She Ripped It (check out the video)

http://www.worldstarhiphop.com/videos/video.php?v=wshhSH7WPhZnMOYPNNWk

BLACKS DON'T READ (PROVE THEM WRONG)

I know most of you do not fall in the category of BLACKS DON'T READ

This is a piece that a Caucasian wrote and was read on a New York radio station by a Black student regarding Blacks.

THEY ARE STILL OUR SLAVES We can continue to reap profits from the Blacks without the effort of physical slavery Look at the current methods of containment that they use on themselves : IGNORANCE, GREED, and SELFISHNESS.

Their IGNORANCE is the primary weapon of containment. A great man once said, "The best way to hide something from Black people is to put it in a book." We now live in the Information Age. They have gained the opportunity to read any book on any subject through the efforts of their fight for freedom, yet they refuse to read. There are numerous books readily available at Borders, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon.com, not to mention their own Black Bookstores that provide solid blueprints to reach economic equality (which should of been their fight all along), but few read consistently, if at all.

GREED is another weapon of containment, Blacks, since the abolition of slavery, have had large amounts of money at their disposal. Last year they spent over 10 million dollars during Christmas, out of their 450 billion dollars in total income (2.22%).

Any of us can use them as our target market, for any business venture we care to dream up, no matter how outlandish, they will buy into it. Being primarily a consumer people, they function totally by greed. They continually want more, with little thought for saving & investing.

They would rather buy new sneakers than invest in starting a business. Some even neglect their children to have the latest Polo or Red Monkeys, And they still think that having a Mercedes, and a big house gives them "Status" or that they have achieved their Dream.

They are fools! The vast majority of their people are still in poverty because their greed holds them back from collectively making better communities.

With the help of BET, and the rest of there media that often broadcasts destructive images into their own homes, we will continue to see huge profits like those of Timberland and Nike. They'll continue to show off to each other while we build solid communities with the profits from our businesses that we market to them.

SELFISHNESS, ingrained in their minds through slavery, is one of the major ways we continue to contain them. One of their own, W.E.B Dubois said that there was an innate division in their culture. A "Talented Tenth" he called it. He was correct in his deduction that there are segments of their culture that has achieved some "form" of success. However, that segment missed the fullness of his work. They didn't read that the "Talented Tenth" was then responsible to aid The Non-Talented Ninety Percent in achieving a better life. Instead, that segment has created another class, a Buppie class that looks down on their people or aides them in a condescending manner. They will never achieve what we have. Their selfishness will not allow them to able to work together on any project or endeavor of substance. When they do get together, their selfishness lets their EGOS get the way of their goal. Their so-called help organizations seem to only want to promote their name without making any real change in their communities.

They are content to sit in conferences and conventions in our hotels, and talk about what they will do, while they award plaques to the best speakers, not the best doers. Is there no end to their selfishness? They steadfastly refuse to see that TOGETHER EACH ACHIEVES MORE (TEAM)

They do not understand that they are no better than each other because of what they own, as a matter of fact, most of those Buppies are but one or two pay checks away from poverty. All of which is under the control of our of our pens in our offices and our rooms.

Yes, we will continue to contain them as long as they refuse to READ, continue to buy anything they want, and keep thinking they are "helping" their communities by paying dues to organizations which do little other than hold lavish conventions in our establishments. By the way, don't worry about any of them reading this letter, remember, THEY DON'T READ!!!!

(Tap tap on the mic & clearing my throat) HEY YOU SLEEPY HEADS, ARE YOU WOKE YET??? OK GOOD NOW PASS IT ON AFTER READING IT...

Conscious Rights

This is a guest post that I wrote for Novel Publicity

Hello and good day fellow authors! I am pleased to write a few words regarding the process of publishing and marketing self-published books. Let me begin the conversation by stating that I heavily emphasize having your publication professionally reviewed prior to publishing. It is a worthy investment and helps to ensure author credibility. With that in mind, let’s address some tips.

First, control your product! Prior to publishing anything online, make sure you own your domain names to establish control of your product. Your name and the name of your book should take priority when putting your work out there for the world to see. After purchasing the domains, you can create your websites from templates that are very easy to manipulate. WordPress and Go Daddy are online sellers that offer templates for all types of genres. Once the websites are officially published, make sure that they are registered with the major search engines. Use key words and or phrases that will allow your book to appear in the links that consumers are researching.

Next, take the time to target your market. It is very important to locate the venues, online media, publications, organizations and any other outlets that will best help promote your book. Having a target market in mind when you approach social media will make all the difference. Through these online resources, you can establish relationships with people who advertise and publicize the types of genres that you have written. On a personal note, I have learned that Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, and the blogs and personal websites that I have created have been quite successful in promoting my ideas and establishing relationships. I have met people who are not only interesting in purchasing my book but who are also interested in sharing information. One technique that I have found especially useful is linking or bundling together social media sites. No matter what site a consumer is using, any one of my accounts will lead to another.

I cannot stress enough that you need to reach out to people whom you meet via social media! A phone call goes a long way in establishing a personal relationship. Involve the people you are going to need for promotion. Since the traditional model of publishing is losing its dominance, it makes sense to establish relationships with those online organizations who read, review, edit and publish books. One of the greatest ways to do this is through blogging. I have established relationships with fellow bloggers. I have written guest posts, read and reviewed books myself, and used those services to advertise my book as well. Once again, relationships are everything!

