America's Dumbest Idea: Creating a Multiple-Choice Test Generation
Standardized testing means more rote memorization and less time for creativity. Students aren't prepared for college and life.

A few years ago, I met with my former high school social studies teacher to catch up over drinks. "Miss F" was one of my favorite teachers and we hadn't seen each other in about 12 years. As we reminisced about our field trips, my other classmates, and my hilariously unfortunate fashion choices, she revealed to me that she and many of my former high school teachers refer to that time as "the golden era". I was shocked. How could it be that the school district had become worse since I graduated?

My high school, which is located in a working class Latino suburb bordering Chicago, was overpopulated, underfunded, and in my opinion, incredibly stifling. Needless to say, I resented going there. I felt we were disenfranchised and were not given the same opportunities that affluent schools provided their students.

I should have realized how lucky I really was when I was in college, however. Unlike many of my classmates, I cranked out papers with little difficulty because I knew how to synthesize information and formulate an argument. Writing a thesis statement was a freaking breeze. But at the time I had no idea that these skills were a luxury.

It wasn't until I reunited with my teacher that I realized I actually received a decent education compared to many students today. I had several talented and passionate teachers who had not been entirely bogged down by a bunch of inane educational requirements. No Child Left Behind hadn't completely ruined our already failing education system. My teachers taught me how to analyze and question texts and write thesis statements. I was taught the symbolism of the Mississippi River in Huckleberry Finn. I was taken on after school field trips to movies, poetry readings, and plays. Some of them even encouraged me to question authority. If it weren't for some of these teachers, I never would have become a writer.

But that has all changed now. According to my teacher, budget cuts have made field trips nearly impossible. Not only that, teachers are now so bogged down by administrative nonsense and standardized testing requirements, that it's very difficult to teach children anything but the rote memorization of information. I hear complaints like these all the time from my friends and family members who are teachers. While they are passionate about what they do, they are not given the agency or resources to flourish and engage their students in higher levels of discourse.

One of my family members is a teacher at our former high school and he is frequently exasperated by the efforts devoted to standardized testing. He says:

With so much riding on these exams, schools try to get kids enthused by even having test pep-rallies, assemblies, and programs to promote test-taking strategies and to underscore the tests' importance. This is how the love of learning is being cultivated? This is how we encourage intellectual curiosity?

No Child Left Behind, which was passed in 2001, mandated that states use test scores to determine whether schools were succeeding or failing. Unfortunately, this emphasis on testing had dire consequences. Even initial supporters, such as Diane Ravitch, an education historian and former assistant secretary of education in George Bush senior's administration, realized how detrimental these measures were. She wrote in a 2010 Wall Street Journal op-ed:

Accountability turned into a nightmare for American schools, producing graduates who were drilled regularly on the basic skills but were often ignorant about almost everything else … This was not my vision of good education.

And Ravitch doesn't believe that Common Core is the solution to this crisis in education either. Now all states must adopt Common Core or similar standards approved by state higher education officials if they want to receive federal waivers from No Child Left Behind. Ravitch feels that these new standards are being imposed on children with little evidence of how they will affect students, teachers, or schools.

"I only see it getting worse", says one of my friends, a fourth grade teacher in Chicago. "Common Core standards have been added to our Illinois testing now, which are much, much more challenging standards. This means learning a whole new test for the teachers and students." Not only are these requirements causing a lot of stress, she says that the materials for the tests are also very expensive. A report from Truthout has outlined Common Core's various corporate connections. Clearly the objective is profit, not a rigorous and nuanced education that will benefit students in the long run.

Why does our education system insist on these kinds of methods when they're clearly not working? Why not emulate Finland, a country with no standardized tests and whose teachers assign less homework and encourage creativity? Finnish students have been turning in some of the highest test scores in the world in the last few years.

Whether it be No Child Left Behind or Common Core, the problem lies in manufactured learning. In teaching English at the university level, I have noticed that students are often ill prepared for the demands of higher education. Students who are used to multiple choice tests lack the skills and the confidence to formulate their own complex opinions and interpretations. It is irresponsible to have these students graduate without the proper skills to succeed.

Rigid curriculums that focus on right and wrong answers teach children to see the world in binaries. These methods don't encourage creativity or innovation. I fear that our deeply flawed education system will produce generations of people who lack critical thinking skills. How can students be expected to become highly skilled or passionate about anything when they're asked to simply regurgitate information? What kind of choices will they make in their adult lives when they have never been taught how to look at the nuances and complexities of situations? Who will have the tools to question authority? Who will question the status quo? How will we compete with other countries when our younger generations have not been encouraged to develop their inquisitiveness and engage with the world?

I fear that our system is failing children by encouraging them to be mindless consumers. High tests scores do not make someone well-educated or well-rounded and memorizing facts does not equal intelligence. Public education should not be a commodity, but a foundation for children to at least have the possibility of succeeding in the world.

http://www.alternet.org/education/am...age=1#bookmark


For anyone interested in exploring this further:
Flow Chart Exposes Common Core's Myriad Corporate Connections
Flow Chart Exposes Common Core's Myriad Corporate Connections

No, Obama Didn't Lie to You About Your Health Care Plans
The claim that President Obama lied in saying that people could keep their insurance looks like another Fox News special.

http://www.alternet.org/no-obama-did...lth-care-plans

Yet this cartoon is amusing:
http://www.alternet.org/files/styles...colorlarge.jpg

The mandatory..
 

standardized testing of public school children was carefully crafted by the "smaller government" crowd who wants to ultimately privatize EVERYTHING.

Their dream is public school failure in order to say "I told you so". The teachers are the bad guys now, anyone working in the public sector just feeds off the government teet. School teachers have a barely a squeak of a chance to be able to do their jobs. As was stated eloquently above, creative and critical thinking skills are being overshadowed by studying for tests.

These are challenging times for us who care deeply for progress. The religious right has snuck upon us by winning local elections decades ago and has now maneuvered themselves in positions of governmental decision-making and worse. Case in point Ted Cruz.

I urge everyone who is eligible to vote, please do so. Pay attention to your local elections and spend some time understanding their positions. They don't start out being born Senators and Governors, most started small and benign.

Voting is a great idea, of course it was a much greater idea before corporations bought the Supreme Court, the House, the Senate and the President. It hasn’t been the same since corporations achieved personhood and Citizens United put a price tag on freedom of speech. So money gets the last word and the rich can just buy everything.

I used to believe local politics were where you could possibly affect some change. I suppose that is still true but whether politicians start out small and benign or not there is no way in hell they will ever move up the political ladder without selling their souls to the corporate world. It was always a little bit like that, but you can thank the Supreme Court for making sure the rich have the means to control the government.

They don’t hear us anymore. It’s even more difficult to make any difference than it was when Bush stole the election from Gore and the Supreme Court backed him up. Now it isn’t necessary to steal elections. Corporations have everyone in their pocket. And because they need government for a safety net, they are somewhat at odds with tea party republicans and libertarians who want small government, therefore corporations cheerfully through money at Democrats as well, making them as deaf to our needs as the Republicans. Still what other option do we have than to vote.

And as happy_go_lucky already stated, it is important to stay informed. Information is currency and truth is for sale to the highest bidder. Sanity is just out the window. What more is there to say when the media can, with a straight face, tout the governor of New Jersey, a guy who makes Reagan look like a liberal, as a political moderate. We have to remember that the media is not objective they are owned and controlled by the rich and powerful and are busily at work twisting the facts in order to mold our opinions. Everybody has an agenda. Read a variety of news sources encompassing a variety of political and ideological opinions and then you at least have a shot at making an informed decision.

I hope you don't mind my using parts of your post as jumping points.

Privatization removes the necessity of even giving lip service to the idea of equality of service or product. The bottom line is all that matters to private businesses. And that’s fine for most things. It’s a sad but unavoidable reality that we all can’t afford everything or the best of everything. That’s life. But in some instances privatization doesn’t work. Education for example. Privatizing education is a really bad idea. However, we are moving in that direction and along with mandatory standardized testing, there is "contracting out", school vouchers and charter schools which are parts of this same push. We already have a huge difference in what kind of education people can afford to give their children. More government control and funding is needed to even out education so that what is available to all citizens is comparable. Even now the level of knowledge and education available depends on money and geography. It will get so much worse with privatization. With money dictating how much your children can learn it’s not hard to imagine a country with an uneducated lower class stuck forever in low paying, dead end jobs (if they are lucky) where they do not earn enough money to support their families. Pretty much the direction we are heading now. Education should not be turned into a consumer product. It is a social and a public responsibility.

Privatized prisons are good business for their owners, but bad business for everyone else. It’s like putting McDonalds in charge of Weight Watchers. It’s not in McDonalds’ best interest for you to eat healthy. It’s not in the best interest of a privately owned prison for you to become rehabilitated or, if truth be told, for you not to commit a crime in the first place. So let’s keep that war on drugs going. We now have prison lobbyists to make sure crimes stay on the books and punishments are severe. It is in the best interest of private prisons for punishment to always be incarceration. The US has the highest incarceration rate in the world. America makes up 5% of the world's population and 25% of its jailed prisoners. It’s only logical, it’s not personal it’s just business. I mean what can you expect, what kind of business owner works at eliminating his clients.

