Category: Class War
Why do Republicans hate America?
I didn’t realize that when it came to aviation workers and union elections, not voting meant “no.” Under rule changes made last year, their union votes became majority rule, just like every other election.
And of course, Republicans are trying to change it back.
Chump change
But hey, it’s important to punish the people who need it most:
Last year, 53,000 children in the state attended full-day kindergarten funded in part with the grants, which began under Gov. Ed Rendell in 2004-05.
Now Gov. Corbett, who campaigned as a supporter of early-childhood education, has proposed eliminating the grants to save $260 million. Last year, about $200 million of that went to early-education programs, including to expand kindergarten to full-day.
Enrollment in full-day kindergarten has grown from 35 percent of students to more than 68 percent since the state started the grants, according to Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization. Philadelphia could lose $55 million in block grants, of which the city used about 90 percent to fund full-day kindergarten for nearly 13,000 students.
Corbett wants to cut funding for public schools by 11 percent, a prospect that leaves districts scrambling to figure whether they can preserve full-day kindergarten.
In a part-day program, Citerone said, there was not enough time to do much writing. The difference by the end of the year is dramatic, she said. Previously, Citerone said, she might have one student in a class reading by the end of the year.
“I didn’t have readers for 22 years,” she said. “Now, over 80 percent go into first grade reading on level or above level. There’s really no comparison. I never thought I’d have children reading.
And right across the bridge, we’re also taking away their health care.
Goodbye, Joe
(UPDATE: This one’s for the Robert Stacy McCain readers who followed his link.)
Joe Bageant, author, blogger and fire-breathing class warrior, died yesterday after a short bout with cancer.
The financial success of Joe’s first book, Deer Hunting with Jesus, shocked and, I think, embarrassed him. He tried to give away as much of the money as he could, as fast as he made it, but felt compelled to hang onto at least some of it because he figured sooner or later, his drinking and smoking would catch up with him and he’d be at the mercy of the American healthcare system.
He was right.
I don’t think I ever felt so comfortable, so fast with anyone as I did with Joe. We were fans of each other’s work, and corresponded back and forth for years. I still remember our first phone call, which lasted a couple of hours and covered everything from class stratification to the consciousness-raising wonders of LSD. I always intended to visit him, either in Winchester, Virgina where he was first born and returned decades later, or in Belize and then Ajijic, Mexico, where he’d been spending a lot of time and was trying to lure his many friends down to form a community of like-minded ex-pats. But I never had a reliable car, or enough money to travel.
And then he got sick.
After a vibrant life, Joe Bageant died yesterday following a four-month struggle with cancer. He was 64. Joe is survived by his wife, Barbara, his three children, Timothy, Patrick and Elizabeth, and thousands of friends and admirers. He is also survived by his work and ideas.
According to Joe’s wishes, he will be cremated. His family will hold a private memorial service.
Did I mention that Joe was, in fact, an actual socialist? He wrote so powerfully about the tyranny of owning things, but also had a deep well of compassion for fellow Americans who were caught on the wheels of the economic machine. He was always urging me to stop looking for a job and “just write, goddamnit!”
He was my friend, a mentor, and a fellow traveler on the road to enlightenment. He was no doubt easier from a distance, but really, aren’t we all?
I have a review copy of his latest book, Rainbow Pie, sitting on my desk. I’ve been edging my way toward it, sad because I knew it was his last book. I think I’ll read it this week, in his memory.
Bless you, brother. See you on the other side.
(More tributes here and here.)
Ambitious asshole
UKUncut
Courage is contagious, and nothing shows it like the growing numbers of people joining in the UKUncut demonstrations against government austerity. (USUncut held rallies Saturday across the country.) Sign up for your closest group, get involved in local actions:
Around 400,000 people (Ed. note: The Guardian has updated the headline to 500,000) have joined a march in London to oppose the coalition government’s spending cuts.
In what looks like being the largest mass protest since the anti-Iraq war march in 2003, teachers, nurses, midwives, NHS, council and other public sector workers were joined by students, pensioners and direct action supporters, bringing the centre of the capital to a standstill.
Tens of thousands of people streamed along Embankment and past police barriers in Whitehall. Feeder marches, including a protest by students which set off from the University of London in Bloomsbury, swelled the crowd, which stretched back as far as St Paul’s Cathedral.
The biggest union-organised event for over 20 years saw more than 800 coaches and dozens of trains hired to bring people to London, with many unable to make the journey to the capital because of the massive demand for transport.
“I’m sure that many of our critics will try to write us off today as a minority, vested interest,” said Brendan Barber, the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, which organised the march.
“The thousands coming to London from across the country will be speaking for their communities when they call for a plan B that saves vital services, gets the jobless back to work and tackles the deficit through growth and fair tax.”
