Well, the plan came to fruition and the big sponsors, along with Chris Cristie, who you would expect to pass the begging bowl to corporations is Mayor of Newark, NJ, Corey Booker.  Booker, like Rubio has become the darling of the reactionaries for they can sue them for their ethnicity and ability to PT Barnum their consituencies.  In the post-racial society Booker knows the cost of skin color and corporate ties has gone up.

What does Booker really stand for and who does he really represent?

According to Thom Hartmann’s show of May 22, 2012, Booker has taken millions from privater equity firms including the Romney’s Bain Capital that he blasted Obama for going after and the company that made Romney all his vulture cash.  He is a paid courtesan with a sharp tongue, a penchant for taking favors and giving them.  He is corruption personified.

At the February 10, 2012 ribbon cutting for the teachers village, basically a corporate mall the Youtube heading noted that:

“Mayor Cory Booker joins Governor Chris Christie, CEO of Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., Lloyd Blankfein, RBH Group Managing Member Ron Beit, Chairman and, Berggruen Holdings President Nicolas Berggruen; CEO of BCDC Lyneir Richardson, Deputy Mayor for Economic Development Adam Zipkin; Sr. Vice President of Prudential Sharon Taylor; and Newark-born and nationally renowned architect Richard Meier at a groundbreaking for Teachers Village, a mixed-use development in downtown Newark.  Other attending guests included former Governor James Florio, Essex County Executive Joseph N. DiVincenzo, Assemblyman Albert Coutinho and Assemblywoman L. Grace Spencer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzbcNc08bWU).

The whole gaggle of the one percent who, if they can get their arms around the man, embrace Christie and his surrogate Booker with open arms and padded wallets.  Just take a look at Booker bending over forwards to thank his Wall Street friends, many of them candidates for the perp walk, for the ‘teacher village.

Praised as an up and coming political heavyweight, Mayor Corey Booker is a very dangerous stew of both corporate loyalty to the corporate state that is emerging while mouthing his love of ‘common folk’ and of course his ‘race’.

Facts show that Booker is a conniving liar who is looking for a slot in the new oligarchy that is now firmly entrenched in America.  You can put him up with the likes of Geoffrey Canada, the corporate begger who claims miracles for kids in Harlem.  Or, better yet, historically it would be best to compare him with Booker T. Washington.

Clearly Booker’s recent back stabbing of Obama and his express love for equity firms and Wall Street should not come as a surprise.  Booker is both undermining Obama in the interest of corporate America who needs him both as a perfidious propagandist, but they also need him to help forge the new corporate democratic party that will emerge if and when Romney wins.  Sure, it is corporate now, but just wait.  Dividing up the ortz will be its new mission if and when Obama is thrown in the dumpster and collaboration will be even more insidious.

Obama was good for the road of neo-liberalism.  He did what he was told by his Goldman Sachs silk back thugs and when it came to regualtions, he did what the capitalist regulators told him to do — deregulate or reregulate in the interest of capital.

Corey Booker is different. Young, black, mendacious and energetic Booker is trying to cast himself as a ‘new corporate democrat’, one that understands that neo-liberalism is no longer the captitalist game.  Now, with the state merging with corporations, the new game is Mussolini type fascism or at least its precursor, totalitarianism.  Booker is down for this.

Booker is a very dangerous, charismatic bit player in a much larger corproate game for education and urban development.  The fact he has charmed the corporate press is no surprise: his rhetorical skills are good enough to undercut working people and those people of color.  Corporations need clever mouthpieces like this.

The New Teacher’s or Charter Corporate Village

The $150 million, eight-building project I wrote about in 2010 was largely publically financed, with support from federal, state and city governments.   This means, we paid for the costs while the profits of course get privatized by the developers, banks and other sundry thieves and politicians.  It’s Booker and Christie’s continuing cooperation, across party lines, on a school reform agenda focused on the expansion of the charter school sector that should be of interest, for Booker is really a republican or better said, a corporatist where parties are just convenient propaganda plates.

Meanwhile, while the slimy Booker undermines Obama, pledges the Oath of Omerta to the corproate class, New Jersey civil rights organizations and teachers’ unions have criticized the state’s charter schools for serving a lower proportion of special-needs and English-language learner students than traditional public schools.  Not surprising: I wrote about this in my book on charters in 2009.   the group also argued that the new urban gentrification and corproate village risk turning neighborhood schools turning into warehouses for the least-advantaged children.  But that is all part of the Booker-Christie Plan.  Turn education into vast swaths of desert and then point to them and argue for the neecd for charter schools.

Placing school reform in the broader context of urban revitalization supported by education advocates from across the ideological spectrum is what Booker and Christie want and this is their first foray which could be seen replicating itself all over the nation.  by tying land zoning to schools, further class divisions can be concretized into urban planning and thus cordon off the city to Booker and Christie’s constituents — the corporations.  We saw this in Chicago under Duncan and we see it all over now as schools close and zoning is re-zoned.

The project’s lead developer, RBH Group president Ron Beit, recently said clustering housing for teachers from charter, public and private schools would encourage “socializing and the exchange of ideas.… It’s like an artists’ enclave or a technology cluster for businesses, but here it’s for teachers.”

Sure, one big corporate discussion cumbaya of how corproations can help kids, provide them jobs, give them health insurance, a decent wage, releave them from debt and all the rest of the good things corproations do for American citizens, like pay them a non-living wage, tear up the social contract with labor and capital, fail tto provide health care and of course — pledge allegiance to the inequality embraced within the capitalist system(http://www.thenation.com/blog/166199/cory-booker-and-chris-christie-teachers-should-live-downtown-newark).

