We Can Win!  Detroit says ‘NO’ to Mayoral Control "DID YOU HERE THE GREAT NEWS! BAMN turns the ballot on Mayoral take over we won once again 6 to 3 votes!!! also rob bobb is running away i heard on the news thats hes going to be gone in like march!!!! we are winning and winning feels so good!!!" This was the message I received last night on FaceBook from De’Von Burt, the 16 year old Frederick Douglas High s ...

Picture of a computer-generated rendering of new buildings (beyond Williams Street, buildings in foreground are existing ones) in a "Teachers Village" along a new retail corridor on Newark's Halsey Street in Newark, New Jersey. Teacher Villages for charter schools: Medieval castles for the educational company store Meet Ron Beit, a New York developer, fresh from gaining approval from the New Jersey City's L ...

Aren’t you tired of bending over?  I know I am.  The too big to fail banks perpetrated a giant real estate scheme. Loaning $$$ to people they knew would never be able to pay them back.  Then they secretly bet against those borrowers by insuring their loans with other banks.  When the house flipping frenzy finally collapsed, they were bailed out, as it were, by us, middle-class taxpayers.  They were also col ...

It has been three years since Naomi Klein’s book, “The Shock Doctrine – The Rise of Disaster Capitalism” was published. Since that time, capitalism’s economic crisis has metastasized, and part of Klein’s analysis has proven extremely useful in understanding much of the response of the capitalist politicians. Another part of her analysis has also been shown to be faulty (at best). CIA’s Mind Control Experime ...

Someone, perhaps the protagonist himself, made a mistake -- perhaps an “oversight,” as Washington bureaucrats label their errors. Alan Gross, on a mission for his company (DAI) working for US AID (United States Agency for International Development) solicited a tourist visa to travel to Cuba for the purpose of “promoting democracy,” a euphemism for undermining governments that challenge Washington dictates. ...

CENSORED IN 1993: HOW TO SELL POLLUTION FOR PROFIT In early May, 1992, the Wisconsin Power and Light Company sold “pollution credits” to the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) for about $3 million. In effect, this deal gave TVA permission to spew into the air an additional 10,000 tons of sulfur dioxide, the primary source of acid rain. The sale, the first to be implemented under the pollution credit trading s ...

By Dennis Bernstein July 27, 2010 The Los Angeles Police Department’s Foothill Division, made famous by the videotaped beating of Rodney King almost two decades ago, has been caught in action again – this time on a cell-phone video – breaking up a family birthday party in Pacoima, California. The Baro family of Mexican immigrants was celebrating the 22nd birthday of Walter Baro on July 17 when the incident ...

Demonizing teachers in the name of children The headline blasted on the face of The Detroit News belched out today that Michigan has lost its second bid for Race to the Top monies.  The paper, which is favorable to the privatization policies promoted by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan in his ill conceived plan to implement No Child Left Behind, re-branded by the savory marketeers as Race to the Top, subt ...

Kaplan University: Blood Bank for the Washington Post Print journalism, in the form of newspapers especially, is in critical shape and has been for some time.  Not only is circulation dropping like swatted flies, but working capital and revenue is drying up as well.  The ‘fourth estate’ has experienced and continues to experience an unprecedented wave of layoffs, bankruptcies and closings and this is expect ...

Some 10,000 people in Baluchistan, Pakistan, are affected by massive floods caused by unusually heavy rainfalls, with many of them dead or missing. Meanwhile, tens of millions of people on the East Coast of the United States are sweltering through an unusually strong heat wave, and 2010 is expected to be the hottest year in recorded history. These two events are but small examples of the devastating effects ...