, church report says
The former Catholic bishop of West Virginia spent church money on “luxury items” — including liquor, travel and home renovations — and faces “credible” accusations that he sexually harassed adults under his authority, according to a report issued under a new Catholic policy to address misconduct by bishops.
The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World
Trump protests: Giant model of president sitting on golden toilet while tweeting appears in central London
Robot also has audio function which makes fart sounds and says ‘no collusion’, ‘you are fake news’ and ‘witch-hunt’ www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/trump-protests-toilet-robot-tweeting-trafalgar-square-london-state-visit-a8943061.html?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR1VQigm2laLe_tM9kPmCqlNhBTDyMFOYQ8GHdrRKrVCT4_-E3yDY9r93TE#Echobox=1559642155
Louisville’s International Airport Renamed After Muhammad Ali (NPR confusing the fascist NOI with “Islam.”)
Now to Louisville, Ky., where the city’s regional airport has a new name – the Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport. Today the city unveiled the branding for the airport renamed for the boxing legend. As Amina Elahi of member station WFPL reports, the change is being hailed by many in the community, especially many Muslims who find great meaning in the decision.
AMINA ELAHI, BYLINE: Muhammad Ali’s daughter Maryum thinks it’s a big deal that Louisville has named its airport after her dad.
MARYUM ALI: My father would be the type where, if he was living, going in and out of that airport – this airport was named after me. That’s something. That’s something, man. This is big. This is beautiful – a Muslim, a Muslim. I could just hear him now. ….MOHAMED SAMAHA: But I stress on the fact that we don’t want to claim Muhammad Ali just for ourselves as Muslims. Muhammad Ali is a world icon. www.npr.org/2019/06/06/730429551/louisvilles-international-airport-renamed-after-muhammad-ali
www.youtube.com/watch?v=quMHNp8QwzI
Ghoul rules in Hamtramck
So Long
www.youtube.com/watch?v=29tUPcw7-R8
James Ketchum, Who Conducted LSD Experiments on Soldiers, Dies at 87
Dr. James S. Ketchum, an Army psychiatrist who in the 1960s conducted experiments with LSD and other powerful hallucinogens using volunteer soldiers as test subjects in secret research on chemical agents that might incapacitate the minds of battlefield adversaries, died on May 27 at his home in Peoria, Ariz. He was 87.
His wife, Judy Ketchum, confirmed the death on Monday, adding that the cause had not been determined.
Decades before a convention eventually signed by more than 190 nations outlawed chemical weapons, Dr. Ketchum argued that recreational drugs favored by the counterculture could be used humanely to befuddle small units of enemy troops, and that a psychedelic “cloud of confusion” could stupefy whole battlefield regiments more ethically than the lethal explosions and flying steel of conventional weapons.
For nearly a decade he spearheaded these studies at Edgewood Arsenal, a secluded Army chemical weapons center on Chesapeake Bay near Baltimore, where thousands of soldiers were drugged. www.nytimes.com/2019/06/03/obituaries/james-ketchum-dead.html
Visduh June 4, 2019 @ 7:54 p.m.
If anyone didn’t see this, or something very like it, coming he/she should have. It wasn’t a matter of who would take it over, but of when and how and to what degree the public and taxpayers would take a huge hit. This new SDSU president could have stopped it, or so I think, and didn’t. Her history of shady activity and double-dealing while at UC Davis are an indication of what can be expected from her. Embracing this deal is totally in character for her, and also many of those at CSU headquarters. Bend over and grab your ankles, San Diego taxpayers.
Student criticizes charter school during her salutatorian speech at graduation