Teacher Village rents have been said to have been calculated to fit teachers’ budgets, according to the Nation blog; the cost at about $700 for a studio apartment, $1,100 for a one-bedroom, and $1,400 for a two-bedroom.  Sorry, but this is hardly within the budget of a school teacher.  More than half of New Jersey teachers make between $40,000 and $60,000 which after the cost of rent, food and transporatation and utilities, leave them table scraps.

Then there is Christie’s plan to undermine teacher salaries:

“More than two decades after Christie’s mentor, Gov. Tom Kean, pushed through mandatory raises for teachers, the issue of teacher pay and benefits took the center stage in Trenton.

In his call for “shared sacrifice” during the state budget crisis of 2010, Christie says public school teachers can afford to take a one-year wage freeze and pay at least 1.5 percent of their salary toward the cost of their health benefits — which, he says, can cost up to $22,000 a year for family coverage. He says most teachers, “when you put salaries and benefits together, are making a significant amount of money,” and he notes that pay freezes are common in the private sector” (http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/05/nj_teachers_pay_freeze_salarie.html).

But what about the Teacher’s Village and the affordable rent? Booker and Christie love teachers and kids for without them they would have nobody to corral for investment purposes and then why would the rich need them as hand tools?  The things we do for love, of money that is.

Newark not the first to develop corporate housing for teachers

Newark is not the first city to experiment with workforce housing for teachers.  the ‘company store’ has been around for a long time and the fact it is now applied to teachers shos the Walmartization of education.

Baltimore’s Miller Court, another corporate village, includes forty teacher apartments, 70 percent of which are rented by Teach for America recruits. In Los Angeles, the Glassell Park complex combines a district pre-school with affordable housing for teachers and other community members.  Affordable meaning what? (ibid).

The other corporate model that is being proposed  is designed as an attempt to increase parents’ involvement with their children’s education by co-locating schools with housing reserved for low-income families with the schools.

Using a mix of public and philanthropic dollars, the Brooklyn Kindergarten Society runs four full-service children’s centers within public housing projects in the neighborhoods of Crown Heights, Bed-Stuy and Brownsville.  The philanthropists are of course corporate or corporate tied.  They use the Robin Hood Fund to spill cash onto the corporate funded school for they are hedge fund operators (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/03/business/03hedge.html?pagewanted=all).

This provides the analogy with Geoffrey Canada and his Harlem Education project and charter school.  He is all corporate suited as well and is vaulted on the shoulders of the ruling class who give philantropy as both a psycholical means of cleansing their filth, but they also use it as a way to make money.

The Robin Hood Foundation donation and other similar tax scams are not entirely altruistic. The benefits for the one percent who ‘give’ include tax deductions, the chance to hobnob with rich competitors, colleagues and even stars, and a shot at becoming part of the fabric of New York society by supportint such laudable institutions as schools.  Alongside the Who’s Who of hedge funds at the Robin Hood ball were media moguls, corporate titans and Gwyneth Paltrow (ibid).

The centers include pre-schools and family support services, and the Society partners with city social service agencies (and corporations for funding) to identify which children living in public housing are most in-need of early academic enrichment.  All of this reeks of seperate but equal and the resegregation of American society.  The New Corporate Deal where inequality is adapted to by provisions of charity by the one percent or the philanthro-pirates who redistributed income upwards for the last four decades.

Profit before people means the whole thing stinks of shennanigans

One thing for sure that will serve to eventually break the fable and seperate it from the lies Christie, Booker and their paymasters are peddling is the fact that  this type of project lacks the potential profit-making upsides of market-rate housing for middle-class teachers.  Oh well, they at least get to sleep under the corporate tent with their students.  Meanwhile Booker and Christie continue to team up to assure teachers are reduced to independant contractors and 1099 forms where they lsoe their status as employees and work under contract at will.  It has not happened yet, but look for it in the future.

Here is the article written in 2010 on Teacher’s Villages for those interested.

For more on Corey Booker google: Bill Gates, the Newark Charter School Fund and venture capitalists.  You’ll see him: he’s the guy with the thousand dollar suit and with his hand perpetually out, either to beg donations or to meet the elite who see him as a good floor manager for the casino economy.

Charter School Teacher Villages being constructed in New Jersey

Larry Miller’s Blog: Educate All Students!

May 21, 2012

Milwaukee’s Education Privatization Explained: What’s the Difference Between Public Schools, Voucher Schools and Charter Schools?

What’s the Difference? Voucher schools, Charter schools, Milwaukee Public Schools

Published in May 2012 by the non-partisan Democracy and Education Research Group. Email: democracy.education.milwaukee@gmail.com

Overview

In recent decades, there has been an expansion of the types of schools in Milwaukee receiving public tax dollars. In some areas, differences may seem slight. In other areas, there are significant differences. This is especially true in terms of students’ rights, public accountability, and democratic oversight.

There are three main types of schools in Milwaukee that receive public tax dollars:

• Private voucher schools, charging tuition but also open to students who receive publicly funded vouchers.
• Charter schools approved by the City of Milwaukee and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
• Schools overseen by the Milwaukee Public Schools district.

The voucher schools, by definition, are private schools and do not have to follow the same rules as public schools. Most provide religious-based education and may charge tuition to private-paying stu­dents and, in some cases, to high school students receiving vouchers.

The charter schools approved by the City of Milwaukee and UWM are considered public schools, but do not have to follow the same state rules, regulations and public oversight as traditional public schools. They are beholden to a “contract” (or charter), granted significant autonomy, and operate as independent entities. The schools are expected to provide greater academic results and innovation, although this has not necessarily happened in practice. Like all charter schools, they are non-religious and may not charge tuition. They are governed by privately appointed boards of directors.

