We're Not Gonna Take It
Patrick Michels |1 Feb 2012
www.texasobserver.org
Last spring, parents and neighbors from school districts statewide converged on the Capitol in matching T-shirts to plead with the Legislature to fix the system once and for all.
The Legislature not only didn’t fix the system, it made it worse. Lawmakers trimmed $5.3 billion from public education—a record cut.
For the first time in 60 years, the state isn’t budgeting for growing enrollment. This year 80,000 new students have entered the system, but there’s no new money to pay for their schooling. The Legislature also eliminated funding for full-day pre-kindergarten and saddled districts with expensive new testing requirements. As the state’s public education budget winnows away, disparities between rich and poor districts grow deeper.
Beaten and cash-starved, schools have turned now to their last, best hope: the courts.
The whole story:
Sunday, February 05, 2012
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
“How is Mitt Romney kicking all of your asses?”
WATCH: Video from Comedy Central, which was broadcast on Jan. 9, 2012
Friday, December 30, 2011
The Young Turks: Matt Taibbi on Obama administration’s fear of fraud prosecutions
29 Dec 2011 | Cenk talks with “Rolling Stone” contributing editor Matt Taibbi about his new piece on the Obama administration’s lack of prosecutions for white collar crime. “If they pushed all these prosecutions, investors worldwide would see how epidemic corruption is on Wall Street,” Taibbi says. “They’re afraid of what the international reaction would be.” Cenk says while he doesn’t think President Obama is personally corrupt, “It’s the system that corrupts all these politicians.”
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Occupy protestors create their own social network
The Global Square is expected to launch in January 2012, providing a secure space for Occupy protestors to organize, share, and meet fellow protestors, according to its developers. It will also boast a Facebook-like news feed. Unlike Twitter and Facebook however, new Global Square members must be sanctioned by existing ones before being accepted.
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Occupy Wall Street Farmers March
On December 4, 2011, farmers and activists from across the country joined the Occupy Wall Street Farmers March for "a celebration of community power to regain control over the most basic element to human well-being: food."
The Farmers March began at La Plaza Cultural Community Gardens where urban and rural farmers addressed an excited crowd about the growing problems in our industrial food system and the promise offered by solutions based in organic, sustainable and community based food and agricultural production. This was followed by a 3-mile march from the East Village to Zuccotti Park, the birthplace of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
The Farmers March began at La Plaza Cultural Community Gardens where urban and rural farmers addressed an excited crowd about the growing problems in our industrial food system and the promise offered by solutions based in organic, sustainable and community based food and agricultural production. This was followed by a 3-mile march from the East Village to Zuccotti Park, the birthplace of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Monday, December 26, 2011
Monday, December 19, 2011
Growth of large private water companies brings higher water rates, little recourse for consumers
Jeremy Schwartz and Eric Dexheimer
Austin American-Statesman
17 Dec 2011
Over the past decade, multistate water utilities have expanded aggressively in Texas, drawn by the state's booming population and welcoming regulatory environment. A September report prepared by utility analysts for Robert W. Baird & Co., a financial management company, identified Texas water regulators as the most generous in the country for private water companies. Today, three out-of-state corporations own about 500 Texas water systems that serve more than 250,000 residents.
For residents living outside cities served by private utility companies, the state environmental commission is charged with setting "just and reasonable" water rates based on a company's cost of doing business plus a guaranteed profit. In exchange, the companies enjoy a monopoly on their service area.
Yet critics say the agency is unprepared to handle the recent influx of corporations that have exploited a regulatory system more accustomed to handling rural mom-and-pop operations. Meanwhile, Texas laws provide fewer consumer protections to residents facing water rate increases than electricity and gas ratepayers.
"We are in the midst of a transformation in this state, and the state is ill-prepared to move into that transition," said Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin, who co-chairs a legislative subcommittee to investigate the rates charged by investor-owned water utilities. "It feels like it's happening at warp speed."
The whole story:
Austin American-Statesman
17 Dec 2011
Over the past decade, multistate water utilities have expanded aggressively in Texas, drawn by the state's booming population and welcoming regulatory environment. A September report prepared by utility analysts for Robert W. Baird & Co., a financial management company, identified Texas water regulators as the most generous in the country for private water companies. Today, three out-of-state corporations own about 500 Texas water systems that serve more than 250,000 residents.
For residents living outside cities served by private utility companies, the state environmental commission is charged with setting "just and reasonable" water rates based on a company's cost of doing business plus a guaranteed profit. In exchange, the companies enjoy a monopoly on their service area.
