Rouge Forum Dispatch: The Ethic? Class Consciousness.
We Say Fight Back!
Fifty-four Walmart workers, members of the clergy and community members sat down in the middle of the street in Downtown Los Angeles Thursday evening to call for an end to retaliation and a salary of at least $25,000 a year for Walmart workers. www.enewspf.com/latest-news/latest-national/latest-national-news/47788-walmart-workers-supporters-intensify-protests-against-mega-retailers-low-wage-jobs-in-southern-california.html
Resistance at Brooklyn College As has happened at so many colleges and universities around the country, administrators at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York are moving to eviscerate a program that for years has provided invaluable educational opportunities for working class students. The college’s plan to dramatically scale back the Graduate Center for Worker Education is one of the latest efforts to curtail examination of working class issues done in a way designed to provide students with activist skills.
This development will no doubt be familiar to anyone involved in or aware of similar programs around the country that have recently been killed or are struggling mightily to survive. Among the principles behind the trend to eliminate such programs, two stand out: first, that college and graduate school should be the exclusive province of the well-to-do; and second, that education should serve the interests of the business class. Rarely do proponents openly enunciate those principles, however, and such is the case at Brooklyn College. www.counterpunch.org/2013/11/08/the-fight-at-brooklyn-college/
NYC Parents/Kids Boycott Big Tests Parents in one New York City school have decided to do more than complain about the perils of testing young children. They’re taking action, en masse, and getting results.
The Castle Bridge Elementary School is a progressive, dual-language K-2 school in the Washington Heights section of New York City. When parents there learned of a plan to give multiple choice tests to children as young as Kindergarten, they decided enough was enough. They refused to let their children be tested — and as a result, the school’s principle canceled the test entirely. www.alternet.org/education/what-happens-when-parents-stand-and-say-no-testing?akid=11107.1078898.sqtXX3&rd=1&src=newsletter919467&t=8&paging=off¤t_page=1#bookmark
Congratulations on the Publication of
Grambling Football on Strike The players said they wanted to call attention to unhealthy and unsafe conditions in their football facilities, and unhappiness over turmoil in their coaching staff, including the firing of Super Bowl-winning quarterback Doug Williams. Now, the strike is now over. Grambling players say that they will return to practice and to the field this weekend, but their move has sparked headlines around the country www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=240245908
Liat Pilots on Strike LIAT wishes to advise its passengers that due to action taken by its airline pilots’ trade union LIALPA, pilots who were scheduled to fly this morning, Tuesday, November 5, 2013, have not reported for duty. The company has not been provided with the required notification of industrial action as required under its agreement with the pilots.
As a result of the action, some of the company’s morning flights have been disrupted. This is also likely to affect service for the remainder of the day. nowgrenada.com/2013/11/liat-pilots-strike/
Timely Reminder –Ollman: Toward Class Consciousness Next Time:Marx and the Working Class Why haven’t the workers in the advanced capitalist countries become class-conscious? Marx was wont to blame leadership, short memories, temporary bursts of prosperity, and, in the case of the English and German workers, national characteristics.1 In the last fifteen years of his lfe he often singled out the enmity between English and Irish workers as the chief hindrance to a revolutionary class consciousness developing in the country that was most ripe for it.2Thesuccess of this explanation can be judged from the fact that it was never given the same prominence by any of Marx’s followers. Engels, too, remained unsatisfied. After Marx’s death,he generally accounted for the disappointing performance of the working class, particularly in England, by claiming that they had been bought off with a share of their country’s colonial spoils.3 The same reasoning is found in Lenin’s theory of imperialism, and in this form it still aidscountless Marxists in understanding why the revolution Marx predicted never came to pass in the advanced capitalist countries …Despite these varied explanations (or, perhaps, because of them), most socialists from Marx onward have approached each crisis in capitalism with the certainty that this time the proletariat will become class-conscious. A half-dozen major crises have come and gone, and the proletariat
at least in the United States, England, and Germany are as far away from such a consciousness as ever. What has gone “wrong”? www.pipeline.com/~rougeforum/towardclassconsciousness.pdf
Citizens militias take fight to Mexican cartel, and win In Mexico they call it “the drop that makes the glass overflow,” and it came at different points for the people living for years in fear of the brutal Knights Templar in the western Valley of Apatzingan, an emerald green tapestry of orchards bordered by blue-gray peaks.