The MPS district primarily oversees traditional public schools, including both neighborhood schools and a range of specialty schools and citywide schools, from language immersion to Montessori. The Milwaukee School Board also oversees charter schools that are part of the MPS but that have a specific “contract” or charter, often to provide a particular curricular focus. Finally, MPS oversees alternative and partnership schools. All MPS schools are non-religious and may not charge tuition. They are gov­erned by the democratically elected Milwaukee School Board. Most MPS schools also have school-based councils of parents, teachers and community members.

Details

Voucher schools

The biggest difference between voucher schools and charter and traditional schools is that, by defini­tion, voucher schools are private schools and can provide religious-based instruction. There are approxi­mately 22,300 students in Milwaukee receiving vouch­ers in the 2011-12 school year, mostly at religious schools. In 2011, for the first time Milwaukee students could attend a voucher school located outside the city.

While the voucher program initially began as an ex­periment promoting “choice” for poor people, a family of four with an income of $67,050 may now receive vouchers. The median family income in Milwaukee is $35,921.

Because they are private schools, voucher schools have limited public accountability and operate un­der different rules than public schools. For instance, voucher schools do not have to follow the state’s open meetings and records law. They do not have to provide information on staff qualifications, student suspen­sions and expulsions, graduation rates, and so forth to the public. Their meetings are not open to the public.

Voucher schools must accept students who require special education services, but they are not required to meet the students’ needs beyond what can be provided with minor adjustments. As a result, many students requiring special services leave voucher schools and attend a Milwaukee public schools. (Less than 2 per- cent of students in voucher schools are identified as receiving special education services, compared to about almost 20 percent in the Milwaukee Public Schools.)

As private schools, voucher schools do not have to honor constitutional rights of due process when students are suspended or expelled. Nor do private voucher schools have to follow Wisconsin law that

prohibits discrimination against students in a range of areas including, sex, pregnancy, marital or parental status, or sexual orientation. Voucher schools, howev­er, must follow federal laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin.

Charter schools overseen by the City of Milwaukee and UWM

There are seven schools chartered by the City of Milwaukee and 11 schools chartered by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The schools enrolled a total of approximately 6,500 students in 2011-12.

Information on the UWM charter schools can be found on the webpage of the Office of Charter Schools at UWM (http://www4.uwm.edu/soe/centers/char­ter_schools/). Links on the website provide data such as the name of a particular charter school, its address, when it was chartered, and its email and school web-site. Detailed data on special education students, racial makeup, curricular offerings and so forth is not easily accessible via the website. A 62-page annual report from 2009-10 is available through the website. The report does not indicate who appoints the staff and leadership overseeing the Office of Charter Schools, nor when and if the office holds meetings open to the public.

The only data available on the City of Milwaukee website specifically regarding charter schools is a phone number where one can get an application to become a charter school (http://city.milwaukee.gov/ CharterSchoolApplication.htm). The charter schools are overseen by a “Charter School Review Commit­tee” appointed by city officials. Meetings and deci­sions by the committee are not available on the City of Milwaukee website, nor is it clear where one can attain such information.

Limited data on individual charter schools, both for UWM and the City of Milwaukee, is available through the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, but not for the schools as a group.

Milwaukee Public Schools

There are 175 schools within MPS in 2011-12, with 80,098 students. Schools include traditional schools, charter schools, and partnership schools. Charter schools include both district-run charters (instrumen­tality) and independent charters (non-instrumentality).

Information on schools, programs, enrollment and demographics can be found at the MPS website (http:// mpsportal.milwaukee.k12.wi.us). MPS is governed

by a nine-member School Board, which each member elected to a four-year term in public elections. The board holds monthly public meetings, in addition to committee meetings, open to the public.

The Milwaukee Public Schools is the city’s largest educational institution, and the only one with the com­mitment, capacity, and legal obligation to serve the needs of all the city’s children.

Overall, almost 20 percent of MPS students require special education services, and 10 percent are English Language Learners. The district offers Spanish/Eng­lish bilingual programs at 24 schools, and Southeast Asian/English Bilingual Programs at two schools. English-as-a-Second Language programs are available at the bilingual schools and an additional 14 schools.

MPS issues an annual Report Card for the district as a whole, and for individual schools. The reports cards are available publicly via the MPS website. Con­tact information for the Milwaukee Board of School Directors, agendas, meeting calendars and audio records of board proceedings are available at the MPS board governance website.

“AIM was there because of our ownership of company stock, enabling us to grill top brass about the condition of the newspaper and the company in general. The value of the company’s stock has fallen by 50 percent over the last five years” (http://www.aim.org/aim-column/the-decline-of-the-washington-post/).

Kaplan the big crime story

Kincaid also reported that there was discussion of the financial and political ruination caused by Kaplan Higher Education, an oxymoron in and of itself.  This is all good news for many students, whistleblowers, teachers and concerned citizens who have come forward with testimonials as to the carnage caused by criminal Kaplan University.  I will not reiterate the litany of allegations of crime and fraud that have been leveled against the Washington Post for its blood bank Kaplan.  You can use the search engine at www.dailycensored.com or “Yahoo” to search for articles detailing the drive-by college’s carnage.  Google has “disappeared” all articles on Kaplan and the Post since October of last year  from www.dailycensored.com that I have written.  The Daily Censored site has been hacked and over two dozen articles on Kaplan and Graham run WaPo have mysteriously been exiled to Google Siberia.  But that’s another story.