In closing, keep in mind that the best results come from the best organization. BE PROFFESSIONAL at all times. Please take the time and invest in yourself. Any online tool that you use must be of the highest quality. If you do not take the time to do this, you will seriously compromise your credibility. Do not even think about putting any product online that is not complete! Remember, the success of your product depends upon how you represent yourself. I try to emulate the processes of major book publishers. Follow the “model” that major publishers use for their successful authors in order to become one yourself.

Raise Your Own Kids by Evonne Bar

PARENTS are shirking the responsibility of disciplining their kids, turning teachers into makeshift mums and dads.

A major Herald Sun survey of Victorian teachers found three-quarters believe parents have unreasonable expectations about the school's role in raising kids.

And the stresses are showing, with nearly half of teachers surveyed admitting they had considered resigning over the past 12 months.

Educators say parents have become too fixated on being "friends" with their children, and are increasingly neglecting their duty to enforce boundaries.

Victorian Principals Association president Gabrielle Leigh believes students are increasingly likely to be sent to school without adequate discipline from home.

"It's well beyond the duty of a teacher, but they can't ignore it," Ms Leigh said.

"We've got to a situation where often kids are asked (by parents), 'What do you think, darling?' But kids sometimes don't know best - it's important that parents make those decisions; important for the kids and their development."

The survey of 816 primary and secondary teachers conducted and analysed by Galaxy Research, also found:

HALF of all teachers surveyed have been verbally abused by a parent;

THREE in five teachers say students do not show them enough respect;

ALMOST 80 per cent of teachers say cyber bullying is a problem at their school, but that students are still largely unaware of the dangers of social networking sites such as Face book.

While the majority of teachers said they would choose teaching if they could start their careers again, many said their job description was broadening rapidly.

Seventy-five per cent believed "parents expect teachers to provide all the discipline for their children".

This was despite 67 per cent of teachers saying parents supported their authority in the classroom.

While teachers' perceptions of bullying overall were unchanged over the past two years, comparing results from the last Herald Sun teacher survey, their concerns about the impact of cyber bullying were rising.

And the proliferation of social media meant round-the-clock problems, such as cyber bullying, were taking up learning time.

"It occurs at home, yet we are the ones who have to deal with the mess," one teacher said.

"A lot of parents are reluctant or unable to 'parent' and expect schools to parent for them. We cannot control what happens outside of school hours."

Another teacher said: "On more than five occasions this year, parents have brought in excess of 200 pages of Face book transcripts and (said), 'We'll leave it to you to sort out'."

"Parents don't monitor their children and expect teachers to 'watch the dog' 24/7."

Parents Victoria executive officer Gail McHardy believed the pressure to clamp down on discipline was largely coming from state government policies such as increased powers for principals.

"But you can't just impose these things if you don't give teachers the appropriate support," Ms McHardy said.

Results: Parenting

Thanks for voting!

Do parents expect teachers to take on too great a role in raising kids?

• Yes89.52% (555 votes)
• No10.48% (65 votes)

Total votes: 620

We’re living and educating in a really challenging period of transition, from analog to digital,isolated classrooms to global connectivity. -- teachermant (@teachermant)

@WilliamPotter68 @teachermant Schools stopped focusing on the three Rs & citizenship, and opted for P.C. babysitting & teaching to the test -- teachermant (@teachermant)

So, this is how the GOP roles huh?

Do not vote for the Republicans! 

A first lady, a civil rights icon and a pilot aided the Tuskegee Airmen, says Henry Louis Gates Jr.

3 Women 'Red Tails' Left Out

By: Henry Louis Gates Jr.|Posted: January 25, 2012 at 7:17 PM

Red Tails, the new George Lucas film depicting the valiant Tuskegee Airmen, reminds us of the often overlooked role of African Americans in World War II and their noble achievements. While much has been written about the airmen, very few of us understand how important three women were to their existence. And this is one crucial historical element that Lucas left out.

Since the Civil War, the United States had maintained a Jim Crow Army. While the Navy never deviated from integration, the Army (the Air Force did not become a separate service until after the war) rigidly segregated African Americans into separate units. While Africans Americans might be effective soldiers, the Army War College in 1925 maintained that "in the process of evolution, the American Negro has not progressed as far as the other subspecies of the human family." (Red Tails opens with a quote from this report.) Blacks, it held, were neither smart enough nor physically strong enough nor brave enough to endure the demands of combat, let alone flight.

Although African Americans had valiantly served in the Civil War, on the frontier in the Indian Wars, in the Spanish American War and in World War I, white politicians and military officers still publicly professed to doubt black ability and patriotism, as part of the ideology and propaganda that undergirded Jim Crow in all of its pernicious forms. The crucial change came in 1938, primarily because of the efforts of an African-American woman, Mary McLeod Bethune, who saw, before most other black leaders, a way to break the hold of racism on black participation in the military, by striking at the most resistant obstacle of all: the integration of the pilot program.

Mary McLeod Bethune and Eleanor Roosevelt Open Doors

Bethune's struggle to get African Americans into pilot-training programs began in 1938 with the New Deal's Civilian Pilot Training Program. The program was modestly funded by the National Youth Administration -- an important point, because Bethune headed the "Negro Section" of the NYA. She was also the only female member of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "black cabinet" and a close friend of first lady Eleanor Roosevelt.