“We lived in bondage, threatened by organized crime,” said Leticia, 40, who ekes out a living picking fruit and selling chicken on the side. “They wanted to treat people like animals.”
Eight months after locals formed self-defense groups, they say they are free of the cartel in six municipalities of the Tierra Caliente, or “Hot Land,” which earned its moniker for the scorching weather but whose name has also come to signify criminal activity. What’s more, the self-defense group leaders, who are clearly breaking Mexican law by picking up military-style arms to fight criminals, say the federal government is no longer arresting them, but recruiting them to help federal forces identify cartel members. www.ironmountaindailynews.com/page/content.detail/id/405127/Local-fight-with-Mexican-cartel–a-small-victory.html?isap=1&nav=5024
The Little Red Schoolhouse
Detroit “Public” Schools Continue Death by 1000 Cuts The cash-strapped Detroit Public Schools racked up an additional $18.7 million in debt from July through September after its plan to boost enrollment failed, and it spent above budgeted amounts on security, transportation and maintenance.
In its first quarterly interim financial report filed Oct. 15 to state school and treasury officials, DPS Emergency Manager Jack Martin cited declining enrollment, high teacher costs and cash flow demands as factors contributing to the district’s financial woes. DPS has been under state control since 2009, when its deficit reached $327 million.From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20131108/SCHOOLS/311080043#ixzz2k7U3YMUU
Detroit Fed Of Teachers Calls the Financial Collapse of DPS “Stabalizing” http://dft231.mi.aft.org/files/41488_teacher_pages.pdf
The Detroit “Leadership Class’ Ties to U Phoenix Benny Napoleon finally made it to WDET’s Craig Fahle Show Friday morning and, during a discussion about marijuana policy, the Wayne County Sheriff touted his credentials, not only as law enforcement veteran, but also as a criminal justice professor. He didn’t mention that he taught at the for-profit University of Phoenix.
Napoleon’s ties to the University of Phoenix aren’t unique. Detroit Police Chief James Craig isn’t just a University of Phoenix pitchman, he’s also an alumnus. Craig has a Master’s degree in management from the chain university. www.deadlinedetroit.com/articles/7060/detroit_s_leadership_class_has_a_university_of_phoenix_problem?utm_source=Deadline+Detroit+Newsletter&utm_campaign=ec76af53aa-newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c4d2ad8703-ec76af53aa-73197837#.Un2WKEvh54L
Lots of Loot for Michigan State “Spartan” bosses Given the financially challenging times, it’s more painful than usual to see officials spending money freely on travel, entertainment and meals.
That’s what’s happening at Michigan State University.
WXYZ’s Ross Jones, a Spartan alum himself, reports that tuition has risen nearly 20 percent since 2010, but school officials spent hundreds of thousands of school dollars on travel, entertainment and meals in the past year. The money comes from public money from the university’s investment accounts.
Jones reports in the past year, MSU trustees spent $68,000 in public funds to attend Spartan athletic events. At the same time, they spent $24,000 on performances at the Wharton Center for the Performing Arts, Jones reports. Jones reports that multi-millionaire developer and trustee Joel Ferguson took in at least 19 shows, including “Wicked,” Carrie Underwood and Jerry Seinfeld….Perhaps no one had a better time spending the school’s money than trustee Faylene Owen. When the MSU basketball team traveled to Germany last season, Owen made the trip, too. Flying business class, her ticket cost $5,698.
But no one likes to fly alone, so Owen brought her husband Larry along. MSU paid for his trip.
Once they landed in Frankfurt, the Owens found themselves in the lap of luxury, staying at the opulent Steigenburger hotel in a room that cost as much as $1,275 a night. www.deadlinedetroit.com/articles/7079/msu_trustees_spend_hundreds_of_thousands_of_on_entertainment_and_travel?utm_source=Deadline+Detroit+Newsletter&utm_campaign=ec76af53aa-newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c4d2ad8703-ec76af53aa-73197837#.Un2WKEvh54L
Another Funny Video on “The Shifts” on the Common Core (YOU MUST DO THIS) www.engageny.org/resource/quick-explanation-of-the-shifts-by-kate-gerson
The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor
Last Year President Obama Reportedly Told His Aides That He’s ‘Really Good At Killing People‘This will not go over well for the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner.