As I and many others have written for years, Kaplan is the blood bank of the Washington Post and as a syndicate it has bled the paper of revenue.  It is little more than a drive-by college but one of the worst offenders.  The fact that no one at the wretched paper which gives nothing but favorable coverage to for-profit education has had the intellectual courage to stand up and say something is distressing.  Not one whistleblower from the Post has come forward, though countless have from Kaplan.

Go to Lexus/Nexus or Google any of the alleged high crimes and misdemeanors of the Washington Post and criminal Kaplan and see how many articles you can find in the Washington Post regarding alleged fraud and abuse, predation and parasitic business plans.  The paper hires ombudsman to field ‘complaints’ for they refuse to publish allegations of their own paper’s crimes.

Can you believe it?  A newspaper that is supposed to report on ‘news’ hires ombudsman to run interference when they fail to cover stories to close to their economic interests?  Taxpayers no doubt pay for this too with the ‘student loan’ monies the Post vacuums up.

Back to the failing Washington Post.  The WaPo stock dropped 5% on May 4^th, 2012!  Imagine if shareholders learned there might be insider trading at the decrepit paper at the same time earnings plummeted?  I wrote about all of this on May 7, 2012 for www.dailycensored.com but the articles magically disappeared from Google not many hours after posting.

Remember, the Post trades on the NY Stock Exchange and I have been told that many reporters who have covered this along with whistleblowers and students, have found they have been targeted in some way by the Post or its predator Kaplan.  For readers interested in seeing what I wrote about possible insider trading at the Washington Post and the Apollo Group please go to http://www.dailycensored.com/2012/05/04/insider-trading-probe-at-university-of-phoenix-washington-post-company-stock-sales-also-seen-as-suspect-2/).  Also, feel free to Google my name and Truthout for dozens more articles.

Through its Kaplan subsidiary the Post is bleeding all over its papers and delivering a financial self-inflicted wound to its own dwindling empire.  Kincaid reported that The Calvert Recorder in Calvert County, Maryland (a paper owned by the Post) is suffering circulation and revenue declines because of its national newspaper product. The Calvert Recorder is part of the Southern Maryland Newspapers group, which is owned by the Post (http://www.aim.org/aim-column/the-decline-of-the-washington-post/).  Graham’s mismanagement along with his hubris has destroyed his father and mother’s legacy.

The Washington Post looks to fascist China for revenues

Evidently, in addition to growing concern over the Kaplan outfit, the stockholder meeting featured questions about the paper’s controversial financial relationship with newspapers owned and controlled by the Russian and Chinese governments.  With Kaplan unable to pony up the revenues needed to run the paper, money must be found somewhere.  The devil-fish paper now looks to any corner of the earth to keep its executives well fed.

The new revenue controversy was spelled out by reporter Ben Johnson on March 28^th, 2012, prior to the stockholder meeting:

“The controversy swirls around the publication of China Watch, a news supplement inserted into the newspaper. The Washington Post logo appears alongside its own, and China Watch‘s website is hosted on WaPo‘s server. However, most of its stories are produced by China Daily, an English-language “newspaper” with offices in Beijing. It is heavily censored by the Communist Chinese regime, with stories carefully chosen to advance the party line and the nation’s geostrategic interests.

Both the real and virtual editions of the publication contain the words, “A Paid Supplement to The Washington Post” – in much smaller print. Online, the words are just above a story on a program to teach LGBT activists to make documentary films and an ad for China Daily, inviting readers to “Click to open a window to the world.”

The owners and editors of The Washington Post “are lending their logo to this foreign propaganda,” Cliff Kincaid, director of Accuracy In Media‘s Center for Investigative Journalism, told LifeSiteNews.com. “If you didn’t know where this comes from, it looks like a regular newspaper (Washington Post Publishes Chinese and Russian Government Propaganda Disguised as News http://www.usasurvival.org/ck03.31.12.html#ixzz1vFOtIi7m).

Kincaid said the Chinese government is “using the logo of The Washington Post to create the impression this is like any other section of The Washington Post.  If you do your digging you can find out this is paid propaganda, and they’re use using the Post,” (ibid).

Another fact noted in the Kincaid article:

“Another China Watch article discusses a panel on women’s issues, which raised the possibility that surviving children, spoiled by their grandparents, had developed a “Little Emperor” complex. “These kids might be spoiled, but they are also the repository of all their parents’ dreams,” said Amy Chua, a contributor to The Daily Beast and author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother “.These ‘spoiled brats’ work extremely hard” (ibid).

Kincaid told LifeSiteNews.com there was one simple reason the paper is partnering with governments that curtail freedom of the press: “The Washington Post wants the money. It’s simply a matter of bucks.”  He’s right and the fact that they can no longer black bag students with impunity has hurt Kaplan’s main business plan; the drive-by university is also partnering with human rights abusers in China because as Graham knows, “One must follow the money.”

Donald Graham a very dangerous member of the one tenth of one percent

Donald Graham, who is the principal owner of the most powerful segments of the stock for the Washington Post (WaPo), has no compunction about who he deals with when it comes to making money.  He uses his paper the way that Ruppert Murdock uses Fox News, as an organ for propaganda against public education, regulations on for-profit schools or any mention of the nefarious for-profit college industry of which he remains a main player.

Human rights are for those who are not privileged and Donald comes from a long line of privilege.  A member of the elite and secret Federal City Council and the Bilderberg Group, Donnie’s ties to the elite of the elite go way back to when his father Philip started the Washington Post in the 1950’s.  The Post, though known for its Watergate fame, was in reality a conduit for the CIA for much of its existence and no doubt still is.  Many reporters on the CIA payroll used the Post as a launch site for anti-Soviet or anti-Communist propaganda, both domestically and abroad.  This is all common knowledge.  “Operation Mockingbird” is what you would Google to find out more.  Donnie himself is a former ‘cop’ and had (maybe continues to have) close ties to the military during the Vietnam era.