Prison for profit is insane and immoral for a country to do it to its adult citizens, but to do it to its children is unforgivable. Yet privately owned prisons for children exist. As does privatized foster care and a variety of other privatized child welfare services.

The privatization of water is a chilling idea, but Nestle’s believes it is the way to go. Nestle’s Chairman and former CEO, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, believes that “access to water is not a public right.” Great. I think we should hurry and put him in charge of water.

To put it simply

Privatization bad, government good.

However we need to bring back that government that is of the people, by the people, for the people. Because as it stands now it is in deep doodoo. There is a good chance it shall perish from the Earth.

And speaking of prisons, this is truly disturbing.

Life in Prison for Stealing Candy? Thousands of Prisoners Sentenced to Die Behind Bars for Nonviolent Crimes
The number of prisoners serving life for nonviolent crimes is truly staggering.


http://www.alternet.org/life-prison-...mes?page=0%2C3

Speaking of prisons
 

It has been recently revealed that the private prison industry not only wishes to control more prisons, but are lobbying the states to maintain demand for their services. In 2012, CCA sent a letter to 48 states offering to buy up their prisons as a remedy to their “challenging corrections budgets,” in exchange for a 20-year contract and an assurance that the state will maintain at least a 90 percent occupancy at the prison. In the Public Interest, an advocacy group pushing for an end to prison privatization, reviewed 62 state and local private prison contracts.

http://www.mintpressnews.com/private...y-beds/169600/


For-Profit prison is immoral.

For-Profit health care is immoral.

For-Profit education is immoral.

For-Profit local governmental services is immoral.

And on and on....

When profit is not a factor, the consumer citizen receives a better shake.

Chomsky’s right: The New York Times’ latest big lie
More misleading half-truths from a paper too cowed by power and myth to tell the truth about U.S. foreign policy

http://www.salon.com/2013/11/16/chom...atest_big_lie/

Elizabeth Warren: quiet revolutionary who could challenge Hillary Clinton in Democrats' 2016 race
Senator's tough stance against Wall Street is attracting voters on the left who are disenchanted with the party establishment
Not many political "rock stars" inspire audience members to knit, but, even by Washington's sedate standards, the darling of America's new left is a quiet revolutionary.

Senator Elizabeth Warren, a former Harvard professor turned Wall Street scourge, is one of a clutch of unlikely radicals giving hope to those disenchanted with mainstream Democrats.

Hours before a rare public appearance last week, one of the largest rooms in Congress begins slowly filling up with an odd mix of groupies: policy wonks, finance geeks, Occupy activists, and, yes, the type of political conference attendee who brings their knitting in.

Warren proceeds to calmly recite numbers that could inspire even librarians to storm a few barricades. The Wall Street crash has cost the US economy $14tn, she says, but its top institutions are 30% larger than before, own half the country's bank assets and are in receipt of an implicit taxpayer subsidy of $83bn a year because they are deemed too big to fail.

"We have got to get back to running this country for American families, not for its largest financial institutions," concludes Warren, before noting how little President Barack Obama has done to achieve that.

When the same message was delivered to union leaders in September, she had them standing on their chairs. But for the first time since the banking crash, the argument is connecting at the ballot box too. Mayoral elections in Boston and New York two weeks ago saw leftwing candidates with similar messages about economic inequality win by surprising landslides.

Meanwhile, Terry McAuliffe, the former Clinton fundraiser who epitomises the business-friendly Democrat mainstream, saw his substantial poll lead in Virginia all but evaporate under attack from populists on the right.

Whereas the Tea Party has worked relentlessly since the financial crash to recast the Republican party as a perceived challenger to Wall Street, Democrats such as Obama and his potential successor Hillary Clinton rely heavily on financial donors and have veered away from confrontation. But the popularity of senators such as Warren in Massachusetts and Sherrod Brown in Ohio has combined with recent mayoral election wins by Bill de Blasio in New York and Marty Walsh in Boston to raise hopes that the left could yet exert the same pull on Democrats.

"The challenges the Democratic party has faced since 2009 have largely been a result of the public's perception that the party isn't clearly enough on their side," argues Damon Silvers, policy director for union umbrella group AFL-CIO. "Republicans have exploited that very skilfully, even though Republicans are totally owned by the financial class."

"What's happening now is the emergence of politicians – De Blasio and Walsh being recent examples – that are just not interested in that type of politics," adds Silvers. "And those people are being successful. They are stepping into a political vacuum that is all about authenticity in relationship to issues of inequality and the power of financial interests."

Though the similarity only goes so far, the shared interest of America's new left and Tea Party conservatives in challenging the economic status quo also shows how figures such as Warren might attract broader support beyond traditional Democrat voters.

One self-confessed Warren groupie is David Collum, a Cornell University chemistry professor and amateur investor, whose enthusiasm for free market economics previously led him to endorse libertarian Republican candidate Ron Paul. Collum has been exchanging regular emails with Warren since before the crash and says she captured his imagination because her brand of intelligent populism transcends traditional political boundaries.

"If you look at her and Ron Paul, it's the same thing: they appear to speak from the heart," he explains. "Here you have Warren saying the banks are thugs, she supports the consumer which has a natural leftwing sound to it, but I don't think it's putty-headed liberalism, I think she is just an advocate for the small person."

The buzz around Warren reached fever pitch last week with an article in New Republic magazine predicting she could challenge Hillary Clinton for the Democrat nomination in the 2016 presidential election. Widely-read, if not endorsed, across Washington, the piece entitled "Hillary's nightmare" was followed by a similar analysis in Politico describing the prospect as "Wall Street's nightmare".

Like many eventual nominees, Warren is emphatic she does not want to run for the White House (a fact her supporters claim makes her ideal) and the notion resulted in scepticism from some Washington insiders.

But the question of whether it is Warren or one of the other emerging leftwingers who challenges the Clinton orthodoxy in 2016 may prove besides the point if even the talk of her running causes Team Hillary to reassess its rumoured dependence on Wall Street fundraising and helps pull the party away from big business.

Political pundits in the media have often been slow to capture public mood changes, ignoring the Occupy Wall Street movement for months, for example, and were also caught by surprise by de Blasio's win in New York.

The man who took America's biggest city back under Democratic party control for the first time in two decades was not even endorsed by the liberal New York Times, which opted for a more mainstream candidate, Christine Quinn.

Rupert Murdoch's New York Post was predictably blunter, calling de Blasio a pro-Cuban communist, while the Washington Post got into hot water with a column suggesting "people with conventional views" in other states would have to "repress a gag reflex" when considering him because he was married to an African-American who used to be lesbian.

In the end, de Blasio won the support of 73% of New York's voters with an unapologetically leftwing campaign: arguing for tax increases on the rich to pay for better schools and using his afro-haired son to promote a campaign against police harassment of young black men.

The skepticism among political elites that such policies will translate outside liberal bastions like New York may be warranted. Howard Dean, the last such candidate seen as a serious presidential candidate, crashed and burned when he was seen as too "shouty". Ralph Nader, who ran to the left of John Kerry as an independent candidate in 2004 arguably cost him the election that made way for George W Bush.

But what has changed is that mainstream Democrats and Republicans in Washington seem even less popular today than the perceived outsiders on the left and right.

Both Obama and the Republican party hit record lows in the polls recently after the government shutdown and botched launch of healthcare reforms exacerbated a national feeling that Washington is broken.

"I think the lesson that we have to draw from [these polls] is that the American people are not satisfied," said White House spokesman Jay Carney. "[Not satisfied] that we're, all of us, focused on the things that matter to them, and we're not getting the results that they want."

In this atmosphere, anyone who doesn't appear part of the Washington mainstream is by definition a populist.

But whereas rightwing challengers in the Tea Party can lump public dissatisfaction with Washington, Wall Street and the government into one big anti-establishment message, radicals on the left have a finer line to tread, especially after Obama's botched healthcare launch led to such mistrust of their preferred public sector solutions.

Warren does it by pointing out the need for more regulation, both to save capitalism from itself and re-engage the social mobility of the American dream.

Other rising stars such as Maryland governor Martin O'Malley – also tipped as a leftwing challenger to Hillary in 2016 – have done it by marrying liberal policies with managerial success at the state level.

The former mayor of Baltimore, said to be one of the inspirations for the Tommy Carcetti character in The Wire, has introduced gun control legislation, abolished the death penalty and legalised same-sex marriages, all while successfully increasing government spending on areas such as transport.

Nonetheless, compared with Hillary Clinton, both O'Malley and Warren remain virtual unknowns on the national stage and would face a huge challenge to win the Democratic primary let alone the White House.

Warren describes her battle with the banks as a "David and Goliath struggle". Whether David can take on the Goliaths of the Democratic party is a whole other matter.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...ce-white-house

http://news.yahoo.com/zimmerman-arre...195031198.html

Well would you believe it? Zimmerman charged with assault. Go figure.

Is it me or is this just like really messed up?


State Rep. Smashes Homeless Peoples' Stuff With a Sledgehammer
The Rep. roams the streets and looks for homeless people in order to literally smash their possessions.

Much like Batkid, Hawaii has found its own superhero. Except that instead of protecting the powerless from harm, he roams the streets with a sledgehammer and looks for homeless people in order to literally smash their possessions.