Bethune, a famed educator and head of the National Council of Negro Women, proved a relentless advocate for black equality and lobbied President Roosevelt to resist the demands of the Southern wing of the Democratic Party, which was hell-bent on maintaining segregation, especially in the military. Since the program's goal was to train 20,000 college students a year as civilian pilots, the key to integrating the U.S. Army's Air Corps during the coming war, Bethune realized, was getting the government to open training programs on the campuses of historically black colleges and universities.

With extraordinary foresight, she used her considerable authority to get Tuskegee Institute, Hampton Institute, Virginia State, North Carolina A&T, Delaware State, West Virginia State and Howard University included among the colleges and universities chosen as sites for pilot training. Without this crucial intervention, there would have been no Tuskegee Airmen.

Beginning in 1939, Bethune advised the president that among all the disabilities black Americans suffered:

One of the sorest points among Negroes which I have encountered is the flagrant discrimination against Negroes in all the armed forces of the United States. Forthright action on your part to lessen discrimination and segregation and particularly in affording opportunities for the training of Negro pilots for the air corps would gain tremendous good will, perhaps even out of proportion to the significance of such action.

West Virginia State College became the first black school to establish an aviation program, and because of Bethune's efforts, it received its first military airplane in 1939. It set a precedent that soon benefited the Tuskegee Institute, which received its authorization in October of that year.

Flying Through the Open Doors: Willa Beatrice Brown

The Tuskegee Airmen also owed a debt to Willa Beatrice Brown, one of two women in the all-black Challenger Air Pilots Association, founded in 1935. Brown was one of about 100 licensed black pilots in the entire country. She also became the first African-American woman to receive a commission as a lieutenant in the U.S. Civil Air Patrol.

An expert in business administration and public relations and a dedicated aviator, Brown played a critical role in promoting the image of black aviators to help fight racial prejudice and expand opportunities for all blacks. She became chair of the association's education committee and appeared in the offices of the Chicago Defender, the famed black paper of the era, to convince the paper to cover the association's air shows.

Enoch Waters, one of the paper's editors, visited an air show and became so impressed with the talent he saw that the Defender became a sponsor of the association. The paper, because of Brown's appeal, also began covering all aspects of black aviation, and soon other black papers followed suit, especially the influential Pittsburgh Courier.

Because several American black aviators had gone to fight the Italian fascists in Ethiopia in 1935, national interest in black pilots had increased. Brown exploited the growing fame of black pilots and helped organize Chicago's National Airmen's Association of America in 1937, which chartered branches across the country except in the Deep South). Without Brown's work, African-American interest in aviation could have languished

Additionally, she not only successfully lobbied for federal funds to support the private Coffey School of Aviation in Chicago but also wrote directly to Eleanor Roosevelt in December 1941. Brown's role in the integration of America's aviation forces, like that of Bethune, was a considerable one as well.

In 1941 Eleanor Roosevelt, at Bethune's urging, convinced the Rosenwald Fund (which had a long history of supporting various kinds of projects aimed at ameliorating American race relations, and on whose board she served) to help expand the pilot-training program at Tuskegee. And then in March of that year, Roosevelt not only visited the Tuskegee Institute's Moton Airfield but, incredibly, also asked the chief flight instructor, Charles A. "Chief" Anderson, to take her on a flight, against the adamant objections of the Secret Service.

This is quite likely the first time a black man flew a plane with a white woman as his passenger. Roosevelt spent over an hour in the skies above Tuskegee. She returned to Washington and lobbied her husband to integrate America's aviation forces. According to the FDR Presidential Library and Museum, she declared that all the statements she had heard that blacks couldn't fly planes were bunkum.

The rest is history: The 99th Pursuit Squadron (later called the 99th Fighter Squadron) was formed in July 1941. The first class of black aviator cadets began to train on Nov. 8, 1941, with the first pilots graduating on March 7, 1942. In all, 992 African-American pilots trained at Tuskegee Army Air Field, and 450 of its black pilots flew in combat during the war, serving in the four black fighter squadrons and four bomber groups.

By June 1944, black pilots had flown 500 missions in the 99th Fighter Squadron, first in North Africa and later in Sicily and the rest of Italy. The 332nd Fighter Group flew 179 heavy bomber-escort missions, as Red Tails depicts so effectively, shielding heavy bombers such as the B-24 Liberator. They shot down 111 Axis aircraft.

In their longest escort mission, the 332nd Fighter group managed to shoot down not one, but three of the new ME-262 jet fighters that the Germans threw against the propeller-driven fighter planes -- again, in a battle that Lucas so vividly re-creates. Sixty-six of the Tuskegee Airmen died during the war, and others earned many Purple Hearts, Silver Stars and Distinguished Flying Crosses. President Harry S. Truman even gave the Tuskegee Airmen a Distinguished Unit Citation for "outstanding performance and extraordinary heroism."

When black activists urged Truman to desegregate the military in 1948, they could point to the heroism of the "Red Tails" pilots to prove that black servicemen had earned the equal treatment that they deserved as loyal Americans. But without the bold imagination of Mary McLeod Bethune, the persistent advocacy of Willa Beatrice Brown and the sheer stubbornness of her friend Eleanor Roosevelt, it is doubtful that Tuskegee Airmen would have come into being.