According to a report on the CIA and Mockingbird:

“You could get a journalist  cheaper than a good call girl, for a couple hundred  dollars a month.”

— CIA operative discussing with  Philip Graham, editor Washington Post, on the  availability and prices of journalists willing to peddle CIA propaganda and cover stories (“Katherine The Great,” by Deborah Davis (New York: Sheridan Square        Press, 1991 (“http://whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/MOCK/mockingbird.php

That is why when I saw the report that “Post Company chairman Donald E. Graham didn’t have any second thoughts over the paper being used, through paid advertisements, to promote Russian and Chinese propaganda to an American audience”, I could only shake my head in affirmation and ‘belief’ (ibid).  This is the Donald Graham that he must be exposed and the good news, now he is.

Where did the one million dollars the Post spent on fighting Department of Education regulations come from?

At the meeting Graham tried to explain why he spent one million dollars fighting regulations of for-profit schools.  Graham did not dispute the claim that the company had spent $1 million lobbying but did anyone ask him where the million came from?  After all, if 90% or more of the blood bank, Kaplan’s revenue comes from taxpayers in the form of Title IV loans that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy, aren’t we to assume that at least some percentage of the cost of his lawyers and the cost of lobbying come from indentured students now in debt purgatory?  Isn’t CEO Graham spending US tax dollars to pay hig priced lobbyists to work against US DOE regulations?  The whole thing is a crime and the fact it isn’t on the books as illegal is a crime in and of itself.

As I wrote at Truthout, even the stench of the Obama administration throughout the whole Washington Post story emits like well-cured manure.  Graham hired a lobbying firm that included former Obama aide Anita Dunn to fight for-profit regualtions.  In fact, an entire bipartisan elite is now employed to lobby for the criminal enterprises they all for-profit schools (http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/8589-bipartisan-political-elite-implicated-in-for-profit-education-fraud).

Lobbying those in attendance using philanthro-pirate, Bill Gates

Finally, and perhaps more absurdly, Kincaid also reported that those who attended the annual meeting were lobbied themselves.  Yes, they were given a free copy of the book, Change.edu: Rebooting for the New Talent Economy, written by Kaplan chairman and CEO Andrew S. Rosen and published by Kaplan itself.  The philanthro-pirate Bill Gates has given a favorable review of the book, of course.  He too is a member of the elite with ties to the same fraternities and more importantly, global economic interests.

Graham must have felt the stockholders needed to be lobbied with propaganda for even they can see the writing on the wall for the newspaper.  The question is when will the invertebrates who know where the bodies are buried  grow a spine and come forward and tell us the real details of how Kaplan University really operates.

“You name it, and we’ve got to cut it.”

He lies.

There are three immediate options to completely solve this problem:

1. California could be its own bank to issue interest-free credit to itself to close the budget deficit, similar to what North Dakota does as the only state with increasing budget surpluses. Governor Brown knows of this option; he vetoed the bill to document the benefits.
2. Monetary reform would solve this problem for all states, as it creates debt-free money for direct payment of public goods and services. This allows government to become employer of last resort for infrastructure investment (hard and soft). Because infrastructure historically adds more to the economy than its cost, this means we have the triple benefits of full-employment, state-of-the-art infrastructure, and falling prices for all 50 states.
3. Two years ago, I wrote that California’s Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) disclosed that Californians had been overtaxed by $367 billion dollars that the state “invested” despite current state employee contributions nearly matching retirement payments, and the availability of a state bank to fund any deficits without interest cost. So get this: as Governor, Jerry sits on twenty times the amount of the budget deficit that we’ve already been taxed and says that’s not enough!?! If one adds all the California various government CAFRs together, the sum has been estimated as high as $8 trillion.

Occupy educates the 99% of “emperor has no clothes” obvious lies and crimes centering on money and war.

The 99% are recognizing that the 1% criminals, of course, also occupy party “leadership” positions at the state level. Why else won’t Governor Brown demand the above three solutions, or demand ending criminal US Wars of Aggression, or demand the end of Wall Street looting in the trillions?

Why Occupy? A government/economics teacher explains

If you are not familiar with the proposal coming out of the state government regarding privatizing and fianancializing community colleges in California please go to the website http://nosstf.blogspot.com and familiarize yourself with the issue.  One of the best fact sheets and analysis of the Orwellian named “Students Success Task Force” has been done by No SSTF at: http://nosstf.blogspot.com. 

In a never ending cascade of brutality, the forces of privatization and financialization are working harder than ever in concert with their lap-dog politicians to privatize education in the interest of Wall Street — this time the target is the 112 community colleges in the state of California that serve 2.6 million students. 

There is a video that you can see at the website http://nosstf.blogspot.com

Below are a few important bullet points quoted from No SSTF:

“Fact Sheet – Recommendations for Student Failure

The California Community Colleges Student Task Force recommendations are meant to radically defund the community college system, which has already had a $1.75 billion in cuts during the past three years. This has resulted in programs eliminated, tens of thousands of students turned away, and overcrowded classes. The Task Force recommendations would cut education further.

Partially funded by the Lumina Foundation, with ideas from the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the Task Force recommendations do not effectively address student success, but instead aim to shrink government-sponsored education. The recommendations would force tens of thousands of California taxpayers to pay out-of-state tuition (which the report calls “full-fare” tuition).