Remarkably, this vigilante isn’t just some random Hawaiian, but five-term State Rep. Tom Brower (D).

Noting that he’s “disgusted” with homeless people, Brower told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser about his own personal brand of “justice”: “If I see shopping carts that I can’t identify, I will destroy them so they can’t be pushed on the streets.” Brower has waged this campaign for two weeks, estimating that he’s smashed about 30 shopping carts in the process.

“I want to do something practical that will really clean up the streets,” he explained to Hawaii News Now as he showed off his property destruction skills:

Uncontent to just destroy homeless people’s items, Brower is also on a mission to wake those he finds sleeping and tell them to sleep somewhere else. “If someone is sleeping at night on the bus stop, I don’t do anything, but if they are sleeping during the day, I’ll walk up and say, ‘Get your ass moving,’” he said.

It’s no stretch to assume that if Brower were found roaming middle-class neighborhoods and smashing items in people’s homes, he would find himself both out of office and behind bars. But segments of society view homeless people as less important and undeserving of the dignity of having their possessions kept safe.

One homeless person in Honolulu, Edward Ferreira, witnessed Brower in action. “To see someone banging on stuff like that, it was very scary for me,” he told Hawaii News Now.

Without a home, homeless people often have nowhere to store their possessions. A shopping cart can be very useful in both its storage space and mobility. Some localities, including New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and others have tried to address this problem by offering free storage space to homeless people.

Hawaii, on the other hand, is garnering a reputation for a less-than-compassionate approach to its homeless population, and it’s not just because of Brower. It’s got the highest rate of homelessness in the country, but rather than build more shelters or offer more services for the poor, lawmakers approved $100,000 over the next two years to offer one-way flights off the islands to any of the state’s estimated 17,000 homeless persons.
http://www.alternet.org/state-rep-sm...f-sledgehammer

For 2013, this is scary.....
 

Poll: Overweight people, gays slammed most online



By CONNIE CASS
The Associated Press
November 20, 2013

Most teens and young adults on Facebook, Twitter or other social networking sites see them at least sometimes: slurs, offensive images or mean-spirited video clips that stigmatize groups of people.

Who's targeted most often? Overweight people, according to a poll of Internet users ages 14 to 24.

When does it seem most hurtful? When aimed at transgender people.

What about potshots at blacks or women? Young people mostly take those as jokes.

In the poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and MTV, young people take stock of the discriminatory words and images they see online:

___

Who gets slammed online?

—Those who are overweight (54 percent of young people see them
targeted sometimes or often)

—Gay, lesbian or bisexual people (50 percent)

—African-Americans (46 percent)

—Women (44 percent)

—Men who dress or carry themselves in a feminine way (42 percent)

—Immigrants (34 percent)

—Latinos (32 percent)

—Muslims (31 percent)

—Women who dress or carry themselves in a masculine way (31 percent)

—Transgender people (31 percent)

___

Young people are more likely to view slurs or discriminatory images as mean-spirited rather than as a joke when they target:

—Transgender people (63 percent say it's most often meant to be hurtful)

—Muslims (60 percent)

—Gay, lesbian or bisexual people (54 percent)

—Those who are overweight (53 percent)

—Men who dress or carry themselves in a feminine way (53 percent)

___

Racial insults are less likely to be considered intentionally hurtful. A majority of young people say racial groups are maligned mostly in a joking way:

—African-Americans (64 percent say it's most often meant as a joke)

—Latinos (67 percent)

—Asian-Americans (73 percent)

___

What about sexism?

A big majority — 7 in 10 — say demeaning comments, pictures and videos about women are mostly jokes, not meant to be hurtful. Women are about as likely to feel that way as men are.

About 60 percent of those polled see the word "bitch" used against people online or in text messages at least sometimes. Fewer than 30 percent are very offended by it when it's aimed at someone else.

___

Christianity, the nation's dominant religion, isn't high on the list of online targets.

But when slurs and images malign Christians, they are more likely to be seen as intentionally hurtful than those aimed at racial minorities.

About half said discriminatory stuff about Christians was mostly hurtful; half thought it was joking.

Another target group that got a split decision? Immigrants.

___

Overall, young people say this stuff is mostly an attempt at humor.

The poll ranked four possible reasons why people text or share discriminatory language:

—They're trying to be funny (53 percent think that's a major reason)

—They think it's "cool" to use that language (45 percent)

—They don't realize the language is offensive (32 percent)

—They really hold hateful feelings about the group (30 percent)

Although "hateful feelings" aren't rated as a prime motive, a big majority of young people — 7 in 10 — say hatred is at least a minor reason for posting or texting slurs about a group.

Young people seem jaded to a lot of the offensive stuff they see on the social network sites and online gaming communities. Fewer than half, for example, say they are very offended by online use of the N-word for African-Americans.

But that doesn't mean they think tweeting slurs or posting derogatory videos is all right.

A majority say it's never OK to use discriminatory language, even if you're just kidding.

___

Associated Press Director of Polling Jennifer Agiesta and AP News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius contributed to this report.

http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pb...129969/-1/NEWS

___

Fact Check: Social Security Does Not Increase the Deficit
Bought politicians and pundits continue to spread nonsense about America's best-loved program.

The American people love Social Security, and with good reason. It protects seniors and the disabled from poverty, and it is the most important life and disability safeguard available to the nation's 75 million children. The program is a bargain: Its administrative costs are lower than privately managed retirement plans. Social Security returns in benefits more than 99 cents of every dollar collected, whereas a typical 401(k) could easily eat up 20 cents of that dollar in fees. The program is fiscally sound and prudently managed — a policy triumph.

There are basically two categories of people who want to see Social Security cut: 1) financiers who wish to move us toward privatized retirement accounts so that they can charge us fees; and 2) rich people who do not like to pay taxes. Their main champions are conservatives at the Heritage Foundation, libertarians at the Cato Institute and Wall Street financier Pete Peterson.

Just about everybody else in America is against cutting Social Security, as poll after poll demonstrates. The people have continued to speak loudly and clearly, and yet Washington can’t seem to get the message. This is obviously because a lot of media people and politicians rely on money from the two groups mentioned above. So they have to come up with arguments to try to convince the public that up is down and red is blue. It’s a war of attrition: repeat lies and distortions often enough and maybe they’ll come to be taken as facts.

The latest volley is a shameful and distorted editorial in the Washington Post which attempts to downplay the retirement crisis faced by Americans and to stoke generational tensions by suggesting that Social Security is a burden on young people instead of a vital safeguard. The editorial actually mocked a sensible bill introduced by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) that would boost Social Security benefits by increasing taxes on the wealthy. The Washington Post's nonsense was blasted by Senator Elizabeth Warren, who spoke out strongly against cuts of any kind, including Obama's "chained CPI" cut which would prevent Social Security from keeping up with seniors' increasing costs.

A favorite tactic of Social Security's foes is to push the notion that the program somehow drives up the federal deficit, an argument that is completely without merit.

In the first place, the federal deficit is shrinking. That’s a highly inconvenient truth for people trying to stoke deficit hysteria, but they’re banking on the fact that a lot of Americans don’t know about the deficit going down. So they go on pretending that the federal deficit is a dire, pants-on-fire problem, even though most of them know that’s a bunch of hot air.

Even if the deficit were rising — which it’s not — the sensible way to deal with that would be to concentrate on putting people back to work and to invest in productive things like education and infrastructure. That gets the economy going and then, guess what? As tax revenues come back, the deficit goes down on its own, which is what’s happening right now.

Taking money out of people's pockets, which is what cutting Social Security would do, actually could have the rerverse effect of increasing the deficit because it means that people can’t buy the stuff they would normally buy with this money, like food and healthcare. When that happens, the businesses trying to sell those items have to scale back and lay off employees, which means less tax revenue for the government. And so on. Not exactly a recipe for a booming economy.

In the second place, it’s a plain economic fact that Social Security is not a driver of the deficit. Nevertheless, irresponsible people continue to confuse the public by using various tricks such as predictions of the future that have little basis in reality and accounting methods applied in devious ways.

We’re going to cut through all of that. By the end of this article, you will be able to confound all Republicans and centrist Democrats who offer up nonsense linking Social Security to the deficit and spread hyperbolic rhetoric.

1. Social Security is a self-financed program.

First, let’s talk about how Social Security works. If you are employed, you most likely pay a certain amount of your paycheck, generally 6.2 percent, to Social Security. Your employer kicks in the same amount. (The exception would be a few state and local workers who get public state pensions instead of Social Security).

The Social Security program has an independent budget that is separate from the rest of the federal government. Social Security is fundamentally a pay-as-you-go system, which means that payments collected today immediately go to pay benefits.

The finances of the Social Security program have been managed extremely well, and until the recent financial crisis and recession, more payments were collected than were needed for benefits and the surplus was placed into a trust fund. The Social Security program has loaned this extra money to the U.S. government, which used it for other things. In return, Social Security gets interest-bearing Treasury securities, or bonds.

The Wall Street-driven financial crisis and recession reduced the payroll collections, and in 2010, Social Security began to tap into its trust fund, which had been built up for just such an emergency.