And while I found the depiction of the relationship between one of the airmen and his Italian fiancée quite touching (in a nod to a similar romance depicted in Spike Lee's Miracle at Santa Ana), it is a pity that the contributions of these three women -- two black, one white -- couldn't have been called up to frame the action of this very important film.

Will You Stand With Stef? Tell Sallie Mae: Stop the Unemployment Penalty

Meet Stef Gray, a recent graduate of a public college who took out private student loans through Sallie Mae before the credit crunch. Despite her school's relatively low tuition and her full-time job, she still needed the extra help in order to pay for rent, utilities, and groceries because her parents had passed away. Sallie Mae loaned her money with a 9.75 percent interest rate because she didn't have anyone who could co-sign She graduated in May with honors, but even with an advanced degree in a technical field, she still hasn't found full-time work. She's doing everything she can to avoid defaulting on her loans, but Sallie Mae has charged her hundreds of dollars in extra fees because she's had to delay her payments (called forbearance). Federal loans allow the unemployed to defer payments without any fees, so the same kindness is not too much to ask from America's largest private lender.

Since May, Stef has already had to pay $300 to Sallie Mae in "forbearance fees." ($50 per loan for every 3 month block. Consolidation is not an option.) Not a dime has gone to her loan principal. Meanwhile, the interest on her loans keeps growing -- meaning that Sallie Mae will cash in two times -- once with the extra fees they're charging her, and again when she pays the interest that accrues as she looks for work. As an unemployed person looking for work, Stef needs every extra dollar she has to pay for rent, electricity and groceries. But Sallie Mae is preying on people like Stef and cashing in on the fact that those in the same boat as her need more time to find work before they can repay their student loans.

If she doesn't find full-time work before the end of November, Sallie Mae is going to her another $150 in "forbearance fees" -- while her total debt continues to grow by $500.

Please join Stef Gray in asking Sallie Mae to stop double-dipping. Sign her petition calling on Sallie Mae CEO Albert Lord to stop charging a $50 forbearance fee on the unemployed who cannot make a loan payment right now.

Once you sign Stef's petition, be sure to share it to your Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or any other profile you might have. Then. . .

Start YOUR OWN petition on predatory student loans!

Together, let's make student loan debt a major issue of the 2012 campaign!

Thanks,

Rob

John FriesenPress · Wilfred Laurier University

I'm about 1/2 way through this book. I was a teacher for about 7 years and experienced many of the battles included in this book. I can say so far this book addresses many of the key issues that parents, teachers, the "Educational System" need to seriously consider. The system of educating children is in serious need of repair. Ask most children, - they will tell you. It doesn't take a PHD to figure it out.

"Were theLatin Americans Hit Hard by the Global Recession?" AboutThe Author: Allen Smith

Were the Latin Americans Hit Hard by the Global Recession?

Abu’s market crashes down hundreds of points in just a matter of hours, it will be quite tough for the Latin Americans to avoid the effects of the global recession. During the recession, the region’s economy has slumped down greatly and has shown a double digit fall in the industrial output.  Yet Latin American countries have been hit by four recessionary forces. This has resulted in the decline of manufacturing sectors, trade and exports.

What are its after effects?

Theater effects of the Global recession have greatly infected the Latin-Americans. There has been a sharp decline in remittance. This has resulted in the decline of the demands for external goods and services and changes in the relative price of exports. According to Ms. Barcena, the Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) one of the hardest hit sectors of the region is the stock market. In the month of April2008, market has been slashed by 32 per cent, whereas export of the same year has declined by 29.2 percent and 34.6 percent drop has been found in the imports during the same period. The GDP in Latin America has contracted slightly in the next year. But it has recovered quite soon in the next following year. According to the prediction of thief, there has been a growth of population by 1.3 % in the same year. As a result income per person has shrunken down.

http://www.ovlg.com/reviews/

How it has affected the employees?

Due to the recession, people are feared to make further investment. As result, it has been noted that the foreign direct investment has been slashed by 35-45 percent in the same year. This has resulted in the increase of the percentage of the unemployed. It has been estimated that unemployment in that year have rose up to 9 percent. People who are staying outside and working has faced a lot of problems. As result, money sent by them to their home land reduced by 5-10 percent.

However, this is not the first time Latin America is facing a recession. Previously in the year 1980, it faced a recession and it took 12years for the economy to recover. Since the growth of development has slowed down, it is expected that the developing countries should participate in helping the Latin Americans maintain strict regulations on financial systems in order to bring about a global growth.

"AboutThe Author: Allen Smith is acontributory writer for Oak View Law Group (oakview review).He is also a financial advisor and guest author for acclaimed blogs.Allen has been writing for more than five years and helping people toget wise with their money. His interests include attending financialseminars, writing columns related to debt settlement, bankruptcy andvisiting personal finance blogs."

Why the United States Is Destroying Its Education System

This article was written by Chris Hedges!  THIS IS A MUST READ!  HIGH PRIORITY!

A nation that destroys its systems of education, degrades its public information, guts its public libraries and turns its airwaves into vehicles for cheap, mindless amusement becomes deaf, dumb and blind. It prizes test scores above critical thinking and literacy. It celebrates rote vocational training and the singular, amoral skill of making money. It churns out stunted human products, lacking the capacity and vocabulary to challenge the assumptions and structures of the corporate state. It funnels them into a caste system of drones and systems managers. It transforms a democratic state into a feudal system of corporate masters and serfs.

