LUV News on Shell in the Arctic

POLLUTING THE ARCTIC

Shell has started drilling in the Arctic, despite flimsy safety tests. The Obama regime has expanded oil drilling in many places previously banned. Should be good for big campaign financing. Polling indicates eighty percent of Americans consider themselves to be pro-environment, but the “2 party system” ignores them, just as it does about their desires to end war, improve the economy for other than the 1%, and many other issues.

One the the biggest scams in the American mass media is the promotion of the illusion that those who run the country want to create jobs. In fact, the only thing the ruling Forces of Greed (FOG) want is more wealth going to transnational corporations that provide wealth to the 1%.

Thus, one hears President Obama talk about creating jobs, but his actions were to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and greatly increase the bankster bailout over that of the Bush regime (which Obama voted for when in the Senate). These actions resulted in billions of American dollars chasing slave labor, child labor and prison labor abroad, where the ruling FOG bring in the highest return.

If there was truly concern about jobs, companies would be punished for laying off workers, just as they are rewarded by the government for hiring, even though they don’t hire for the good of the country, but so they can get a worker who will produce far more than they are paid (so why does this require a reward from taxpayers?). In fact, the Federal Reserve is known for raising interest rates when it feels that too many people are employed, to slow the economy so that wages will not increase for the working class. There is no concern about the working class in the White House, Congress, or Supreme Court.

“Creating jobs” is usually a straw man when employed in mass media, used to convince the masses that we must pollute the environment, provide banksters and other criminals with tax dollars, or whatever else will bring more profit to the 1% at everyone else’s expense.  Americans are trained to believe that if some jobs are created from these actions, they are worthy projects, but job creation is never the objective, only the enabling phrase of the scam.

The only time rulers have shown concern for the working class is when it is too late, and the revolution comes with guillotines to chop off royal heads or royalty are lined up and shot, as happened in 1917 Russia. It looks like we might be headed in that direction again, by the actions of our government leaders, who seem not to have a clue as to the suffering of those at the bottom of the American class system.  —Jack Balkwill

Greg Palast on Chicago Schools

The Worst Teacher in Chicago

by Greg Palast | For the OccupiedChicago Tribune
Tuesday, September 10, 2012

This is a true story.
CHICAGO.  In a school with some of the poorest kids in Chicago, one English teacher—I won’t use her name—who’d been cemented into the school system for over a decade, wouldn’t do a damn thing to lift test scores, yet had an annual salary level of close to $70,000 a year. Under Chicago’s new rules holding teachers accountable and allowing charter schools to compete, this seniority-bloated teacher was finally fired by the principal.

In a nearby neighborhood, a charter school, part of the city system, had complete freedom to hire. No teachers’ union interference. The charter school was able to bring in an innovative English teacher with advanced degrees and a national reputation in her field—for $29,000 a year less than was paid to the fired teacher.

You’ve guessed it by now: It’s the same teacher.

It’s Back to School Time! Time for the editorialists and the Tea Party, the GOP and Barack Obama’s Education Secretary Arne Duncan to rip into the people who dare teach in public schools.

And in Arne’s old stomping grounds, Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel is stomping on the teachers, pushing them into the street.

Let’s stop kidding ourselves. This is what Mitt Romney and Obama and Arne Duncan and Paul Ryan have in mind when they promote charter schools and the right to fire teachers with tenure:  slash teachers salaries and bust their unions.
They’ve almost stopped pretending, too.  Both the Right Wing-nuts and the Obama Administration laud the “progress” of New Orleans’ schools—a deeply sick joke. The poorest students, that struggle most with standardized tests, were drowned or washed away.

One thing Democrat Emanuel and Republican Romney both demand of Chicago teachers is that their pay, their jobs, depend on “standardized tests.” Yes, but whose standard?

Here is an actual question from the standardized test that were given third graders here in NYC by the nation’s biggest test-for-profit company:

“…Most young tennis stars learn the game from coaches at private clubs.  In this sentence a private club is….”   Then you have some choices in which the right answer is “Country Club—place where people meet.”

Now not many of the “people [who] meet” at country clubs are from the South Side of Chicago—unless their parents are caddies.  A teacher on the South Side whose students are puzzled by the question will lose their pay or job. Students on the lakefront Gold Coast all know that mommy plays tennis at the Country Club with Raul on Wednesdays. So their teacher gets a raise and their school has high marks.

And while Mayor Rahm promises kids in “bad” schools new teachers (the same ones at lower pay) at high-score schools, in fact, they are never actually allowed in.

But Rahm, after all, is just imposing Bush education law which should be called, No Child’s Behind Left.

You want to know what’s wrong with our schools? Benno Schmidt, CEO of the big Edison Schools teach-for-profit business is a creepy, greedy privateer. But he told me straight: that before Hurricane Katrina, his company would never go into New Orleans because Louisiana spent peanuts per child on education. He made it clear: You get what you pay for. Not what you test for.

So the charter carpetbaggers slither in, cherry-pick the easy students, declare success. The tough cases and special ed kids are left in the public system so they can claim the public system fails.

Here’s what the teacher who was terrible at $70,000 but brilliant at $41,000 told me:

“They’re not doing this in white neighborhoods. And they want to get rid of the older, experienced teachers with seniority who cost more. Get rid of the teachers and, ultimately get rid of the kids. And the charter school gets to pick the kids who get in.”

It’s simple. When you look at the drop-out rates in New York (41%) and Chicago (44%), the solution offered is to pay teachers less. They punish those who dare to work in poor schools where kids struggle and you can bet that “washing away” half the kids in our schools is, in fact, exactly what they’ve planned.