You might hear some guy from the Cato Institute getting clever by pointing out that Social Security is using interest on the government bonds it holds to help pay for benefits, and therefore adding to the deficit because the government has to pay that interest. That’s a bit like saying that because I was smart and saved money and then loaned it to my profligate neighbor, I am somehow responsible for increasing his debt when I ask him to pay back what he borrowed. Would any reasonable person make such an upside-down claim?

No. Yet people calling themselves “fact checkers” are promoting this absurdity in the mainstream media.

As economist Dean Baker has explained, it’s a perfectly ordinary thing for bond holders to use interest collected on bonds. Grandmothers with pensions do it, and they aren’t generally accused of adding to the deficit. Just for fun, Baker uses the example of Pete Peterson as an illustration: “If Peter Peterson used $5 million in interest on government bonds he held to finance the startup of his Campaign to Fix the Debt, would it be accurate to say that he had contributed to the deficit? I suspect that most of the fact checkers would say that it is not.”

2. Social Security is not in danger of running out of money.

Another thing you hear is that Social Security is going to run out of money sometime in the future. Actually, by the forecasts made on the part of the Social Security Trustees, the program isn’t going to run out of money even if its trust funds — and that’s a big if — get depleted some decades down the road (2033 is the latest projected date).

The Trustees report is based on predictions that are deliberately conservative. Yet even with its worst-case scenario reasoning, the report says that the tax income would still be enough to pay about three-quarters of scheduled benefits through 2085. Does that sound like a crisis? No, because it isn’t. The real crisis is the growing number of Americans who will face retirement without traditional pensions and not enough money in their 401(k)s. Cutting Social Security would only add fuel to that fire.

3. There is no justification for tampering with Social Security’s financing right now.

Economists are not very good with crystal balls. If you don’t believe this, look at how few of them predicted the last financial crisis. Yet they are addicted to making prognostications.

Social Security’s finances are in perfectly good shape: the Social Security Trust Fund has a $2.7 trillion surplus and will continue to grow until 2021. Perhaps there will be more trouble some decades down the road, but we will be better able to make those assessments when we actually see what the reality is. To cut benefits right now because of a problem that might occur years from now is ridiculous, unless of course your real concern is to cut taxes, which is naturally the desire of America’s Ebeneezer Scrooges.

If you insist on doing something right now, there is a very simple way to generate more revenue for the program, and it doesn’t involve cutting benefits in all the myriad ways the politicians and pundits have proposed: Raise the cap on earnings taxed to pay for Social Security from its current $113,000 to something like, say, $200,000. Presto! You now have loads more revenue and you did not keep grandma from buying medicine.

You don’t hear the greedy rich jumping on board with this idea, because they don’t like to pay taxes, even when doing so might benefit the economy where they make their millions. You don’t hear the financiers cheering this approach, because they really want to see the program destroyed so they can get their mitts on your retirement money. But it would certainly suit everybody else.

http://www.alternet.org/economy/fact...age=1#bookmark

More Heartless Advice from McDonald's to Employees: Sell Your Christmas Gifts
The fast-food conglomerate would do just about anything to avoid paying a living wage.

As the giving season approaches, fast-food giant McDonald’s has found a new way to avoid helping its low-paid workers with a living wage: this time by urging employees to sell their Christmas presents for extra money. The helpful bit of corporate advice was posted on the company’s “McResource” employee webpage in an effort to help staff manage finances and stress as the holiday season approaches. Companies like McDonald's and Walmart are really outdoing themselves with the holidays approaching: Retail giant Wal-Mart's recently requested help with the company's food drive, with proceeds going to their own employees, because Wal-MArt does not pay them enough to afford food.

Of course, McDonald's also recently advised employees break food into little pieces in an effort to feel more full on less food. In yet more helpful tips from this very caring employer, McDonald’s also recommended singing away stress and taking two vacations a year to lower the risk of heart attack. And, of course, selling your possessions is not just good for Christmas presents, they advise “selling some of your unwanted possessions on eBay or Craigslist” for “some quick cash.”

The company recommendations were publicized on Tuesday through Low Pay Is Not OK, an advocacy group for higher wages for fast food workers, arguing that the conglomerate asking its employees to make up for a lack of financial stability because of pitifully low wages was reprehensible. The organization quickly experienced blowback from McDonald’s, with the company flaming that the company-wide advice was taken out of context.

“This is an attempt by an outside organization to undermine a well-intended employee assistance resource website by taking isolated portions out of context,” the company said in a public statement.

The group was in the news earlier this month for releasing a recording of McDonald’s workers calling the company hotline asking for assistance, where the operators then urge the decade-long employee to apply for federal food stamps and Medicaid assistance. According to a recent study, 52% of families of major fast-food employees are enrolled in one or more public assistance programs, compared with the 25% of the whole workforce. The same employee in question was arrested that same month after confronting McDonald’s USA President Jeff Stratton during a speech in Chicago regarding the $8.25 hourly wage that left her unable to purchase clothing from her children, which has since been used as a major rallying cry for those asking for a major overhaul in fast food companies' obligation to their employees.

http://www.alternet.org/labor/more-h...hristmas-gifts

McDonald’s Eating Tip: Break Your Food Into Pieces So You’ll Be Less Hungry

The more we hear about McDonald's HR resource center, appropriately titled McResources, the more we learn about the darkness of the human soul. Almost one month to the day after learning that their help center tells its employees to sign up for food stamps, Mickey D's has struck again. This time their website suggests its hungry, underpaid employees to break their food up into smaller bites so that it "results in eating less and still feeling full." The New York Times's Steve Greenhouse, a labor reporter, tweeted this screenshot of the McResources page that has many people aghast.

http://presstubes.com/mcdonalds-eati...e-less-hungry/

Noam Chomsky | Media Control and Indoctrination in the United States

http://www.truth-out.org/progressive...-united-states

End the 1 Percent’s Free Ride: Taxing Land Would Solve America’s Biggest Problems
Want a real overhaul of the tax code? Here's an elegant way to reduce inequality and mitigate poverty — in one tax.

Appealing to the overwhelming majority of Americans who believe the tax code is so complex that it needs “major changes or a complete overhaul,” Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., have adorably started a joint Twitter handle: @simplertaxes. The bipartisan love fest is no doubt a heartfelt effort, but not very convincing from men who acquired the fancy titles by opening and maintaining loopholes for the ownership class. Baucus’ hot-off-the-presses tax reform proposals predictably simplify the code very little.

At present, neither party advocates the tax code so elegant it can reduce inequality, mitigate poverty, stimulate productivity, prevent asset price bubbles, stem community-shredding gentrification and drain the distended Wall Street cabal of its ill-gotten gains – in just one tax.

Land value. If we want a real overhaul/simplification of the tax code, the way to do it is to tax land value. It might be the only tax we need. No sales tax. No income tax. No payroll tax to fill a Social Security trust fund. No corporate income tax that, as we can plainly see, offshores profits. No need to tax labor and industry at all. Just tax the stuff that humans had nothing to do with creating, and therefore have no basis to claim ownership over at all. You’ll find that almost all of it is “owned” by the fabled 1 percent.

And boy are they sucking a lot of money out of it. By far the most valuable asset form in the U.S. is real estate, and the majority of that is the value of the land, as distinct from the value of the human-made buildings. Economist Michael Hudson has assessed that the land value of New York City alone exceeds that of all of the plant and equipment in the entire country, combined. No one put any enterprise or cost into producing the land’s value – they simply bought it when it was cheap, sold it when it was dear, and waited for the check. “They” are the Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) sector, and they capture 40 percent of the United States’ profits, despite the complete passivity of their profit-accumulation method.

Not only would a land value tax (LVT) drastically shrink that Wall Street bloat, it would have prevented the housing bubble in the first place. Land, after all, was the speculative commodity at play, not the houses themselves, which, as “Arrested Development” incisively suggested, were a bunch of crap. With an LVT, the cookie-cutter McMansions in suburban housing developments would only be worth the cost of their cheap paneling, artificial marble and the rest of it. Without one, they were wrongly assessed as being worth the value of the land they stood upon, which speculators bid up and up and up.

An LVT would stimulate urban property development without incurring the socially catastrophic ethnic displacement pattern we call “gentrification.” As that noted far-left rag the Economist notes, “Property developers … would be less inclined to hoard undeveloped land if they had to pay an annual levy on it.” Despite this, the new developments wouldn’t push rents up throughout the rest of the neighborhood, because the increased land value would be taxed. The rest of the apartment buildings in the area didn’t get any nicer. So why should they cost more? Urban land, scarce by definition, is very valuable. There is no reason to let a small group of rich landlords extract its value, when what created the value are parks, subways, local restaurants and other things the landlords didn’t provide.

Nothing could simplify and demystify the taxation experience for Americans like making sure that the vast majority of us who don’t own the resources, who don’t collect rent and capital gains, who have to work to get our paychecks, wouldn’t ever have to mark April 15 on the calendar again.

In contrast to its tiny tax base, the amount of revenue that can be raised by taxing the land is huge. Enough, for example, to support truly liberatory social spending, like a universal basic income, without risking inflation. Or the money could be devoted to starting a sovereign wealth fund to collectivize ownership claims on capital (the dividends to provide a UBI). Or it could go to local public banks capable of investing in the needs of their communities and regions.