Here are the main problems with the Task Force recommendations

The Students Success Task Force doesn’t address the accepted measures of successful learning such as Student Learning Outcomes, which are used by the accrediting bodies that evaluate the quality of public and private learning institutions. The Task Force does not consider the number of students who transfer to private and out of state colleges and universities, the successes of students who maintain work and family life while attending college, or the number of students who complete a single course to upgrade skills for employment. By including these measures, it would be clear that community colleges are doing well.

Removes funding for retraining unemployed or degreed workers. California residents with degrees returning to college to retrain or upgrade skills could be required to pay out of state tuition if they’ve used a certain allocation of community college units. However, new California residents who went to college in other states before moving to California would still be eligible for in-state fees.

Drastically reduces local control of community colleges, creating a larger bureaucracy at the state level. Community colleges throughout the state serve vastly different student populations with different issues; urban and rural, middle- and low-income students. Priorities for admission and for class offerings at local colleges would be set at the state level, not at the local level based on local needs. A one-size-fits-all approach does not serve local communities nor is it accountable to local communities.

Turns needs-based fee waivers into performance-based waivers, affecting the poorest and most disadvantaged students, including immigrants and native born.

Locks first year community college students into a major and prevents them from exploring other options. California residents would be required to pay out of state tuition for courses not listed in their education plan. This idea would be devastating because community college is often where students discover in what areas they excel through exploratory coursework.

Focuses on increasing the number of full time students at the expense of students who choose to be part-timers. A majority of community college students attend part-time while working, and many have families to support. Becoming a full-time student will require additional financial aid and student loans, leaving most students with significant student loan debt when they complete their studies.

Rations education by focusing primarily on 18-24 year old students, and would place significant limits to basic skills preparation. After students reach that limit, they would be required to pay out of state tuition for further coursework in basic skills. The average student at City College of San Francisco is 27 years old. Many current students would no longer have access to community college classes.

Discouraging colleges from serving the neediest and educationally disadvantaged by switching to performance-based funding mechanisms for basic skills students.

California residents and taxpayers taking single courses to upgrade technical skills, or students enrolled for purposes of lifelong learning, would pay out of state tuition.

Takes away the ability for local districts to do placement tests. The recommendations would have a single centralized test created by a private company (contracted by the California State Chancellor’s Office) with one statewide cut score to determine eligibility to take college-level courses. This doesn’t take into account local circumstances. Today’s tests are state-approved local placement tests, which takes into account demographic factors.

This would be the first step towards an admissions process ending California’s 50-year-old open-access policy for community colleges” (ibid).

For more information Contact: Gohar Momjian, Office of Marketing and Public Information Telephone: (415) 239-3680, fax (415) 452-5150, e-mail gmomjian@ccsf.edu

As I wrote at www.dailycensored.com back in early May:

“Community colleges across California are facing the wrath of privatization efforts by reactionary forces, most notably for-profit colleges and their surrogates, the corporate media and coin-operated politicians.  Both democrats and republicans have been and are continuing to use shock doctrine crisis management to privatize the community college campuses. 

But the forces of privatization will not stop with one defeat.  Both corporate liberals and conservative reactionaries have decided the best way to deal with austerity crisis and budget cuts are to capitulate to the forces of capital, not to mount an offensive to their plans to devastate the public commons.  They have drafted and engineered another “access hierarchy” which, if ever successful, promises to form a class-based tollbooth for students who wish to attend community colleges.  What this means is a two-tiered class system of fees for a two-tiered class society owned by the one-percent.  Those students who can pay more at the ‘tollbooth’ will do so and those who cannot will be denied access to classes.

Plans to privatize the community college system have been going on for some time and readers can go back to an article at Dailycensored.com, http://dailycensored.com/2010/08/26/california-community-colleges-decide-not-to-fornicate-with-for-profit-predatory-kaplan-university/, written in August of 2010 that chronicles how current Chancellor of the California Community College system, Jack Scott attempted to contract out community college classes to predatory, subprime, Kaplan University back in 2010.  The despicable failure of the liberal Chancellor and union leadership at the 112 community colleges to fight for students has now created the material conditions for the private control of the educational means of production.

On August 27, 2010 an article on the whole sordid mess was penned and can be found at: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:E_8ymfrc2-8J:dailycensored.com/2010/08/27/race-to-the-top-coming-to-a-community-college-near-you-2/+daily+censored+2010+race+top+coming+community+college+near+you&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us).

The issue the article confronted at the time is the claim by the authors of an article in Insidehighered.com arguing that we have failed to connect colleges with careers ((http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2010/08/26/carnevale). 

This is nothing new; it has been with us throughout history and is called ‘instrumentality’ in learning or “instrumental rationality”. 

According to philosopher and social critic Henry Giroux:

“Instrumental rationality is the belief that systems and practices should be organized according to principles of standardization, efficiency, practicality, and measureable utility (over and above philosophical, humanistic, or ethical considerations).  Such criteria have been used to legitinmate empiricist and market driven forms of education that serve the intersetts of a closed and authoritarian social order rather than an open and democratic society” (girxou, H. (2012) Disposable Youth, racialized memories and the culture of cruelty, routledge: NY. Pp. 57.).

John Dewey, the great 20^th century philosopher and social critic confronted this instrumental rationlaity back in the early part of the 20th century, arguing against the instrumetntality of learning by stating: “We train animals, we educate human beings.”  W.E.B. Du Bois, one of the most prominent black thinkers of the 20^th century, abhorred the idea as well stating in even more graphic terms:  “The role of education is not to make carpenters out of men, but men out of carpenters.”