According to the new book “Double Down,” in which journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilemann chronicle the 2012 presidential election, President Barack Obama told his aides that he’s “really good at killing people” while discussing drone strikes.
Peter Hamby of The Washington Post reported the nugget in his review of the book.
The claim by the commander-in-chief is as indisputable as it is grim.
Obama oversaw the 2009 surge in Afghanistan, 145 Predator drone strikes in NATO’s 2011 Libya operations, the May 2012 raid that killed Osama bin Laden, and drone strikes that killed leader of the Pakistani Taliban leader and a senior member of the Somali-based militant group al-Shabab this week.
His administration also expanded the drone war: There have been 326 drone strikes in Pakistan, 93 in Yemen, and several in Somalia, compared to a total of 52 under George Bush.
Two of those strikes killed American-born al-Qaeda propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki and his American-born 16-year-old son within two weeks.
Under Obama U.S. drone operators began practicing “signature strikes,” a tactic in which targets are chosen based on patterns of suspicious behaviour and the identities of those to be killed aren’t necessarily known. (The administration counts all “military-age males” in a strike zone as combatants.)
Furthermore, the disturbing trend of the “double tap” — bombing the same place in quick succession and often hitting first responders — has become common practice.
Needless to say, a lot of innocent people have been killed.
Obama has also embraced the expansion of capture/kill missions by Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) after it developed into the primary counterterrorism tool of the Bush administration.
One JSOC operator told investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill, author of “Dirty Wars: The World Is A Battlefield,” that operations became
“harder, faster, quicker with the full support of the White House” under Obama.
Scahill, who also made a “Dirty Wars” documentary, told NBC News that Obama will “go down in history as the president who legitimized and systematized a process by which the United States asserts the right to conduct assassination operations around the world.”
So it is true that President Obama is “really good at killing people,” but he has demonstrated that is not necessarily noble. www.businessinsider.com.au/obama-said-hes-really-good-at-killing-people-2013-11
CIA Revenge Drone Killing in Pakistan After a drone strike had reportedly killed Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud Nov. 1, the spokesperson for the U.S. National Security Council declared that, if true, it would be “a serious loss” for the terrorist organisation.
That reaction accurately reflected the Central Intelligence Agency’s argument for the strike. But the back story of the episode is how President Barack Obama supported the parochial interests of the CIA in the drone war over the Pakistani government’s effort to try a new political approach to that country’s terrorism crisis.
The failure of both drone strikes and Pakistani military operations in the FATA tribal areas to stem the tide of terrorism had led to a decision by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to try a political dialogue with the Taliban.
But the drone strike that killed Mehsud stopped the peace talks before they could begin.
Pakistani Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan immediately denounced the drone strike that killed Mehsud as “a conspiracy to sabotage the peace talks.” He charged that the United States had “scuttled” the initiative “on the eve, 18 hours before a formal delegation of respected ulema [Islamic clerics] was to fly to Miranshah and hand over this formal invitation.” www.counterpunch.org/2013/11/08/the-cias-revenge-drone-strike-in-pakistan/
That Other Big Afghan Crisis, the Growing Army of Addicts The addicts stalk the streets of this border post like hollowed-out skeletons, hair matted by filth and eyes glassy. The villages that hug the roads are veritable zombie towns, where families of men, women and children hide their addiction within barren mud compounds. In western Herat Province, held up as an island of stability and progress in Afghanistan, this forlorn border town is instead a showcase for an intensifying crisis: Long the global leader in opium production, Afghanistan has now also become one of the world’s most addicted societies.
The number of drug users in Afghanistan is estimated to be as high as 1.6 million, or about 5.3 percent of the population, among the highest rates in the world. Nationwide, one in 10 urban households has at least one drug user, according to a recent report from the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. In the city of Herat, it is one in five.