If this sounds like it’s a little too far outside the box, the solution is to collapse the box. Capitalism requires pretending that individuals’ private ownership of the land, minerals, gases and oils that nature provided is not a completely ludicrous idea. And as long as our political parties are both capitalist parties, there is little hope for a land value tax. But the day is coming, and soon, when it will no longer be so.

http://www.alternet.org/tax-land-end...age=1#bookmark

Sarah Palin is really going to be upset this time. She's had to speak out about her concern over his liberal agenda already. This is going to push her over the edge. Citizens should be guaranteed dignified work, education and healthcare. What is wrong with this guy. Must be a socialist. And clearly he doesn't understand what god is really concerned about and what religion's role is supposed to be.

Pope Francis Attacks 'Idolatry of Money,' Says Inequality 'Kills'
Pope Francis called on politicians to guarantee “dignified work, education and healthcare” to their citizens.

Pope Francis launched a broadside against inequality and out-of-control capitalism in a 84-page document released Tuesday.

In what is known as an “apostolic exhortation,” which means communication from the Pope of the Catholic Church, Francis called on politicians to guarantee “dignified work, education and healthcare” to their citizens and also criticized the “idolatry of money,” according to Reuters. Francis “beg[ged] the Lord” to deliver politicians who were more concerned with the poor and inequality.

Francis blasted the current economic system as one that is profoundly unequal.

“Just as the commandment 'Thou shalt not kill' sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say 'thou shalt not' to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills,” the Pope wrote. “As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world's problems or, for that matter, to any problems.”

He also repeated his calls for reform in the Catholic Church, though still said that women could not become priests. He did say that women should have more influence in the church.

Francis himself has made it a point to practice what he preaches. He lives in a guest house at the Vatican rathan the usual, lavish Apostolic Palace. Last month, Reuters notes Pope Francis suspended a bishop who spent millions on his residence.

http://www.alternet.org/pope-francis...and-capitalism

How Wall Street Turned America Into Incarceration Nation
Transforming poorer neighborhoods into desirable real estate for the new elites often requires getting rid of the poor: jail becomes the new home for many.

http://www.alternet.org/corporate-ac...eration-nation

Florida woman in warning-shot case released

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/11/28/justice/florida-stand-your-ground-release/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

"A Florida woman who was sentenced to 20 years for firing a gun to scare off her allegedly abusive husband has been released from prison as she awaits a new trial, her attorney said.

Marissa Alexander was released Wednesday night, attorney Bruce Zimet said."

16-Year-Old Jailed at Rikers for 3 Years Without Trial

A teen who spent three years in a notorious New York jail without ever having been convicted or put on trial is coming forward after filing a lawsuit against New York City. In June, charges against Kalief Browder were mysteriously dropped and he was released, as first reported by WABC-TV.

Browder was a 16-year-old sophomore in high school walking home from a party in the Bronx when he was arrested on a tip that he robbed someone three weeks earlier. He was hauled off to Rikers Island, a prison known for punishing conditions and overuse of force, and was held because he couldn’t pay the $10,000 bail. Browder went to court on several occasions, but he was never scheduled for trial. After 33 months in jail, Browder said a judge offered freedom in exchange for a guilty plea, threatening that he could face 15 years in jail if convicted. He refused. Then one day, he was released with no explanation.

“They just dismissed the case and they think it’s all right. No apology, no nothing,” he told WABC-TV. Now at age 20 with his teen years behind him, Browder is first faced with finishing his GED and trying to make up for three years of his teen years lost.

Browder says he spent more than 400 days in solitary confinement, was deprived of meals, and was assaulted and beaten both by officers and fellow inmates. Browder attempted suicide at least six times. Last month he filed a lawsuit last month against the city and several agencies. The Bronx District Attorney’s office has declined to comment.

Browder’s story lays out a laundry list of some of the most prevalent problems with the criminal justice system. Browder was stopped in the Bronx, where the New York Police Department came under particular fire for its over-aggressive use of stops and unsubstantiated charges of “trespassing.” He was purportedly jailed based solely on one report to police, reinforcing race disparities in the criminal justice system. He was held in jail pursuant to bail policies that routinely punish the impoverished. And he was held in solitary confinement as a juvenile, even though the draconian punishment has particularly detrimental long-term effects on youths.

An internal review recently obtained by the Associated Press finds a spike in use of both solitary confinement and force by staff at Rikers Island.

http://www.alternet.org/16-year-old-...-without-trial

Corporations Should Pay a Living Wage or Face the Death Penalty
Doing business is a privilege, not a right. Let's take our power back.

If businesses can't pay a living wage, they should get the corporate death penalty.

Doing business in America – and pretty much every other developed country in the world – is a privilege, not a right.

In order to do business, you, or you and a group of participants, must petition a Secretary of State for a business license.

If your petition is granted, you will be given to set of privileges ranging from the ability to deduct from your income taxes the costs of your meals (if you discuss business), to a whole variety of special tax breaks, incentives, and immunities from prosecution for things that, had you done them as an individual, you might otherwise go to prison for.

When we set up this country more than 200 years ago, we established some of these privileges, and associated with them some pretty heavy responsibilities.

Up until the 1890s, a corporation couldn’t last more than 40 years in any state – which prevented them from being used as a tool to accumulate massive and multigenerational wealth. A corporation had to behave in the public interest, and when they weren’t, thousands of them every year were given the corporate death penalty, their assets dissolved and their stockholders losing everything (but nothing more than) they had invested.

Over the years, as the Supreme Court has given more and more power to wealthy individuals and corporations, these responsibilities receded so far into the background that in one state, Delaware, your articles of incorporation can be a single sentence stating that you intend to “Do whatever is legal in the state of Delaware.” Which is probably why more than half of all the companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange are Delaware corporations.

The reason we originally allowed businesses to do business in this country was that some benefit would come to society from it. But since the era of New Deal economics was replaced by Reaganomics, the principal rationalization we use to give limitations of liability and privileges to corporations and their masters has changed from, “What is best for society?” to, “How can somebody best get rich quick?”

This is a perversion of the entire concept of why nations allowed people and corporations to do business, and why we facilitate that activity by providing at public expense: stable currencies and a stable banking system; predictable and fair court systems; transportation, electrical, water, septic, and communications infrastructure; a criminal justice system to enforce the rules of the game of business; and a workforce educated at the public expense and protected with a public pension called Social Security. We do all these things so the business will provide some good to the public while, in the meantime, enriching its owners.

But a new business model has emerged in the United States. Companies still get the privileges, but they no longer have to conduct themselves in ways that inure a net positive to the public.

Companies are now free to demand not just huge welfare payments, tax breaks, and subsidies, but can actually play one state off against another in a competition for which state this most willing to transfer the most dollars from the taxpaying individual people to the corporations and their billionaire CEOs. Similarly, corporations routinely use “Right To Work For Less” laws empowered by the Taft-Hartley Act to pit workers in high-wage states against workers in low-wage states, producing a national race to the bottom.

Boeing, for example, is participating in both of these practices right now, having just taken billions from Washington State and now playing their workers against desperate workers in old Confederate states. Senator Bernie Sanders has recommended that when States participate in letting corporations play states off against each other, both states should lose federal highway funds.

That, or any other remedy, is pretty unlikely as America continues to race from being one of the world’s wealthiest nations pre-Reagan, to a post-Reagan dystopia; the first modern, fully developed, industrialized nation to actually de-industrialize and move in the direction from First World status toward Third World status as a result of 32 years of Reaganomics.

Finally, a particularly pernicious form of this new business model has emerged, in part out of the radical restructuring of welfare systems in the 1990s led by Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton.

Because welfare reform in the 1990s tied the ability to receive welfare to having to work, low-wage employers discovered that as long as they kept their employees’ pay below the poverty level, you and I, through our tax dollars, would pick up the rest of their employees cost-of-living through food stamps, Medicare, etc. The result is higher taxes for us, and billions in additional money for the CEOs and stockholders of America’s largest companies.

This is not how business should be done in America. If a company refuses to pay – or, their business model is so bad, that they can’t pay – at least a living wage, they should not receive the privilege of doing business in this country.

http://www.alternet.org/corporate-ac...age=1#bookmark

Before I became a Canadian citizen, even before I received my permanent resident card, I was given medicare. I was told I was accepted for permanent residency in January of 2006 and although I could not work until I received my official acceptance and my permanent resident card, which would not happen until June of that year, I was eligible for healthcare immediately. I still remember my amazement. I pointed out the discrepancy to the woman who gave me the good news and she smiled and explained that in Canada health care was a right not a privilege and while I might have to wait for an official card to work, no one expected me to go without health care while I waited for the wheels of the bureaucracy to turn. When I saw this article I immediately thought of my first experience with my adopted country and how different the mindset is here. I don't understand why my native country still refuses to care for its citizens.


21 Ways Canada's Single-Payer System Beats Obamacare
Canadian style single-payer healthcare is simple, affordable, comprehensive and universal—dream on, America.

Dear America:

Costly complexity is baked into Obamacare. No health insurance system is without problems but Canadian style single-payer full Medicare for all is simple, affordable, comprehensive and universal.

In the early 1960s, President Lyndon Johnson enrolled 20 million elderly Americans into Medicare in six months. There were no websites. They did it with index cards!