Yet critics say the agency is unprepared to handle the recent influx of corporations that have exploited a regulatory system more accustomed to handling rural mom-and-pop operations. Meanwhile, Texas laws provide fewer consumer protections to residents facing water rate increases than electricity and gas ratepayers.
"We are in the midst of a transformation in this state, and the state is ill-prepared to move into that transition," said Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin, who co-chairs a legislative subcommittee to investigate the rates charged by investor-owned water utilities. "It feels like it's happening at warp speed."
The whole story:
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Obama to sign indefinite detention bill into law
After spend months threatening a veto, the President decides instead to codify the first such bill since the 1950s.
Glen Greenwald | salon.com | 15 Dec 2011
The ACLU said last night that the bill contains “harmful provisions that some legislators have said could authorize the U.S. military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians, including American citizens, anywhere in the world” and added: “if President Obama signs this bill, it will damage his legacy.” Human Rights Watch said that Obama’s decision “does enormous damage to the rule of law both in the US and abroad” and that “President Obama will go down in history as the president who enshrined indefinite detention without trial in US law.”
Both groups pointed out that this is the first time indefinite detention has been enshrined in law since the McCarthy era of the 1950s, when — as the ACLU put it — “President Truman had the courage to veto” the Internal Security Act of 1950 on the ground that it “would make a mockery of our Bill of Rights” and then watched Congress override the veto. That Act authorized the imprisonment of Communists and other “subversives” without the necessity of full trials or due process (many of the most egregious provisions of that bill were repealed by the 1971 Non-Detention Act, and are now being rejuvenated by these War on Terror policies of indefinite detention). President Obama, needless to say, is not Harry Truman. He’s not even the Candidate Obama of 2008 who repeatedly insisted that due process and security were not mutually exclusive and who condemned indefinite detention as ”black hole” injustice.
The whole story:
Glen Greenwald | salon.com | 15 Dec 2011
The ACLU said last night that the bill contains “harmful provisions that some legislators have said could authorize the U.S. military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians, including American citizens, anywhere in the world” and added: “if President Obama signs this bill, it will damage his legacy.” Human Rights Watch said that Obama’s decision “does enormous damage to the rule of law both in the US and abroad” and that “President Obama will go down in history as the president who enshrined indefinite detention without trial in US law.”
Both groups pointed out that this is the first time indefinite detention has been enshrined in law since the McCarthy era of the 1950s, when — as the ACLU put it — “President Truman had the courage to veto” the Internal Security Act of 1950 on the ground that it “would make a mockery of our Bill of Rights” and then watched Congress override the veto. That Act authorized the imprisonment of Communists and other “subversives” without the necessity of full trials or due process (many of the most egregious provisions of that bill were repealed by the 1971 Non-Detention Act, and are now being rejuvenated by these War on Terror policies of indefinite detention). President Obama, needless to say, is not Harry Truman. He’s not even the Candidate Obama of 2008 who repeatedly insisted that due process and security were not mutually exclusive and who condemned indefinite detention as ”black hole” injustice.
The whole story:
Robert Reich puts an offer on the table for President Obama
In less than three minutes, our favorite economist spells out what it's going to take to get our support.
Monday, December 12, 2011
STRONG response from a Teacher
11 Dec 2011 | Joshua Grizelle: Texas Governor Rick Perry is apparently unfamiliar with the bill he signed into Texas law in 2003 mandating a "minute of silence" each morning during which "students may pray".
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Perry wants constitutional amendment for school prayer
11 Dec 2011 | As president, Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) says he would fight for a constitutional amendment to allow prayer in schools.
Saturday, December 10, 2011
'Tyrants' replacing local democracy in Michigan
8 Dec 2011 | Rachel Maddow reports on the expanding role of the "emergency manager" in Michigan, supplanting elected local governments.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Bankers are the dictators of the West
Robert Fisk | The Independent
10 December 2011
Let's kick off with the "Arab Spring" – in itself a grotesque verbal distortion of the great Arab/Muslim awakening which is shaking the Middle East – and the trashy parallels with the social protests in Western capitals. We've been deluged with reports of how the poor or the disadvantaged in the West have "taken a leaf" out of the "Arab spring" book, how demonstrators in America, Canada, Britain, Spain and Greece have been "inspired" by the huge demonstrations that brought down the regimes in Egypt, Tunisia and – up to a point – Libya. But this is nonsense.
The real comparison, needless to say, has been dodged by Western reporters, so keen to extol the anti-dictator rebellions of the Arabs, so anxious to ignore protests against "democratic" Western governments, so desperate to disparage these demonstrations, to suggest that they are merely picking up on the latest fad in the Arab world. The truth is somewhat different. What drove the Arabs in their tens of thousands and then their millions on to the streets of Middle East capitals was a demand for dignity and a refusal to accept that the local family-ruled dictators actually owned their countries.