From 2005 to 2009, the use of opiates doubled, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, putting Afghanistan on par with Russia and Iran, and the number of heroin users jumped more than 140 percent. Most drug experts think the rate of drug use has only increased since then. www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/world/asia/that-other-big-afghan-crisis-the-growing-army-of-addicts.html?ref=international-home&_r=2&
Who Broke Iraq and Set In Motion A 4 sided war forever? Three separate attacks killed at least 30 people in Iraq on Thursday, the authorities said. Two suicide bombers attacked an Iraqi military base north of Baghdad late Thursday, killing 22 soldiers and wounding at least 45 others, officials said. That attack, in Tarmiya, about 30 miles north of Baghdad, was a coordinated strike, with the first bomber setting off his explosives at the base’s front gate and the second bomber following three minutes later as soldiers responded to the first blast. In another attack, an explosion at a tent serving food to people on their way to the holy city of Karbala killed five Shiite pilgrims and wounded 12 others in the neighborhood of Baghdad Jadida, the police said. Earlier, a suicide bomber denoted his explosives near a military base in Anbar Province, killing three soldiers and wounding 10, a security official said. www.nytimes.com/2013/11/08/world/middleeast/iraq-blasts-kill-at-least-30-people.html?src=recg
Hey There Big Sailor! Want a Big Bribe? Two U.S. admirals — including the director of naval intelligence — are under investigation as part of a major bribery scandal involving a foreign defense contractor, Navy officials announced Friday night.
Vice Adm. Ted “Twig” Branch, the service’s top intelligence officer, and Rear Adm. Bruce F. Loveless, the Navy’s director of intelligence operations, were placed on leave Friday, and their access to classified material was suspended, the Navy said in a statement. Both admirals are being investigated for their ties to a Singapore-based defense contractor, Glenn Defense Marine Asia, whose chief executive was arrested in September on charges that he bribed other Navy officers into giving him classified or privileged information in exchange for prostitutes and cash.
Two Navy commanders and a senior Naval Criminal Investigative Service agent have already been arrested, and a captain was relieved of his ship’s command last month in connection with the case. www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/two-admirals-face-probe-in-navy-bribery-scheme/2013/11/08/d2dc063a-48d8-11e3-bf0c-cebf37c6f484_story.html?tid=pm_pop
The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor
The Demagogue Knew: Millions Face ObamagogueCare Cancellations Even as President Barack Obama sold a new health care law in part by assuring Americans they would be able to keep their insurance plans, his administration knew that tens of millions of people actually could lose those their policies.
“If you like your private health insurance plan, you can keep your plan. Period,” Obama said as he pitched the plan, the unqualified promise he made repeatedly.
Yet advisers did say in 2010 that there were large caveats and that anyone whose insurance plan changed would lose the promised protection of being able to keep existing plans. And a report in 2010 said that as many as 69 percent of certain employer-based insurance plans would lose that protection, meaning as many as 41 million people could lose their plans even if they wanted to keep them and would be forced into other plans. Another 11 million who bought their own insurance also could lose their plans. Combined, as many as 52 million Americans could lose or have lost old insurance plans. Read more here: www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/11/07/207909/analysis-tens-of-millions-could.html#emlnl=Morning_Newsletter#storylink=cpy
Stewart on Sibelius’ Lies Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius likely thought her interview with Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show” Monday night would be an easy setting to pitch the Obamacare exchanges to young people. Instead, she ended up getting accused of being a liar by the popular comedy host.
During his interview with Sebelius, Stewart repeatedly sought an answer from the secretary on why big businesses got a delay in their Obamacare mandate to provide affordable health insurance to their employees, while individuals did not get a delay in their Obamacare mandate making them purchase health care or face a penalty.
In a rare monologue at the end of the show, Stewart said he remained confused and that he suspected that the secretary may have been lying to him. dailycaller.com/2013/10/08/jon-stewart-accuses-kathleen-sebelius-of-lying-to-him-about-obamacare/
California’s Politios Head to Maui, On Capitalists’ Tab California lawmakers are packing their bags for their annual migration to the beaches of Maui starting Wednesday, where two conferences will be held sponsored by nonprofits backed by special interest groups.
A group called the Pacific Policy Foundation is holding a conference starting Wednesday in Maui to be attended by an unknown number of lawmakers.