Below please find 21 Ways the Canadian Health Care System is Better than Obamacare.

Repeal Obamacare and replace it with the much more efficient single-payer, everybody in, nobody out, free choice of doctor and hospital.

Love, Canada

Number 21:
In Canada, everyone is covered automatically at birth – everybody in, nobody out.

In the United States, under Obamacare, 31 million Americans will still be uninsured by 2023 and millions more will remain underinsured.

Number 20:
In Canada, the health system is designed to put people, not profits, first.

In the United States, Obamacare will do little to curb insurance industry profits and will actually enhance insurance industry profits.

Number 19:
In Canada, coverage is not tied to a job or dependent on your income – rich and poor are in the same system, the best guaranty of quality.

In the United States, under Obamacare, much still depends on your job or income. Lose your job or lose your income, and you might lose your existing health insurance or have to settle for lesser coverage.

Number 18:
In Canada, health care coverage stays with you for your entire life.

In the United States, under Obamacare, for tens of millions of Americans, health care coverage stays with you for as long as you can afford your share.

Number 17:
In Canada, you can freely choose your doctors and hospitals and keep them. There are no lists of “in-network” vendors and no extra hidden charges for going “out of network.”

In the United States, under Obamacare, the in-network list of places where you can get treated is shrinking – thus restricting freedom of choice – and if you want to go out of network, you pay for it.

Number 16:
In Canada, the health care system is funded by income, sales and corporate taxes that, combined, are much lower than what Americans pay in premiums.

In the United States, under Obamacare, for thousands of Americans, it’s pay or die – if you can’t pay, you die. That’s why many thousands will still die every year under Obamacare from lack of health insurance to get diagnosed and treated in time.

Number 15:
In Canada, there are no complex hospital or doctor bills. In fact, usually you don’t even see a bill.

In the United States, under Obamacare, hospital and doctor bills will still be terribly complex, making it impossible to discover the many costly overcharges.

Number 14:
In Canada, costs are controlled. Canada pays 10 percent of its GDP for its health care system, covering everyone.

In the United States, under Obamacare, costs continue to skyrocket. The U.S. currently pays 18 percent of its GDP and still doesn’t cover tens of millions of people.

Number 13:
In Canada, it is unheard of for anyone to go bankrupt due to health care costs.

In the United States, under Obamacare, health care driven bankruptcy will continue to plague Americans.

Number 12:
In Canada, simplicity leads to major savings in administrative costs and overhead.

In the United States, under Obamacare, complexity will lead to ratcheting up administrative costs and overhead.

Number 11:
In Canada, when you go to a doctor or hospital the first thing they ask you is: “What’s wrong?”

In the United States, the first thing they ask you is: “What kind of insurance do you have?”

Number 10:
In Canada, the government negotiates drug prices so they are more affordable.

In the United States, under Obamacare, Congress made it specifically illegal for the government to negotiate drug prices for volume purchases, so they remain unaffordable.

Number 9:
In Canada, the government health care funds are not profitably diverted to the top one percent.

In the United States, under Obamacare, health care funds will continue to flow to the top. In 2012, CEOs at six of the largest insurance companies in the U.S. received a total of $83.3 million in pay, plus benefits.

Number 8:
In Canada, there are no necessary co-pays or deductibles.

In the United States, under Obamacare, the deductibles and co-pays will continue to be unaffordable for many millions of Americans.

Number 7:
In Canada, the health care system contributes to social solidarity and national pride.

In the United States, Obamacare is divisive, with rich and poor in different systems and tens of millions left out or with sorely limited benefits.

Number 6:
In Canada, delays in health care are not due to the cost of insurance.

In the United States, under Obamacare, patients without health insurance or who are underinsured will continue to delay or forgo care and put their lives at risk.

Number 5:
In Canada, nobody dies due to lack of health insurance.

In the United States, under Obamacare, many thousands will continue to die every year due to lack of health insurance.

Number 4:
In Canada, an increasing majority supports their health care system, which costs half as much, per person, as in the United States. And in Canada, everyone is covered.

In the United States, a majority – many for different reasons – oppose Obamacare.

Number 3:
In Canada, the tax payments to fund the health care system are progressive – the lowest 20 percent pays 6 percent of income into the system while the highest 20 percent pays 8 percent.

In the United States, under Obamacare, the poor pay a larger share of their income for health care than the affluent.

Number 2:
In Canada, the administration of the system is simple. You get a health care card when you are born. And you swipe it when you go to a doctor or hospital. End of story.

In the United States, Obamacare’s 2,500 pages plus regulations (the Canadian Medicare Bill was 13 pages) is so complex that then Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said before passage “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”

Number 1:
In Canada, the majority of citizens love their health care system.

In the United States, the majority of citizens, physicians, and nurses prefer the Canadian type system – single-payer, free choice of doctor and hospital , everybody in, nobody out.

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-pol...eats-obamacare

I would love to see a woman president. I just prefer it be someone like Elizabeth Warren and not another corporate owned minion. The sex of the POTUS will make no difference if the heart beating in the chest and the brain functioning in the head has been bought and paid for by Wall Street.


The Dynastic Hillary Bandwagon – Bad for America

The Hillary Clinton for President in 2016 bandwagon has started very early and with a purpose. The idea is to get large numbers of endorsers, so that no Democratic Primary competitors dare make a move. These supporters include Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), financier George Soros and Ready for Hillary, a super PAC mobilizing with great specificity (already in Iowa).

Given this early bird launch, it is important to raise the pressing question:

Does the future of our country benefit from Hillary, another Clinton, another politician almost indistinguishable from Barack Obama’s militaristic, corporatist policies garnished by big money donors from Wall Street and other plutocratic canyons?

There is no doubt the Clintons are syrupy political charmers, beguiling many naïve Democrats who have long been vulnerable to a practiced set of comforting words or phrases camouflaging contrary deeds.

Everybody knows that Hillary is for women, children and education. She says so every day. But Democrats and others can’t get the Clintons even to support a $10.50 federal minimum wage that would almost equal the 1968 minimum wage, inflation-adjusted, and would raise the wages of 30 million workers mired in the gap between the present minimum wage of $7.25 and $10.50 an hour. It just so happens that almost two-thirds of these Americans are women, many of them single moms struggling to support their impoverished children. Nearly a million of these workers labor for Walmart, on whose Board of Directors Hillary Clinton once sat. Words hide the deeds.

As a Senator on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Hillary had to start proving that women, just like the macho men, can be belligerent and never see a weapons system and its use that they didn’t like. Never did she demonstrate any ongoing interest in debloating the massive, wasteful, duplicative military budget so as to free up big monies for domestic public works programs or other necessities.

As Senator she also admitted that she didn’t have time to read a critical National Intelligence Estimate Report, which had caveats that might have dissuaded her from voting with George W. Bush to invade Iraq in 2003. War-mongering and wars of Empire never bothered her then or now. Just a few weeks ago, she was photographed giving the recidivist war criminal, Republican Henry Kissinger, a big, smiling hug at a public event. It’s all part of the bi-partisan image she is cultivating under the opportunistic banner of “cooperation.” (For more information, read the New York Times’ Collateral Damage and Nixon and Kissinger’s Forgotten Shame, or Seymour Hersh’s The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House.)

As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton accelerated the Department’s militarization, belting far more war-like, threatening assertions toward governments of developing countries than did the Secretaries of Defense. She loved to give speeches on “force projection,” the latest synonym for “the Empire,” and “the pivot” toward East Asia and against the asserted looming threat of China. Taking due note, the Chinese generals demanded larger budgets.

The Secretary of State’s highest duty is diplomacy. Not for her. Despite her heavy travelling, she made little or no effort to get the government to sign onto the numerous international treaties which already had over a hundred nations as signatories. These include stronger climate change agreements and, as Human Rights Watch reports, unratified treaties “relating to children, women, persons with disabilities, torture, enforced disappearance and the use of anti-personal landmines and cluster munitions.” These tasks bore her.

Much more exciting was military action. Against the wishes of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, she pulled Barack Obama into the Libyan war. There were consequences. Libya is now in militia chaos, having spilled over into Mali, but without Gaddafi, its overthrown dictator who had disarmed and was making peace with western nations and oil companies.

As a Yale Law School graduate, she was not in the least bothered that the attack on Libya occurred without any Congressional declaration, authorization or appropriation of funds – a classic Madisonian definition of impeachable high crimes and misdemeanors.

Like Bill Clinton, she is an unabashed cheerleader for corporate globalization under NAFTA, the World Trade Organization and the proposed sovereignty-stripping, anti-worker Trans-Pacific Partnership Free Trade Agreement. Secretary of State Clinton, in the words of trade expert Jamie Love, “put the hammer to India when the government took steps to grant compulsory licenses on cancer drug patents” by not requiring life-saving compulsory license of expensive drugs so that low-income people and their children could have access to more affordable medication.

Even regarding the easy clampdown on waste and fraud, Hillary Clinton fired Peter Van Buren, a 24-year-Foreign Service Officer, who exposed such waste and mismanagement by corporate contractors in Iraq. (For more information, see http://wemeantwell.com/).