Teachers, their unions under attack, are becoming as replaceable as minimum-wage employees at Burger King. We spurn real teachers—those with the capacity to inspire children to think, those who help the young discover their gifts and potential—and replace them with instructors who teach to narrow, standardized tests. These instructors obey. They teach children to obey. And that is the point. The No Child Left Behind program, modeled on the “Texas Miracle,” is a fraud. It worked no better than our deregulated financial system. But when you shut out debate these dead ideas are self-perpetuating.

Passing bubble tests celebrates and rewards a peculiar form of analytical intelligence. This kind of intelligence is prized by money managers and corporations. They don’t want employees to ask uncomfortable questions or examine existing structures and assumptions. They want them to serve the system. These tests produce men and women who are just literate and numerate enough to perform basic functions and service jobs. The tests elevate those with the financial means to prepare for them. They reward those who obey the rules, memorize the formulas and pay deference to authority. Rebels, artists, independent thinkers, eccentrics and iconoclasts—those who march to the beat of their own drum—are weeded out.

“Imagine,” said a public school teacher in New York City, who asked that I not use his name, “going to work each day knowing a great deal of what you are doing is fraudulent, knowing in no way are you preparing your students for life in an ever more brutal world, knowing that if you don’t continue along your scripted test prep course and indeed get better at it you will be out of a job. Up until very recently, the principal of a school was something like the conductor of an orchestra: a person who had deep experience and knowledge of the part and place of every member and every instrument. In the past 10 years we’ve had the emergence of both [Mayor] Mike Bloomberg’s Leadership Academy and Eli Broad’s Superintendents Academy, both created exclusively to produce instant principals and superintendents who model themselves after CEOs. How is this kind of thing even legal? How are such ‘academies’ accredited? What quality of leader needs a ‘leadership academy’? What kind of society would allow such people to run their children’s schools? The high-stakes tests may be worthless as pedagogy but they are a brilliant mechanism for undermining the school systems, instilling fear and creating a rationale for corporate takeover. There is something grotesque about the fact the education reform is being led not by educators but by financers and speculators and billionaires.”

Teachers, under assault from every direction, are fleeing the profession. Even before the “reform” blitzkrieg we were losing half of all teachers within five years after they started work—and these were people who spent years in school and many thousands of dollars to become teachers. How does the country expect to retain dignified, trained professionals under the hostility of current conditions? I suspect that the hedge fund managers behind our charter schools system—whose primary concern is certainly not with education—are delighted to replace real teachers with nonunionized, poorly trained instructors. To truly teach is to instill the values and knowledge which promote the common good and protect a society from the folly of historical amnesia. The utilitarian, corporate ideology embraced by the system of standardized tests and leadership academies has no time for the nuances and moral ambiguities inherent in a liberal arts education. Corporatism is about the cult of the self. It is about personal enrichment and profit as the sole aim of human existence. And those who do not conform are pushed aside.

“It is extremely dispiriting to realize that you are in effect lying to these kids by insinuating that this diet of corporate reading programs and standardized tests are preparing them for anything,” said this teacher, who feared he would suffer reprisals from school administrators if they knew he was speaking out. “It is even more dispiriting to know that your livelihood depends increasingly on maintaining this lie. You have to ask yourself why are hedge fund managers suddenly so interested in the education of the urban poor? The main purpose of the testing craze is not to grade the students but to grade the teacher.”

“I cannot say for certain—not with the certainty of a Bill Gates or a Mike Bloomberg who pontificate with utter certainty over a field in which they know absolutely nothing—but more and more I suspect that a major goal of the reform campaign is to make the work of a teacher so degrading and insulting that the dignified and the truly educated teachers will simply leave while they still retain a modicum of self-respect,” he added. “In less than a decade we been stripped of autonomy and are increasingly micromanaged. Students have been given the power to fire us by failing their tests. Teachers have been likened to pigs at a trough and blamed for the economic collapse of the United States. In New York, principals have been given every incentive, both financial and in terms of control, to replace experienced teachers with 22-year-old untenured rookies. They cost less. They know nothing. They are malleable and they are vulnerable to termination.”

The demonizing of teachers is another public relations feint, a way for corporations to deflect attention from the theft of some $17 billion in wages, savings and earnings among American workers and a landscape where one in six workers is without employment. The speculators on Wall Street looted the U.S. Treasury. They stymied any kind of regulation. They have avoided criminal charges. They are stripping basic social services. And now they are demanding to run our schools and universities.

“Not only have the reformers removed poverty as a factor, they’ve removed students’ aptitude and motivation as factors,” said this teacher, who is in a teachers union. “They seem to believe that students are something like plants where you just add water and place them in the sun of your teaching and everything blooms. This is a fantasy that insults both student and teacher. The reformers have come up with a variety of insidious schemes pushed as steps to professionalize the profession of teaching. As they are all businessmen who know nothing of the field, it goes without saying that you do not do this by giving teachers autonomy and respect. They use merit pay in which teachers whose students do well on bubble tests will receive more money and teachers whose students do not do so well on bubble tests will receive less money. Of course, the only way this could conceivably be fair is to have an identical group of students in each class—an impossibility. The real purposes of merit pay are to divide teachers against themselves as they scramble for the brighter and more motivated students and to further institutionalize the idiot notion of standardized tests. There is a certain diabolical intelligence at work in both of these.”