It’s notable that, when he lived in Chicago, Barack Obama played basketball with city school chief Arne Duncan, but Obama sure as hell didn’t send his kids to Arne’s crap public schools. Those are for po’ folk.

His kids went to the tony “Lab” School in Hyde Park. Obama believes what Duncan believes and what Romney believes:  there’s no need for universal education and no need to spend money on it. Yes, they like to say that “children are our future.” But they mean the children of China are our future, the Chinese kids who will make the stuff we want and the children of India who will program it all for us.

After all, how much education does some obese kid from Texas need to stack boxes from China in a Wal-Mart warehouse?

Education is no longer about information and learning skills. It’s now about “triage.” A few selected by standardized tests or privileged birth will be anointed and permitted into better and “gifted” schools.

The chosen elite are still very much needed: to invest in India and Vietnam, to design new derivatives to circumvent the laughable new banking laws, and to maintain order among the restless hundred-million drop-outs squeezed out of the colon of our educational system.

Democrats’ Bantustans, Republicans’ Value-less Vouchers.

The Obama/Duncan/Emanuel plan is to create Bantustans of un-chartered, cheaply-run dumpster schools within a government system. But Romney and the GOP would give every child a “choice” even outside government schools with “vouchers.”

Of course, the “vouchers” don’t vouch for much. Romney’s old alma mater, Cranbrook Academy, runs at $34,025 a year, not counting the polo sticks and horse. The most generous voucher program is Washington DC’s, beloved of the GOP, which pays about $7,500, or if the student’s “choice” is Cranbrook, about 2 months of school. Hyde Park Day School Chicago is $35,900. To give each kid a real choice, not just a coupon, means a massive increase in spending per pupil. I didn’t see that in the Republican platform, did you?

The experienced teacher in Chicago who took the pay cut was offered one consolation. She was told she could make up some of the pay loss by quitting the union and saving on union dues.

So that’s the program. An educational Katrina: squeeze the teachers until they strike, demolish their unions and drown the students.
Chicago’s classroom war is class war by another name.

Class dismissed.

Media Matters on the Wall Street Journal’s Ethics

The Wall Street Journal’s Disclosure Issue: Bolton Edition

In the Wall Street Journal, John Bolton parroted a clear Romney campaign falsehood that the U.S. Navy under President Obama is as weak as it was in World War I. Furthermore, in publishing the op-ed, the Journal did not disclose Bolton’s position as an adviser to Mitt Romney.

The Journal’s failure to disclose Bolton’s interest fits with the paper’s pattern of printing columns by Karl Rove attacking President Obama without acknowledging that Rove co-founded and runs a super PAC devoted to defeating Obama.

In a September 10, Wall Street Journal op-ed, Bolton claimed that China is becoming increasingly aggressive towards its neighbors in the Pacific Ocean because of Obama administration policies. He claimed that the United States should reverse Obama’s policies, in part, by “rapidly rebuild America’s Navy.” Bolton went on to claim: “Today we have about 285 warships at sea, a scarcity of vessels not seen since World War I.”

The suggestion that the Navy is as weak as it was in World War I echoes untrue arguments advanced by Romney himself. During a Republican presidential debate, Romney claimed, “Our Navy is smaller than it’s been since 1917″ and suggested that Obama was to blame.

However, Politifact declared that claim false, reporting that a University of Georgia historian said such a claim “doesn’t pass ‘the giggle test’ ” because our Navy is clearly stronger than it was in World War I. Moreover, the number of Navy ships declined in every year of President George W. Bush’s second term, but has increased under Obama.

Politifact explained:

Counting the number of ships or aircraft is not a good measurement of defense strength because their capabilities have increased dramatically in recent decades. Romney’s comparison “doesn’t pass ‘the giggle test,’ ” said William W. Stueck, a historian at the University of Georgia.

Consider what types of naval ships were used in 1916 and 2011. The types of ships active in both years, such as cruisers and destroyers, are outfitted today with far more advanced technology than what was available during World War I. More importantly, the U.S. Navy has 11 aircraft carriers (plus the jets to launch from them), 31 amphibious ships, 14 submarines capable of launching nuclear ballistic missiles and four specialized submarines for launching Cruise missiles — all categories of vessels that didn’t exist in 1916.

[...]

[M]ost experts we spoke to felt that Romney’s critique was misguided. [Commonwealth Institute expert Charles] Knight went so far as to offer this reply:

“If Mr. Romney wants a truly stark example of diminished military capability, he should compare today’s horse cavalry to that in 1917, or even 1941 when there were still 15 active horse-cavalry regiments in the Army. Today there has been total disarmament of horse cavalry,’ he might say, ‘leaving our nation defenseless in this regard.’ His chosen comparisons are almost as absurd.”

Politifact also reported that the number of Navy ships peaked during the Korean war, but that has been “followed by a slow, consistent decline over the next five decades.” Politifact added:

[D]uring the years 2005 to 2008, the number of active ships was 282, 281, 278 and 282, respectively — each of which were below the levels of 2009, 2010 and 2011. In other words, each of the final four years under George W. Bush saw lower levels of active ships than any of the three years under Obama. The number of surface warships also bottomed out in 2005 under Bush, later rising by about 10 percent under Obama.

Editorial page editors have harshly criticized the Journal for publishing Rove’s columns without disclosing his ties to anti-Obama organizations. The newspaper’s decision to publish an op-ed by Bolton that echoed a Romney falsehood without even disclosing Bolton’s role in the Romney campaign is another example of this ethics problem.