Got that? A plan that “saves vital services, gets the jobless back to work and tackles the deficit through growth and fair tax.” Learn it, love it, live it! Stand up for your rights.
Meanwhile, in USUncut actions yesterday, Ohio members demonstrated at a local Verizon store; D.C. members shut down a Bank of America branch; Jackson, Mississippi members presented a bill for unpaid taxes to Verizon; Minneapolis shut down a Bank of America loan office due to “fraud”; and in Philadelphia, members demonstrated at a downtown Bank of America office.
Horrible
This was a truly horrifying thing to watch, and even more upsetting to wonder what’s happening to this woman now as a result of telling foreign journalists of her ordeal:
It was just another breakfast time at Tripoli’s smart Rixos Al Nasr hotel, sleepy foreign journalists helping themselves to cereals, rolls and terrible coffee in the restaurant, looking out over a neat garden unusual in the dour capital city.
But the Groundhog Day conversations – more overnight coalition air strikes against Muammar Gaddafi’s forces, rebel advances in the east, how to escape the minders – were suddenly interrupted when a distraught woman burst in to describe how she had been repeatedly raped by government militiamen.
Iman al-Obeidi was quickly manhandled and arrested by security officials – an extraordinary spectacle for the journalists staying in the luxurious hotel-cum-media centre, hemmed in by severe restrictions on their movements and fed barely credible information.
The scene – filmed by several of those present – unfolded when Obeidi entered the Ocaliptus dining room and lifted up her abaya (dress) to show a slash and bruises on her right leg. “Look what Gaddafi’s men have done to me,” she screamed. “Look what they did, they violated my honour.”
Distraught and weeping, she was surrounded by reporters and cameramen. Libyan minders pushed and lashed out at the journalists, one of them drawing a gun, another smashing a CNN camera. Two waitresses grabbed knives and threatened Obeidi, calling her “a traitor to Gaddafi”.
Obeidi said she had been arrested at a checkpoint in the capital because she is from Benghazi, stronghold of the anti-Gaddafi rebellion in the east. “They swore at me and they filmed me. I was alone. There was whisky. I was tied up. They peed on me.” She said she had been raped by 15 men and held for two days.
Charles Clover of the Financial Times, who tried to protect her, was pushed, thrown to the floor and kicked, and Channel 4 correspondent Jonathan Miller was punched.
Obeidi was frogmarched, struggling, into the lobby and driven away, shouting: “They say they are taking me to hospital but they are taking me to jail.” Minders again tried to stop journalists taking pictures. It was impossible to verify her account. Musa Ibrahim, a government spokesman, said he had been told Obeidi, apparently in her 30s, was drunk and suffered from “mental problems”.
The incident made a powerful impression on journalists who have heard of, and occasionally seen, brutality but are subject to stringent controls to prevent them reporting independently and have a frustrating sense of being manipulated for crude propaganda purposes by the authorities.
“There was a desperate sense of our failure to prevent the thugs taking her away,” C4’s Miller said afterwards. “There was nothing more that we could have done as we were overtly threatened by considerable physical force.”
An American TV cameraman said: “I think she probably was raped, otherwise I can’t see her having the courage to put herself at such risk to let us know what the regime is doing. We see the fear in people all the time. But this is the most blatant example of the vicious way the regime treats the Libyan people.”
Gee
So the union was asking for two air traffic controllers on the overnight shift. Hmm.
Random reinforcement
One of the first questions before taking a lead development job in sales is, are my incentives based on things within my control? I learned early on not to even consider jobs where my commission depended on whether or not the salesperson closed the deal. “If you developed a good lead, the deal should close,” one sales manager argued with me. Uh uh. Sales people fuck up the close ALL THE TIME, ruining MY chance at MY commission. So that’s a major issue.
And that’s also why paying teachers on the basis of how the students perform is one of the stupidest, most insidious ideas the policy morons have ever come up with:
Reporting from Jacksonville, Fla.— Florida Gov. Rick Scott has signed a far-reaching teacher merit-pay bill that will overhaul how teachers across the state will be evaluated and paid.
The law creates an evaluation system that relies heavily on student test score data to judge teacher quality. For new teachers, it also creates a performance-based pay system and ends tenure-like job protections.
Florida’s merit-pay push is part of a national effort to improve education by tying teachers’ pay to their overall effectiveness.
“We are absolutely changing this country,” Scott said during the signing ceremony Thursday at a charter school in Jacksonville that aims to boost academic performance among low-income students. He was flanked by students as he put his name on the controversial measure.
Continue reading “Random reinforcement”
They get hard
When they hear the word “austerity”. Deficit fluffers!