Assembly Republican leader Connie Conway of Tulare is the highest ranking of 16 California lawmakers scheduled to attend a separate five-day conference beginning Nov. 17 at the Fairmont Kea Lani hotel, also on Maui.
The tab for lodging, receptions and conference events is picked up by the Independent Voter Project, a nonprofit policy group whose financial supporters have included Chevron, cigarette maker Altria, Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric, the California Beer and Beverage Distributors, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Assn., Lilly USA, LLC and the state prison guards union. www.latimes.com/local/political/la-me-pc-california-lawmakers-head-to-maui-for-annual-retreats-20131108,0,7335496.story#axzz2kBsPuS2c
Al Jazeera on California’s Corrupt Pols In one of its first major scoops since its August launch, Al Jazeera America has unearthed an FBI investigation into California state senator Ronald Calderon, who’s suspected of massive corruption.
Saying the FBI investigation could lead to “California’s biggest legislative scandal in more than two decades,” Al Jazeera America details the secret operation, which it discovered via a 124-page affidavit that’s under seal at U.S. district court in Sacramento. According to Al Jazeera America, Calderon has used campaign money to pay for trips to Cuba and Las Vegas, golf trips, and other goodies.
The alleged corruption spreads beyond potential misuse of campaign funds, and into Calderon’s influence over the entertainment business, according to Al Jazeera’s report. When FBI agents posing as movie executives approached Calderon, who chairs the Senate Select Committee on California’s Film and Television Industries, about lowering the budget threshold for films to qualify for tax credits, Calderon said he could help make it happen — in exchange for financial assistance for his kids, according to the affidavit obtained by Al Jazeera America. www.thewrap.com/al-jazeera-america-exposes-corruption-investigation-california-politician/
What Americans Don’t Know about Inequality f you think the widening chasm between the rich and the rest spells trouble for American democracy, have a look at the growing gulf between the information-rich and-poor.Earlier this year, a Harvard economist’s jaw-dropping study of American’s beliefs about the distribution of American wealth became a viral video. Now a new Pew study of the distribution of American news consumption is just as flabbergasting.According to the Harvard study, most people believe that the top 20 percent of the country owns about half the nation’s wealth, and that the lower 60 percent combined, including the 20 percent in the middle, have only about 20 percent of the wealth. A whopping 92 percent of Americans think this is out of whack; in the ideal distribution, they said, the lower 60 percent would have about half of the wealth, with the middle 20 percent of the people owning 20 percent of the wealth. What’s astonishing about this is how wrong Americans are about reality. In fact, the bottom 80 percent owns only 7 percent of the nation’s wealth, and the top 1 percent hold more of the country’s wealth – 40 percent – than 9 out of 10 people think the top 20 percent should have. The top 10 percent of earners take home half the income of the country; in 2012, the top 1 percent earned more than a fifth of U.S. income – the highest share since the government began collecting the data a century ago.
But America’s information inequality is at least as shocking as its economic inequality.
Pew sliced the TV news audience into thirds: heavy, medium and light. In my Jeffersonian fantasy, that distribution would look like a bell curve; in fact, it looks like a cliff. Heavy viewers watch a little over two hours of TV news a day, but medium viewers barely watch a quarter of an hour and light viewers average only two minutes a day. The top third of the country does 88 percent of the day’s TV news viewing; the middle third watches only 10 percent of the total time; the bottom third sees just 2 percent of the minutes of news consumed. Two-thirds of Americans live in an information underclass as journalistically impoverished as the minuscule bazillionaire class is triumphant.This month, the Pew Research Journalism Project reported how Americans get their news at home. If you think it’s from the Internet, you’ll be surprised that the 38 percent of us who access news at home on a desktop or laptop spend an average of only 90 seconds a day getting news online. America’s dominant news source is television, and the disparity between heavy viewers of TV news and everyone else is as startling as the gap between the plutocrats and the people.