All of this is lost on the neo-instrumetnalists that wish to boil education down to a sickening standardization process devoted to securing low-paid work.  They see education as little more than a boot camp for obedience training by the new non-union adjunct ‘constables of obedience’ and the community college, as a factory for creating workers as commodities for the new global corporate Banana Republic.

Santa Monica College: Advance the Dream or Advance the Scheme?

Santa Monica College was chosen as a Petri dish by the corporate coordinating class of coin operated politicians to launch the two-tiered system in light of the failure of AB515 to pass.  That bill was introduced by a democrat, Carol Brownley as a strategy to compete with for-profit colleges.  Santa Monica college has a student body of 20,000, of which only four percent come from Santa Monica, and is highly diverse.  Built in 1939 the campus is huge and if it had dormitories, it would qualify for a state college or university – it is that big. 

Looking for a community college where they could experiment with students in an attempt to compete with for-profit colleges through internal privatization, the Board of Trustees attempted to shove through their own version of AB515 for SMC.  SMC also has 40% of their student body eligible for waivers from fees as opposed to most California Community colleges that ses approximately 60% of their campus student body eligible for fee waivers.  This makes the experiment even more savory for the privatizers for if the idea would work at SMC, they could then take the pilot on the road to the other 112 community colleges where they would then open more corporate branches of the new two-tiered class sale.

Meanwhile, the attempt to continue to fully privatize the college has not abated.  The Board of Trustees, determined to force a hierarchy for classes on SMC, are now trying to secure the idea using sophist rhetoric.  They call the new, privatized two-tiered program, Advance the Dream when it would be more logical to entitle it:  Advance the Scheme.  We can only hope Orwell is listening.  However, it is necessary to adopt language that exposes the official narrative and advances a more nuanced and true narrative of what is transpiring.

The May 12^th meeting was successful in SF to begin to strategize to stop the privatization of community colleges

The good news is that concerned citizens, teachers, students and others committed to standing up against the for-profit colleges and the privatization of community colleges had an excellent meeting in San Francisco on May 12th.  Present were students, teachers, labor leaders, researchers, public interest lawyers and citizens interested in protecting the public commons from the locusts of privatization.

Santa Monica college students attended the conference in San Francisco in substantial numbers.  They will be working with other students and those concerned about public education to form a Student Union for the entire state of California.  This is similar to what has happened in Chile and Quebec, as was explained by Chilean born, Alphonso Pizzzaro, currently a student at Berkeley who gave an excellent workshop on the student struggles in Chile and how they represent the same struggles against the corporatization, privatization and financialization everywhere.

 See the Youtube:

CA STATEWIDE STUDENT UNION ORGANIZING CONFERENCE

The Santa Monica College Student Organizing Committee calls for a meeting on Saturday, May 19, 2012 9:00am until 6:00pm in PDT

The Economics of Happiness (2011)

Film Review

The term “economic relocalization,” which has been around about four years, describes the global movement of loosely knit Transition Towns and other grassroots networks working to strengthen local and regional economies and systems of food and energy production. I myself was unacquainted with the term until I came across it in the promotional materials for the Economics of Happiness. Most of the last six years of my life have been focused on grassroots relocalization activities. For four years, I helped run a local mutual credit system (an alternative monetary system allowing people on a fixed income to purchase goods and services from each other). During the same period, I have been a strong and vocal supporter of New Plymouth’s farmers market, as well helping to start a local community garden. Along with a group of local energy engineers and other members of Grey Power, I also (successfully) lobbied New Plymouth District Council to promote and support locally produced “distributed” energy (for example local wind farms and grid-connect solar electricity) systems.

What I like best about Economics of Happiness is learning I am part of a global movement to strengthen local communities economically and politically. The 2011 film, narrated by Helena Norberg Hodge, is based on her 1991 book Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh and her 1993 film by the same name. The book and both films draw their inspiration from the nearly forty years Norberg-Hodge has spent living and working in Ladakh, a small Himalayan region in the India-controlled (and disputed) state of Jammu and Kashmir. The beginning of Economics of Happiness includes footage from the 1993 film. It also includes substantial documentary footage on the global economic crisis and the impending global ecological crisis, a consequence of runaway climate change and mass species extinction.

In addition to examining extreme weather events, mass unemployment, extreme income inequality and skyrocketing energy and food costs, the Economics of Happiness also explores “the crisis of the human spirit.” As evidence of this “spiritual” crisis, Norberg-Hodge examines the epidemic level of loneliness, alienation and demoralization that seems to accompany wholesale industrial globalization.

The Psychological Devastation of Globalization

The film opens with the same narrative Norberg-Hodge recounts in her earlier Ancient Futures film. We are shown the “before” image of Ladakh, a rich thriving culture in which residents live in large spacious homes, enjoy respectable amounts of leisure time and have no concept of unemployment. Then we have the “after” image where, thanks to globalization, cheap (government subsidized) food, fuel and consumer goods have flooded the region and destroyed most residents’ traditional livelihoods. Previously pristine communities face rising levels of air and water pollution, while Ladakhi teenagers are continuously bombarded with consumerist messages.

It’s heartbreaking to see the psychological effect of all this. Most young Ladakhi have come to regard themselves as backwards and poor, while the communities they live in face rising racial tensions, juvenile delinquency and epidemic levels of psychological depression.

The Destructive Nature of Urbanization

The film goes on to sketch the mechanics of globalization, stressing the deregulation that forces small self-contained regions like Ladakh to open their markets to foreign goods, which quickly supplant higher priced local products. Norberg-Hodge paints an even uglier picture of urbanization, an inevitable result of forcing millions of small formers off their land. In discussing the growing global scarcity of fossil fuels, water and food, she stresses that city life is vastly more resource intensive than rural living. All urban residents rely on food, energy and water transported from some distant source, while they burn up massive fossil fuel transporting their waste products to the remote countryside. Most city residents go along with the massive ecological and social devastation their lifestyle produces because they don’t see it. Most of the damage occurs somewhere else.