And that is the true parallel in the West. The protest movements are indeed against Big Business – a perfectly justified cause – and against "governments". What they have really divined, however, albeit a bit late in the day, is that they have for decades bought into a fraudulent democracy: they dutifully vote for political parties – which then hand their democratic mandate and people's power to the banks and the derivative traders and the rating agencies, all three backed up by the slovenly and dishonest coterie of "experts" from America's top universities and "think tanks", who maintain the fiction that this is a crisis of globalisation rather than a massive financial con trick foisted on the voters.
The whole story:
Rape in the US military: America's dirty little secret
A female soldier in Iraq is more likely to be attacked by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire
Lucy Broadbent | guardian.co.uk
9 Dec 2011
Rape within the US military has become so widespread that it is estimated that a female soldier in Iraq is more likely to be attacked by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire. So great is the issue that a group of veterans are suing the Pentagon to force reform. The lawsuit, which includes three men and 25 women (the suit initially involved 17 plaintiffs but grew to 28) who claim to have been subjected to sexual assaults while serving in the armed forces, blames former defence secretaries Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates for a culture of punishment against the women and men who report sex crimes and a failure to prosecute the offenders.
Since the lawsuit became public in February, 400 more have come forward, contacting attorney Susan Burke who is leading the case. These are likely to be future lawsuits. Right now they are anxiously awaiting a court ruling to find out if the lawsuit will go to trial. The defence team for the department of defence has filed a motion to dismiss the case, citing a court ruling, dating back to 1950, which states that the government is not liable for injury sustained by active duty personnel. To date, military personnel have been unable to sue their employer.
Whether or not the case goes to trial, it is still set to blow the lid on what has come to be regarded as the American military's dirty little secret. Last year 3,158 sexual crimes were reported within the US military. Of those cases, only 529 reached a court room, and only 104 convictions were made, according to a 2010 report from SAPRO (sexual assault prevention and response office, a division of the department of defence). But these figures are only a fraction of the reality. Sexual assaults are notoriously under-reported. The same report estimated that there were a further 19,000 unreported cases of sexual assault last year. The department of veterans affairs, meanwhile, released an independent study estimating that one in three women had experience of military sexual trauma while on active service. That is double the rate for civilians, which is one in six, according to the US department of justice.
The whole story:
Lucy Broadbent | guardian.co.uk
9 Dec 2011
Rape within the US military has become so widespread that it is estimated that a female soldier in Iraq is more likely to be attacked by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire. So great is the issue that a group of veterans are suing the Pentagon to force reform. The lawsuit, which includes three men and 25 women (the suit initially involved 17 plaintiffs but grew to 28) who claim to have been subjected to sexual assaults while serving in the armed forces, blames former defence secretaries Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates for a culture of punishment against the women and men who report sex crimes and a failure to prosecute the offenders.
Since the lawsuit became public in February, 400 more have come forward, contacting attorney Susan Burke who is leading the case. These are likely to be future lawsuits. Right now they are anxiously awaiting a court ruling to find out if the lawsuit will go to trial. The defence team for the department of defence has filed a motion to dismiss the case, citing a court ruling, dating back to 1950, which states that the government is not liable for injury sustained by active duty personnel. To date, military personnel have been unable to sue their employer.
Whether or not the case goes to trial, it is still set to blow the lid on what has come to be regarded as the American military's dirty little secret. Last year 3,158 sexual crimes were reported within the US military. Of those cases, only 529 reached a court room, and only 104 convictions were made, according to a 2010 report from SAPRO (sexual assault prevention and response office, a division of the department of defence). But these figures are only a fraction of the reality. Sexual assaults are notoriously under-reported. The same report estimated that there were a further 19,000 unreported cases of sexual assault last year. The department of veterans affairs, meanwhile, released an independent study estimating that one in three women had experience of military sexual trauma while on active service. That is double the rate for civilians, which is one in six, according to the US department of justice.
The whole story:
Tuesday, December 06, 2011
How the right wing destroyed the U.S. Postal Service
By SamSeder | 9 Sept 2011
The Majority Report
Steps taken during the Bush administration are the reason why the once successful U.S. Postal Service is currently in financial trouble. Sam takes a look at the Right Wing cause to privatize the mail and destroy a U.S. institution.
Truth Out article on this by Allison Kilkenny:
The Majority Report
Steps taken during the Bush administration are the reason why the once successful U.S. Postal Service is currently in financial trouble. Sam takes a look at the Right Wing cause to privatize the mail and destroy a U.S. institution.
Truth Out article on this by Allison Kilkenny:
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