As for those heavy news viewers, says Pew, “There is no news junkie like a cable junkie.” A heavy local news viewer watches about 22 minutes of it a day at home, and a heavy network news viewer watches about 32 minutes a day. But a heavy cable news consumer averages 72 minutes of it a day. The gap between heavy, medium and light cable news viewers is especially stark. If you’re reading this, you’re probably in that 72-minutes-of-cable-news-a-day class. But medium cable news viewers see barely more than three minutes of it a day, and light cable news viewers see about 12 seconds of it a day. In other words, either you live in the country that watches more than an hour of Blitzer, O’Reilly, Maddow, et al, a day – or in the country that watches virtually none of them at all. www.alternet.org/media/americas-information-inequality-least-shocking-its-economic-inequality?page=0%2C1
Screwed By Obamagogue and His Big Pharma Insuro Pals Americans who face higher insurance costs under President Obama’s health-care law are angrily complaining about “sticker shock,” threatening to become a new political force opposing the law even as the White House struggles to convince other consumers that they will benefit from it.
The growing backlash involves people whose plans are being discontinued because the policies don’t meet the law’s more-stringent standards. They’re finding that many alternative policies come with higher premiums and deductibles. After receiving a letter from her insurer that her plan was being discontinued, Deborah Persico, a 58-year-old lawyer in the District, found a comparable plan on the city’s new health insurance exchange. But her monthly premium, now $297, would be $165 higher, and her maximum out-of-pocket costs would double.
That means she could end up paying at least $5,000 more a year than she does now. “That’s just not fair,” www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/for-consumers-whose-health-premiums-will-go-up-under-new-law-sticker-shock-leads-to-anger/2013/11/03/d858dd28-44a9-11e3-b6f8-3782ff6cb769_story.html?hpid=z1
The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement
Loot and Swag in the US Marshalls Service The U.S. Marshals Service spent almost $800,000 over five years on “swag”— silk neckties, commemorative coins, holiday ornaments and fancy retirement gifts, according to a report from the Justice Department’s watchdog.
The spending was excessive and in some case violated department guidelines on how such promotional items should be handled, according to a report released Tuesday by the department’s Inspector General. www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/nov/05/marshal-service-swag-oig-report/
How Far Right Might Europe Lurch? All over, established political forces are losing ground to politicians whom they scorn as fear-mongering populists. In France, according to a recent opinion poll, the far-right National Front has become the country’s most popular party. In other countries — Austria, Britain, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Finland and the Netherlands — disruptive upstart groups are on a roll.
This phenomenon alarms not just national leaders but also officials in Brussels who fear that European Parliament elections next May could substantially tip the balance of power toward nationalists and forces intent on halting or reversing integration within the European Union.
“History reminds us that high unemployment and wrong policies like austerity are an extremely poisonous cocktail,” said Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, a former Danish prime minister and a Social Democrat. “Populists are always there. In good times it is not easy for them to get votes, but in these bad times all their arguments, the easy solutions of populism and nationalism, are getting new ears and votes.”
In some ways, this is Europe’s Tea Party moment — a grass-roots insurgency fired by resentment against a political class that many Europeans see as out of touch. The main difference, however, is that Europe’s populists want to strengthen, not shrink, government and see the welfare state as an integral part of their national identities. www.nytimes.com/2013/11/09/world/europe/right-wings-surge-in-europe-has-the-establishment-rattled.html?ref=international-home.
Solidarity for Never
above, Detroit Federation of Teachers President Keith Johnson joins VP Muslim and the Detroit Schools Emergency Financial Manager (inheritor of the EFM who fired every DFT member in 2012) in a group grin.
Detroit Fed of Teachers/AFL-CIO touts Common Core It is time to Dispel the myths and discover why these standards must be enacted dft231.mi.aft.org/files/41488_teacher_pages.pdf
The DFT on How to Suck up to your Boss on a Completely Unjust Evaluation After lots of conversations, here is my thinking: It’s best to own it, study it, practice for it, and know what administrators
are looking for. The main goal is to make sure you shine all the time. Knowing the criteria will help you enhance what you do well and strengthen your identified areas for improvement.
Here’s what I would do in advance of my evaluation:
• Obtain a copy of the rubric. Know the criteria and everything
you will be evaluated on.
• Mastering the process will lessen the fear. Like studying for a
test, if you know what’s going to be covered, why not study,
learn and practice.
• Document everything you do to improve your teaching. Document
every video you download and watch.