Foreshadowing this season’s headlines, former Secretary of State Clinton ordered U.S. officials to spy on top UN diplomats including Secretary General of the UN, Ban Ki-Moon, and those from the United Kingdom. She ordered her emissaries around the world to obtain DNA data, iris scans and fingerprints along with credit card and frequent flier numbers. Not only was this a clear violation of the 1946 UN convention, but after admitting what happened she didn’t even make a public apology to the affected parties.

Under her watch, the advice and status of the Department’s foreign service officers and aid workers were marginalized in favor of the militarists – and not only in Iraq.

Many Wall Streeters like Hillary Clinton. Expecting their ample contributions, and socializing with their business barons, it is not surprising that Hillary Clinton avoids going after the crooked casino capitalism that collapsed the economy, drained investors, pensions, jobs and taxpayer bailouts. Hillary Clinton is a far cry from the stalwart Senator Elizabeth Warren on this towering pattern of unaccountable corporate abuse.

The surreal world of Hillary Clinton is giving $200,000 speeches, collecting prestigious awards she does not deserve, including one from the American Bar Association, and basking in the glory of her admirers while appropriately blasting the Republicans for their “War on Women” – the safe refrain of her forthcoming campaign.

It is true that the Republican madheads make it easy for any Democratic candidate to judge themselves by the cruel, rabid, ravaging Republicans. But, is that the kind of choice our country deserves?

A Clinton Coronation two years or more before the 2016 elections will stifle any broader choice of competitive primary candidates and more important a more progressive agenda supported by a majority of the American people.

Full Medicare for all, cracking down on corporate abuses, a fairer tax system, a broad public works program, a living wage, access to justice and citizen empowerment, clean election practices, and pulling back on the expensive, boomeranging Empire to come home to America’s necessities and legitimate hopes are some examples of what the people want.

Maybe the sugarcoating is starting to wear. Columnist Frank Bruni, writing in the New York Times (Hillary in 2016? Not so Fast), reports her polls are starting to slump. Apparently, as Bruni suggests, she’s being seen as part of the old Washington crowd that voters are souring on.

As I wrote to Hillary Clinton in early summer 2008, when calls were made by Obama partisans for her to drop out, no one should be told not to run. That’s everyone’s First Amendment right. However, not voting for her is the prudent decision.

http://nader.org/2013/11/08/dynastic...n-bad-america/

Train DeRailment
 

http://news.yahoo.com/metro-north-de...133919511.html

Hoping no from BFP or family and friends are on this train.

Sending positive thoughts.

Responding to Miss Tick's post (Senator Elizabeth Warren)
 

I couldn't agree with you more in that I would support a presidential bid by someone like Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), but I just read today that she's not going to run for president and carry out her term as an elected Senator for the DNP in Massachussetts.

I don't know about you or others, but when I read that brief news article this afternoon, the first thing that came to mind was .... 'Why is it that Senator Warren would rather finish out her term in Massachussetts vs elect to run for the seat of president in 2016?'

An idea that came to mind was one that centers on a much larger political agenda that the public does not really know about. I think it's great that Senator Warren feels compelled to carry out her term as Senator. If she were a senator in my homestate, I'd want her to be on board with making sure our state didn't lose its foothold in the ongoing struggle to represent a more progressive and liberal-minded agenda, rather than cede to seats of power that seemingly don't always cultivate an economy which allows autonomy for everyone.

I made a conscious decision recently to align myself with an independent political party; which I think is a wise decision, in light of broken economies across the country.

I'm going to strictly vote a Green Party ticket, next time around.

Nelson Mandela Dies
 

95 Years old!

http://politicalblindspot.com/arkans...ational-media/

Nuclear plant explosion and fire in Arkansas, no media reports.

Pope Francis is Time's Person of the Year
 

NEW YORK - Time magazine selected Pope Francis as its Person of the Year on Wednesday, saying the Catholic Church's new leader has changed the perception of the 2,000-year-old institution in an extraordinary way in a short time.

The pope beat out NSA leaker Edward Snowden for the distinction, which the newsmagazine has been giving each year since 1927.

The former Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected in March as the first pope from Latin America and the first Jesuit. Since taking over at the Vatican, he has urged the Catholic Church not to be obsessed with "small-minded rules" and to emphasize compassion over condemnation in dealing with touchy topics like abortion, gays and contraception.

He has denounced the world's "idolatry of money" and the "global scandal" that nearly 1 billion people today go hungry, and has
charmed the masses with his simple style and wry sense of humor. His appearances draw tens of thousands of people at a clip and his @Pontifex Twitter account recently topped 10 million followers.

"He really stood out to us as someone who has changed the tone and the perception and the focus of one of the world's largest institutions in an extraordinary way," said Nancy Gibbs, the magazine's managing editor.

The Vatican said the honor wasn't surprising given the resonance in the general public that Francis has had, but it nevertheless said the choice was a "positive" recognition of spiritual values in the international media.

"The Holy Father is not looking to become famous or to receive honors," said the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi. "But if the choice of Person of Year helps spread the message of the Gospel — a message of God's love for everyone — he will certainly be happy about that."

It was the third time a Catholic pope had been Time's selection. John Paul II was selected in 1994 and John XXIII was chosen in 1962.

Besides Snowden, Time had narrowed its finalists down to gay rights activist Edith Windsor, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Time editors made the selection. The magazine polled readers for their choice, and the winner was Egyptian General Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, who didn't even make the top 10 of Time's final list.

-------------------------------


The editors at Time must be seeing a different Pope than I do.

On France News this AM on BBC:

The UN confirmed Syria used chemical weapons against its own people (protestors) 5 times, up through August, 2013.

During two of those attacks: they used Sarin.

Why is this not on network news in the USA?

Is it really important that people lined up for a week to buy cheap video games and it had to be shown on network news?

I guess that is what passes for "news".

:olive:

Please: Much needed increase in Alzheimer's funding
 

I cared for my estranged Ex during her final 6 months, Alzheimer's and dementia, progressing daily. Now, my beloved's Mother is drifting away. Please take a moment. It hits home.

Contact Your Representative
Budget Deal Struck and the Countdown Begins


Please reach out to your Member of Congress. Feel free to use some of the talking points shown below:


While there has been substantial progress in the fight against Alzheimer's,the soaring global costs of Alzheimer's and dementia care, the escalating number of people living with the disease, and the challenges encountered by affected families demand a meaningful, aggressive and ambitious effort to solve this crisis.

Alzheimer's is the most expensive disease in America and is set to increase like no other.
Today, the more than 5 million American's living with Alzheimer's cost our nation an estimated $203 billion, including $142 billion to Medicare and Medicaid.
If we fail to make a difference right now in the fight against Alzheimer's, the number of Americans living with Alzheimer's could soar to as many as 16 million in 2050.
Costs from Alzheimer's on its current path between now and 2050 will total $20 trillion.
Congress must continue its bipartisan support for the National Alzheimer's Plan by providing an additional $100 million in resources for research, education, care and support activities.


On December 10th, the Bipartisan Budget Conference led by Senator Patty Murray and Representative Paul Ryan reached a deal on the federal budget for the current fiscal year. The House of Representatives passed the budget on December 12th and the Senate is likely to do the same today. Now the Appropriations Committees have begun working quickly to write the funding bills for FY2014. These weeks are critical for Alzheimer’s funding.

While the House did not increase funding for Alzheimer's disease research and support services, the Senate Appropriations bill passed out of Committee earlier this year included an additional $100 million in funding for these vital programs. Now we must urge all of Congress to follow the Senate in providing a much needed increase in Alzheimer's funding!

Please contact your member of the U.S. House of Representatives now.

Are you on Facebook or Twitter? Please reach out to your Representative with the following messages:

Please help #EndAlz by securing critical Alzheimer’s Resources
Urge members of Congress to follow the Senate and provide a much needed funding increase for Alzheimer’s!
I just asked (see link below for yours) to secure vital Alzheimer’s Resources. Will you?

http://act.alz.org/site/Advocacy?pag...mepage&id=1171

For easy contact info, which just takes a moment of your time..>

https://act.alz.org/site/Advocacy;js...Action&id=1171

As negotiations continue over the FY14 Budget, I urge you to ensure that Alzheimer's is a national priority by supporting an additional $100 million in resources for Alzheimer's disease research, education, care and support activities.

From the NY Times:

Ugandan Parliament Approves Antigay Law
By ALAN COWELL
Published: December 20, 2013


LONDON — After years of argument that has drawn ferocious condemnation from outsiders like President Obama, the Ugandan Parliament approved legislation on Friday introducing harsher punishment — including life imprisonment —for what the law called “aggravated homosexuality,” news reports said.

The law was not as tough as an initial bill, first mooted in 2009 and later withdrawn, that would have imposed the death sentence in some cases and would have required citizens to report acts of homosexuality within 24 hours. Mr. Obama called that legislation “odious.” But it reflected a broader aversion to homosexuality across Africa that has brought persecution and intolerance in many countries.

Homosexuality is illegal in Uganda but David Bahati, a lawmaker who has promoted the antigay legislation, said existing laws needed to be strengthened to prevent Western homosexuals from promoting it among young Ugandans.

“I am officially illegal,” Agence France-Presse quoted a gay activist, Frank Mugisha, as saying when the legislation was approved on Friday. Like legislation in Russia against “gay propaganda,” the new law would criminalize the public promotion of homosexuality, including discussion of the issue by rights groups, news reports said.