“If the Bloomberg administration can be said to have succeeded in anything,” he said, “they have succeeded in turning schools into stress factories where teachers are running around wondering if it’s possible to please their principals and if their school will be open a year from now, if their union will still be there to offer some kind of protection, if they will still have jobs next year. This is not how you run a school system. It’s how you destroy one. The reformers and their friends in the media have created a Manichean world of bad teachers and effective teachers. In this alternative universe there are no other factors. Or, all other factors—poverty, depraved parents, mental illness and malnutrition—are all excuses of the Bad Teacher that can be overcome by hard work and the Effective Teacher.”

The truly educated become conscious. They become self-aware. They do not lie to themselves. They do not pretend that fraud is moral or that corporate greed is good. They do not claim that the demands of the marketplace can morally justify the hunger of children or denial of medical care to the sick. They do not throw 6 million families from their homes as the cost of doing business. Thought is a dialogue with one’s inner self. Those who think ask questions, questions those in authority do not want asked. They remember who we are, where we come from and where we should go. They remain eternally skeptical and distrustful of power. And they know that this moral independence is the only protection from the radical evil that results from collective unconsciousness. The capacity to think is the only bulwark against any centralized authority that seeks to impose mindless obedience. There is a huge difference, as Socrates understood, between teaching people what to think and teaching them how to think. Those who are endowed with a moral conscience refuse to commit crimes, even those sanctioned by the corporate state, because they do not in the end want to live with criminals—themselves.

“It is better to be at odds with the whole world than, being one, to be at odds with myself,” Socrates said.

Those who can ask the right questions are armed with the capacity to make a moral choice, to defend the good in the face of outside pressure. And this is why the philosopher Immanuel Kant puts the duties we have to ourselves before the duties we have to others. The standard for Kant is not the biblical idea of self-love—love thy neighbor as thyself, do unto others as you would have them do unto you—but self-respect. What brings us meaning and worth as human beings is our ability to stand up and pit ourselves against injustice and the vast, moral indifference of the universe. Once justice perishes, as Kant knew, life loses all meaning. Those who meekly obey laws and rules imposed from the outside—including religious laws—are not moral human beings. The fulfillment of an imposed law is morally neutral. The truly educated make their own wills serve the higher call of justice, empathy and reason. Socrates made the same argument when he said it is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong.

“The greatest evil perpetrated,” Hannah Arendt wrote, “is the evil committed by nobodies, that is, by human beings who refuse to be persons.”

As Arendt pointed out, we must trust only those who have this self-awareness. This self-awareness comes only through consciousness. It comes with the ability to look at a crime being committed and say “I can’t.” We must fear, Arendt warned, those whose moral system is built around the flimsy structure of blind obedience. We must fear those who cannot think. Unconscious civilizations become totalitarian wastelands.

“The greatest evildoers are those who don’t remember because they have never given thought to the matter, and, without remembrance, nothing can hold them back,” Arendt writes. “For human beings, thinking of past matters means moving in the dimension of depth, striking roots and thus stabilizing themselves, so as not to be swept away by whatever may occur—the Zeitgeist or History or simple temptation. The greatest evil is not radical, it has no roots, and because it has no roots it has no limitations, it can go to unthinkable extremes and sweep over the whole world.”

Mort Zuckerman Blames Lack of Upward Mobility in America on Teachers Unions

I've got one thing to say to Mort, you need your head examined!  Screw you Mort!  How dare you say that America has "lousy" teachers and blame it on the teacher unions!  What a disgusting statement to make!

I don't know about anyone else, but I feel there's something rather disconcerting about about watching four extremely rich American immigrants who were all born on third base, discussing the reasons for lack of upward mobility in the United States, but that's exactly what we got here on CNN's weekend show, Your Money.

I guess they couldn't find anyone who actually grew up as a member of the working class or a union member or leader to potentially counter the likes of Mort Zuckerman, and statements such as this one that are inevitable when you allow him on the air:

ZUCKERMAN: Let me just say I really support what Arianna has just described. I think there are huge problems in this country and a lot of it, in my judgment, stems not from capitalism but from the government.

I'll focus on the first one, which is we have done a terrible job in providing enough education for the children of this country. There's a whole mismatch in terms of the number of people coming out looking for jobs and the qualifications that people need for jobs, particularly those who are educated, particularly in the world of science and technology.

There are shortages of people, there are literally millions of open jobs because we don't train --

VELSHI: But why does the free market not solve that problem?

ZUCKERMAN: Because the education is a government function. If there ever was a public function in this country from the days it started, it's public education and we've done a lousy job. Part of it is frankly because we have lousy teachers.

Part of the reason we have lousy teachers is we have teachers union that say won't deal with those issues. So there are lots of reasons why education is not being properly handled in this country.

But to me if I could think of one thing that would change it, it would be to change our system of education and make sure that our children were properly educated.

I can think of a lot of reasons as to why we are lacking upward mobility in the U.S., like outsourcing, a race to the bottom on wages (which is what Zuckerman is really advocating for here), union busting, corporate raiders and vulture capitalists like Mitt Romney and his ilk, our terrible trade laws, lowering taxes on the rich, not regulating the financial sector, privatizing our commons, and some of the issues they did touch on during this segment. But not being able to fire enough of those terrible greedy overpaid teachers that have those damned unions representing them is not one of them that makes my list.