• Take photos of your classroom. dft231.mi.aft.org/files/41488_teacher_pages.pdf
NEA Joined AFT, Bill Gates, the Waltons, and Billionaires to Screw Colorado and Failed (so long member dues) They had $10 million in contributions, a barrage of advertising and support from the usually warring factions of the educational establishment. But Democratic leaders in this swing state were dealt a stinging defeat on Tuesday as voters resoundingly rejected an effort to raise taxes by $1 billion a year to pay for a sweeping school overhaul. The outcome, a warning to Democrats nationally, was a drubbing for teachers unions as well as wealthy philanthropists like Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York and Bill and Melinda Gates, who pumped millions of dollars into the measure, and it offered a sharp rebuke to Gov. John W. Hickenlooper and the Democratically led legislature, who have recently tugged Colorado to the left with laws on gun control and clean energy. www.nytimes.com/2013/11/07/us/politics/loss-on-school-tax-stings-colorado-democrats.html?src=recg
Meet the New UAW Union Boss–Same as the Old Boss and Pal of the Big Boss “He’s worked closely with Bob King,” said Harley Shaiken, a University of California-Berkeley labor professor and adviser to King. “I don’t think there will be a change of direction.”
King has overseen an increased alliance with unions outside the United States, an expansion of a two-tiered pay scale and more cooperation with companies in what he called the “UAW of the 21st Century.”
To further those goals, Williams brings some high-powered connections. “He’s one of the few in the labor movement who was an early supporter of the president and I think Barack Obama is very much aware of that,” Shaiken said. “That opens doors. www.nytimes.com/reuters/2013/11/06/world/europe/06reuters-autos-uaw-president.html?hp&_r=1&
The Torment and Demise of the UAW clogic.eserver.org/2006/gibson.html
Spy versus Spy
The only part of Government that listens to you is going to listen some more for now, President Obama and his top advisers have concluded that there is no workable alternative to the bulk collection of huge quantities of “metadata,” including records of all telephone calls made inside the United States. www.nytimes.com/2013/11/05/world/as-us-weighs-spying-changes-officials-say-data-sweeps-must-continue.html?ref=international-home&_r=1&
The Magical Mystery Tour
And In St Louis The St. Louis archdiocese asked a judge Wednesday to dismiss a lawsuit accusing the archbishop of failing to report child sexual abuse allegations against a priest he lived with and apparently mentored.
Attorney Gerard Noce, who represents Archbishop Robert Carlson and the archdiocese, told Circuit Judge Chris Kunza Mennemeyer that the lawsuit filed by the family of the alleged victim fails to spell out how Carlson and the priest’s other superiors acted improperly. She told attorneys for the two sides she would review the request and scheduled another hearing for next June.
The priest, the Rev. Xiu Hui “Joseph” Jiang, was charged in June 2012 with first-degree child endangerment and witness tampering. His trial had been scheduled to begin last month but was postponed. Jiang, who has pleaded not guilty, was placed on administrative leave. His attorney, Paul D’Agrosa, didn’t respond to a phone message Wednesday seeking comment.
Prosecutors allege that on several occasions earlier in 2012, Jiang had improper sexual contact with an underage girl in a church rectory parking lot and at her family’s home in Old Monroe, about 45 miles north of St. Louis. She was 16 years old when the alleged abuse began. www.startribune.com/local/230880671.html
The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World
A Classic Study of Alienation in Pro Baseball: Why I quit www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/sportingscene/2013/10/why-i-quit-major-league-baseball.html
Best and worst places to be an expat
So Long
Nancy Wake, “the White Mouse” and the most decorated woman of the 1939-45 war, disliked people messing around with her life story. Small wonder. It was an extraordinary story and an extraordinary life.
Ms Wake, who has died in London just before her 99th birthday, was a New Zealander brought up in Australia. She became a nurse, a journalist who interviewed Adolf Hitler, a wealthy French socialite, a British agent and a French resistance leader. She led 7,000 guerrilla fighters in battles against the Nazis in the northern Auvergne, just before the D-Day landings in 1944. On one occasion, she strangled an SS sentry with her bare hands. On another, she cycled 500 miles to replace lost codes. In June 1944, she led her fighters in an attack on the Gestapo headquarters at Montlucon in central France. www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/resistance-heroine-who-led-7000-men-against-the-nazis-2334156.html