Agence France-Presse quoted Mr. Bahati as saying the new law represented “victory for Uganda.”

“ I am glad the Parliament has voted against evil,” he said.

“Because we are a God-fearing nation, we value life in a holistic way,” he said. “It is because of those values that members of Parliament passed this bill regardless of what the outside world thinks.”

The legislation was promoted in part by the country’s influential evangelical pastors, some of them supported and partly financed by American churches.

When the bill was re-introduced last year, it deepened tensions in Uganda’s religious and traditional society between advocates and opponents of gay rights. At one point a government minister personally broke up a clandestine gay rights meeting in a hotel, saying homosexuals should face the firing squad.

In 2011 a newspaper published a list of gay people and urged readers and policy makers to “hang them.”

Another Victory
 

Gay marriage is now legal in UTAH!! I couldnt believe it...awesome day

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/57...court.html.csp

I live in Utah and never thought I would be alive to actually see it happen.
I am freakin so excited!
I know they will apeal it and a struggle for it will happen. But atleast its happening.

I thought this would be last on the list honestly.

SUPER COOL!!!!!!

:(
 

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013...navy-says?lite

Poor young women, how much damage did this, one of many incidents, scar them for life?

If the effing economy would be more balanced, these young women would have more professional choices in their lives.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/1...n_4497427.html


Alan Turing Pardoned By UK Government, Finally
By RAPHAEL SATTER 12/24/13 06:45 AM ET EST AP

Alan Turing Pardoned
LONDON (AP) — His code breaking prowess helped the Allies outfox the Nazis, his theories laid the foundation for the computer age, and his work on artificial intelligence still informs the debate over whether machines can think.

But Alan Turing was gay, and 1950s Britain punished the mathematician's sexuality with a criminal conviction, intrusive surveillance and hormone treatment meant to extinguish his sex drive.

Now, nearly half a century after the war hero's suicide, Queen Elizabeth II has finally granted Turing a pardon.

"Turing was an exceptional man with a brilliant mind," Justice Secretary Chris Grayling said in a prepared statement released Tuesday. Describing Turing's treatment as unjust, Grayling said the code breaker "deserves to be remembered and recognized for his fantastic contribution to the war effort and his legacy to science."

The pardon has been a long time coming.

Turing's contributions to science spanned several disciplines, but he's perhaps best remembered as the architect of the effort to crack the Enigma code, the cypher used by Nazi Germany to secure its military communications. Turing's groundbreaking work — combined with the effort of cryptanalysts at Bletchley Park near Oxford and the capture of several Nazi code books — gave the Allies the edge across half the globe, helping them defeat the Italians in the Mediterranean, beat back the Germans in Africa and escape enemy submarines in the Atlantic.

"It could be argued and it has been argued that he shortened the war, and that possibly without him the Allies might not have won the war," said David Leavitt, the author of a book on Turing's life and work. "That's highly speculative, but I don't think his contribution can be underestimated. It was immense."

Even before the war, Turing was formulating ideas that would underpin modern computing, ideas which matured into a fascination with artificial intelligence and the notion that machines would someday challenge the minds of man. When the war ended, Turing went to work programing some of the world's first computers, drawing up — among other things — one of the earliest chess games.

Turing made no secret of his sexuality, and being gay could easily lead to prosecution in post-war Britain. In 1952, Turing was convicted of "gross indecency" over his relationship with another man, and he was stripped of his security clearance, subjected to monitoring by British authorities, and forced to take estrogen to neutralize his sex drive — a process described by some as chemical castration.


S. Barry Cooper, a University of Leeds mathematician who has written about Turing's work, said future generations would struggle to understand the code breaker's treatment.

"You take one of your greatest scientists, and you invade his body with hormones," he said in a telephone interview. "It was a national failure."

Depressed and angry, Turing committed suicide in 1954.

Turing's legacy was long obscured by secrecy — "Even his mother wasn't allowed to know what he'd done," Cooper said. But as his contribution to the war effort was gradually declassified, and personal computers began to deliver on Turing's promise of "universal machines," the injustice of his conviction became ever more glaring. Then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued an apology for Turing's treatment in 2009, but campaigners kept pressing for a formal pardon.

One of them, British lawmaker Iain Stewart, told The Associated Press he was delighted with the news that one had finally been granted.

"He helped preserve our liberty," Steward said in a telephone interview. "We owed it to him in recognition of what he did for the country — and indeed the free world — that his name should be cleared."

Afghanistan's first female police chief starts job
 

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — She wears a black headscarf instead of a cap. But otherwise Col. Jamila Bayaz looks like any other district police chief in Afghanistan as she reviews checkpoints in the center of Kabul.

Bayaz, 50, is the first woman to be promoted to run an entire district — the highest front-line appointment for an Afghan policewoman. With just two days on the job, she said she feels up to the challenge despite the threat as policewomen are among the Taliban's top targets.

"I work day and night," she said as she walked through a money exchange bazaar that lies at the heart of Kabul's District 1. "I am ready to serve, I am not scared nor am I afraid."

Women have made much progress since the days of Taliban rule, when they were forced to cover their heads and faces with burqas and banned from going to school or outdoors without a male relative as an escort. They have greater access to education, health care and the workplace but still face widespread discrimination, domestic abuse and militant attacks in this ultraconservative Islamic society.

Being a woman in the public eye poses particular difficulties.

In the past seven months, several prominent women have been attacked, including two Afghan police officers who were killed in the south, an Indian author living in eastern Afghanistan who was killed years after her memoir about life under Taliban rule became a Bollywood film, and an Afghan senator who was wounded in an ambush. Another female parliamentarian was kidnapped by the Taliban and later released in a prisoner exchange.

The assaults have added to growing fears that what few gains Afghan women have made since the U.S. toppled the Taliban government in 2001 could be erased once American-led foreign troops finish withdrawing at the end of the year.

Bayaz's district — one of 10 in the sprawling city of about 5 million people — houses the presidential palace, numerous ministries, the central bank and the main money exchange and gold markets.

She was appointed to oversee it on Monday, more than three decades after joining the police force. In her previous position, she was a plainclothes officer and wore the traditional robe as well as a headscarf. She draws more attention now wearing pants as part of her gray uniform, though she continues to cover her hair instead of wearing a cap.

During the Taliban's harsh five-year rule, Bayaz stayed at home taking care of her children.

"I was a housewife taking care of my family," she said. "Women are part of society and since they left, more and more are getting involved and they need to join the police."

In the two days following her appointment, she has been making the rounds checking on markets and other areas in her district accompanied by a large group of police bodyguards. Although she drives, her bodyguards now take Bayaz around the city and to the police station.

"When I got out of my car, I spoke to my police officers on duty and all eyes were on me. It was interesting for the people to see a woman in uniform," she said. "Carrying out my duties in uniform is a lesson for others. I hope it inspires other women to wear the uniform and I hope more women become officers."

Afghan policewomen are frequently threatened and targeted by the insurgents after and several have been killed in the past few years. In one high-profile example, Lt. Col. Malalai Kakar, who worked in southern Kandahar province, was shot dead by the Taliban in 2008.

Bayaz acknowledges the danger.

"I am the first woman district chief in Afghanistan. There are difficulties, but I will continue," she said.

According to a report released late last year by the international aid agency Oxfam, efforts to recruit more women into Afghanistan's police force have been met with limited success. In 2005, the national police force employed just 180 women out of 53,400 personnel, the report said. By July 2013, that had risen to 1,551 policewomen out of 157,000.

Female police officers are part of teams that search the women's sections of homes during raids, but also work in criminal investigations.

Despite the challenges, recruiting more women to serve as police could have major benefits for the Afghan population, especially women and girls who feel uncomfortable or even afraid reporting crimes to male police, Oxfam said.

Bayaz previously worked in the criminal investigation and counternarcotic departments.

She enjoys great support from her family, including her two daughters and three sons.

Her youngest son Tawhid agreed. The 12-year-old was visiting his mother at the police station after complaining he had not seen her for days and wanted to see what she did at work.

http://www.wishtv.com/news/internati...s-job_70231432

-------------------------------


This is one of those mixed emotions things for me. One the one hand, it is good to see a woman in a traditionally male role in an Islamic society. On the other hand, given the males attitudes towards women do not seem to have changed much, part of me wonders if the thought behind this was more akin to better a woman as a sacrificial lamb for the Taliban than a man.

News that makes you go WTF
 

Man's sex with 11-year-old not abusive, Italian court rules


An Italian high court has overturned the conviction of a 60-year-old man for having sex with an 11-year-old girl, because the verdict failed to take into account their "amorous relationship".

Pietro Lamberti, a social services worker in Catanzaro in southern Italy, was convicted in February 2011 and sentenced to five years in prison for sexual acts with a minor.

The verdict was later upheld by an appeals court.

But the Italian supreme court ruled that the verdict did not sufficiently consider "the 'consensus', the existence of an amorous relationship, the absence of physical force, the girl's feelings of love".

The court's October 15 decision to order a retrial was made public this month by Il Quotidiano della Calabria and slowly spread to social media networks, where it sparked heated reactions against the Italian justice system.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...urt-rules.html