And Zakaria wasn't much better with basically saying we have to choose between our social safety nets or investing in infrastructure and education as though we can't do something about the unfairness in our tax structure and controlling the costs of providing medical benefits to Americans, like say, single-payer, and do both. I will give him credit though for admitting that austerity isn't going to solve our economic problems and at least bothering to mention that the people who are still employed are in the jobs you can't outsource. It would have been nice to hear the topic of the pure greed of a few and the race to the bottom that got us there though, which I don't expect from the likes of CNN. They play the same "fair and balanced" game Fox does. They're just not as blatant about it.

Full transcript below the fold.

VELSHI: Fareed, is American capitalism the problem here? Is it broken? Is it doing what we expected it to do?

ZAKARIA: I don't think American capitalism is broken, but I think that there have been fundamental changes that have taken place over the last 20 years.

If you look at the American economy over the last 20 years we have created net no new jobs in what is called the tradable sector of the economy, the part of the economy that is subject to global competition.

The only jobs we've created have been in health care, in government and in fields like construction, which are not really subject to outsourcing. You can't outsource the building of a New York skyscraper. So something has happened and I think it's a combination of technology and globalization that is pressing down very hard on the average American worker.

It becomes very difficult for him to find a way to raise his wages or her to raise her wages. So that's real and I think it's a huge problem for an economic system, which has been able to provide enormous rewards to capital corporations. But it's finding it much more difficult to provide those rewards to workers.

VELSHI: That's interesting. What you're talking about here is what we thought of as upward mobility, which is we think about it as capitalism and free enterprise.

But really part of the American dream, Arianna, has been the ability to come here and leave this earth in a better socioeconomic position than you started, that upward mobility, that your work will be rewarded.

HUFFINGTON: Absolutely. As an immigrant to this country, this accent is for real. I've lived the American dream. I remember growing up in Athens and walking by a statue of President Truman, who was revered because of the Marshall plan, and there was a sense that you could move to America in search of a better life. That was always identified with America.

And I think what happened goes even beyond technology and globalization. I think it's two things for me. The role of government in misallocating resources, because you have basically the role of money in politics, the role of lobbies, the role of influence has meant that we have so many rewards being given for the wrong reasons.

Whether you are -- whether it's sugar subsidies or whether it is the attempt as happened recently to regulate for profit colleges, which was undermined by for profit colleges spending $16 million to basically water down the regulations.

Again, education is at the heart of the American dream. If you can't go to a good school and if you can't afford to go to college, that's a central undermining of the dream.

VELSHI: So let's take a look at this Pew study, Mort. Pew survey recently found that 46 percent of Americans believe most rich people are wealthy because they came from wealth. They came from a wealthy family or they have great family connections.

So that's 46 percent, 43 percent believe people become rich primarily as a result of their own hard work and education. So Americans are roughly divided on whether making money in this country is as a result of hard work.

This is at the core of some of the debate that we're having right now. You hear a lot of the Republican candidates saying that Democrats are not rewarding work. This issue of whether work pays is central to whether capitalism works.

ZUCKERMAN: Let me just say I really support what Arianna has just described. I think there are huge problems in this country and a lot of it, in my judgment, stems not from capitalism but from the government.

I'll focus on the first one, which is we have done a terrible job in providing enough education for the children of this country. There's a whole mismatch in terms of the number of people coming out looking for jobs and the qualifications that people need for jobs, particularly those who are educated, particularly in the world of science and technology.

There are shortages of people, there are literally millions of open jobs because we don't train --

VELSHI: But why does the free market not solve that problem?

ZUCKERMAN: Because the education is a government function. If there ever was a public function in this country from the days it started, it's public education and we've done a lousy job. Part of it is frankly because we have lousy teachers.

Part of the reason we have lousy teachers is we have teachers union that say won't deal with those issues. So there are lots of reasons why education is not being properly handled in this country.

But to me if I could think of one thing that would change it, it would be to change our system of education and make sure that our children were properly educated.

VELSHI: OK, let's go full circle here because I know you've talked about this, Fareed, this idea if we're educating properly, it should lead to less -- we have a mismatch.

Let's say we have 15 or 16 million people unemployed. We have probably 3 million job openings in the United States and we've had that consistently for some period.

Because the people with the 3 million job openings say we can't find the talent to fill it and the 16 million looking for jobs don't have the skills to fill the 3 million. So we got a mismatch.

ZAKARIA: The 3 million job openings are slightly deceptive because there's always a process of jobs being available that people aren't filling. I think I want to go to the central point you were asking, which is -- and what Mort was talking about, the role of government.

I think it's very important to understand there is no such thing as just capitalism and socialism. There are varieties of capitalism and the crucial question is are we providing the kind of investment in human capital and physical capital that are going to make it possible for broad-based economic growth, or are we instead subsidizing a bunch of industries here. That is the crucial issue.

We have to find a way to get the role of government to be pro-growth, pro-middle class and we're not doing that right now because of lobbies and frankly, the American public want very large and lavish subsidies for the health care. They don't want to invest in science and technology in education.

Even things like infrastructure are much less popular than expenditures that consumption, Medicare, Medicaid, things like that. So I think the crucial pointing is not -- you can't cut your way to a new generation of prosperity.

People who think you can have austerity and budget balancing are crazy. You need an active, energetic government, but it's got to do the right things.

VELSHI: So the role of government in providing the ability for the individuals to change their situation, to improve their economic situation is central.

Battlegrounds: America's War in Education and Finance: A View From the Front Lines!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                 

             
Educator Gives Hope To Parents Seeking To Take Back Their Authority in New Book         
                                   

East Hartford, Connecticut  (questionable)- Parent, author and educator, Todney Harris reveals the long-lasting effects of parental involvement and lack thereof in a child’s education in his new book, America’s War in Education and Finance: The Fight to Save Public Education in America expected to launch in early 2012. 

In society, many of today’s youth are beginning to perceive the media as their parents and their teachers. Therefore, real parenting and the importance of an education are perceived as obsolete. In his book, Harris provides parents tips to reclaim their role.  For example, by establishing a positive, communicative relationship with their child’s teachers and attending parent-teacher conferences, parents are enhancing their parent-child relationship.

 “My ultimate goal is to increase both students and parents’ interests and involvement in the educational curriculum,” exclaims Harris when asked what he wants readers to gain from his book.

 About Todney Harris

Todney Harris has been an educator within the Hartford, CT public school system for 15 years. He is a strong advocate for community involvement and educational reform. He is an educator at New Haven Board of Education and Jepson Multi Age Middle Magnet in New Haven, CT. To find out more information about Todney Harris and his book, please visit www.todneyharris.com.

 Antonia Harper 

443.739.1904

educationalbattlegrounds@gmail.com

###

In Congress, nearly half the members are millionaires

Alright America, Please tell me what is wrong with this picture?  I did not send my elected representatives to the halls of Congress to become millionaires.  I certainly did not expect them to become a part of the 1% and rip off American citizens.  I am outraged!
Todney

One-Percenter of the Week: The Senate's median net worth is $2.63 million. The House's is $756,00.

By Michael Brush

 Just a few days into the new year, and we're already blitzed with wall-to-wall election coverage. But the fun is only just beginning. Before this election year is out, scores of congressional candidates will join the presidential contenders already dominating the airwaves.

If you observe their endless debates and expensive attack ads and get a sense that these candidates are out of touch with many of the pedestrian problems faced by the rest of us -- oh, say like trying to balance a family budget -- it's not just your imagination.

While most Americans saw their incomes and wealth slip in the past several years, the wealth of our reps in Washington, D.C., has grown by leaps and bounds. The key takeaway here: Being a millionaire would make any normal person a One-Percenter, a member of the nation’s wealthiest group. In Congress, it just makes you average.

So rather than a CEO this week -- we’ll get back to them – I’m making Congress my One-Percenter of the Week.

Consider these numbers:

·     Nearly half of the members of Congress are millionaires, according to the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), a Washington watchdog.

·     The median net worth of a U.S. senator was $2.63 million in 2010, the most recent year for which financial data are available. That was up 11% from the year before, says CRP.

·     The median estimated net worth for House members was $756,765.

·     The median net worth of House members almost tripled from 1984 and 2009, while the net worth of Americans declined slightly during the same time, according to the Washington Post and the University of Michigan.

"It's no surprise that so many people grumble about lawmakers being out of touch," said Sheila Krumholz, CRP executive director. And it's not only the news of their costly yachts and expensive vacations that rankles.

It's also the sense that our One-Percenter reps in Washington aren't doing enough to help the rest of us, perhaps because they are so distracted by their embarrassingly rancorous bipartisan arguing -- which has earned them their most unfavorable ratings in years.

Bickering over the budget last summer, for example, brought the threat of a U.S. credit rating downgrade, helping to shave billions off our stock holdings in just a few painful weeks.

A recent Congressional Budget Office study found that public policy efforts -- in the tax code and through programs like Medicaid -- now do less to combat income inequality than they did in 1979.

And three years after the worst financial meltdown in decades -- which many blame on lax oversight of the financial sector by Washington -- our economy is improving, but not fast enough to provide jobs for the millions who are unemployed.

It’s not hard, either, to suggest a little bias toward the One Percent, and a bipartisan one. For all the talk about rescinding the portion of the Bush tax cuts that apply to the highest income brackets, they survived two years with a Democratic president and Democratic majority in both houses of Congress as well as the current, divided Congress. And late in 2011, House Republicans took lots of criticism for stalling on a 2% payroll tax that by its nature helped those in the lower brackets more than the One Percent.

So who's richest in Congress?

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., tops the CRP list as the wealthiest of the lot, with an estimated 2010 net worth of $448 million. He's followed by Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, with an estimated net worth of $380 million. (For a look at a list from Roll Call and CNBC, read "The 15 richest members of Congress.")

Just how did these reps get so wealthy? Probably not on the $174,000 they make a year, despite the juicy perks like extra pay for senior posts and generous medical and pension benefits. Most likely, they're so much richer than the rest of us simply because campaigning is expensive, so politics naturally attracts wealthy people. Many of them made their riches in real estate, or they got their wealth through inheritances and marriage.

But shrewd stock picking also clearly help. Studies by Alan Ziobrowski at Georgia State University conclude that our reps regularly outperform the markets by large amounts due to the “significant information advantage” they derive from their jobs.

Our reps may actually be a lot wealthier than the numbers provided by CRP suggest, since so much of their wealth goes unreported. The top bracket for assets of spouses is "more than $1 million," which means that family net worth is likely undervalued in many cases. Plus their annual filings exclude the value of government retirement accounts, primary residences and personal property not held for investment -- like artwork and cars.