Rebuilding Local Communities and Economies

The solutions Norberg-Hodge offers for all these problems are similar to those proposed by an increasing number of “latter day” economists. First and foremost we must acknowledge that humankind has exceeded the earth’s carrying capacity – that the corporate drive for continual economic growth must end. Secondly people of conscience need to opt out of corporate economy to facilitate the creation of more efficient and environmentally accountable regional and local economies. In addition to transitioning to local energy and food production, people need to exert collective pressure to break up large investment banks and replace them with local retail banks and credit unions. State and local governments need to stop giving subsidies and tax breaks to large corporations and start supporting their own local businesses. Not only do small businesses create the vast majority of jobs, but they don’t pack up after a few years to move to overseas.

Norberg-Hodge sees this process of rebuilding local communities as the only way to address the “crisis of the human spirit.” The breakdown of community engagement that occurred in Ladakh is very striking because it occurred so suddenly. Yet no region of the developed or developing world has escaped it.

The film ends on an extremely optimistic note, with numerous examples of international and community organizations working at the local level to support people as they reclaim their lives from multinational corporations.

***

Dr Stuart Jeanne Bramhall is a 64 year old American child and adolescent psychiatrist and political refugee in New Zealand. She has just published a free non-fiction ebook 21^st Century Revolution, which can be downloaded at http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/120942. Her first book The Most Revolutionary Act: Memoir of an American Refugee describes the circumstances that led her to leave the US in 2002. Her website is www.stuartbramhall.com. Email her at stuartbramhall@yahoo.co.nz

“Rich people are likelier to steal candy from children” (Harpers, May, 2012, Findings, pp.80).

I thought about it for awhile and it made sense.  In fact, childhood itself has been stolen.  The rich who run corporate America and indeed the corporate global economy have been stealing from children for a very long time and it isn’t just candy; they’ve foreclosed on their future stealing generations of youth lives throughout the world.  Educational and cultural theorist, Henry Giroux has been writing about “disposable youth” for some years now.  According to Giroux, disposability is:

“a set of ideas and practices characterized by a ruthless indifference to human suffering whereby the most brutalizing forces of capitalism are unleashed on individuals and communities who are increasingly denied the protections of the social state.  Under such conditions certain groups such as immigrants, poor minority youth, and those individuals considered bad consumers are viewed as excess, waste, and expendable” (Giroux, Henry, (2012) Disposable youth, Racialized Memories and the Culture of Cruelty, Routledge pp. 56).

Feds crackdown on student loan defaulters

A culture of cruelty indeed, for I also found it a cruel  irony that on the same weekend  the New York Times published the editorial “Control Reckless For-Profit Colleges” (http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/05/12/easing-the-pain-of-student-loans/control-reckless-for-profit-colleges) and the article “A Generation Hobbled by the Soaring Cost of College” (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/business/student-loans-weighing-down-a-generation-with-heavy-debt.html), the Sun Sentinel published the article “Feds crack down on South Florida student loan defaulters”  which reported  how the federal government is suing Florida students who have defaulted on their student loans to recoup government money. (http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2012-05-12/news/fl-student-loan-lawsuits-20120510_1_student-loan-default-rate-federal-stafford-loans).
According to the Sun Sentinel article, 10.5% of all Florida student loan debtors were required to start repaying their loans in 2009 but due to no jobs, lack of opportunities, poverty, disability, the state of being broke in America they went into default.  This, while the default rate for for-profit college and university students soared to heights of 40%.

Department of Education Rules Allow for-profit institutions of higher predation to have student loan default rates as high as 40% and still receive federal funds

The Wall Street Journal noted that Department of Education (DOE) rules permit all colleges, public, non-profit, and private to have student loan default rates as high as 40% in any one year and 30% over three years before eligibility to participate in federal student loan programs is negatively affected. These so-called ‘rules’ are little more than licenses for the for-profits to steal.   It is obvious that the ‘rules’ accommodate predatory for-profit colleges, since non-profit colleges on average have default rates under 10%. 
(http://online.wsj.com/articleSB10001424052748704709304576124280473684142.html).   It’s apparent that the DOE rules were written and hammered out either by or for the for-profit disaster colleges and universities, their lobbyists, lap-dancing politicians and right wing think tanks that rationalize the whole rape of America under the guise of education.

Even the corporate press, the same press that take ads from the for-profit colleges, had to acknowledge that for-profit colleges target and recruit poor, veteran and minority students knowing many of these students will default on their loans.  As the Washington Post Company (owner of Kaplan University)  admitted in a court filing ” Plaintiff alleges that KHE’s supposedly “secret business model” depended upon the recruitment of “low-income and minority” students who were dependent upon federal loans and grants. But that was not a secret.
(http://dailycensored.com/2012/01/14/in-court-filing-washington-post-admits-telemarketing-boiler-room-tactics-at-kaplan-u/). 

We send you into debt purgatory because we love you

But it’s much worse than this.  Kaplan University in the form of its major stockholder, Donald Graham, actually is on record arguing that sub-prime Kaplan and other such disaster colleges do minority and low-income students a favor!  This is the same argument used by Pay-Day Loan hucksters where the public is told that without the existence of these corporate parasites, low-income citizens would not be able to get loans. 

The Orwellian argument, like most, relies on the material conditions of human despair and a beleaguered mind devoid of facts for the for-profit colleges and universities are simply parasites looking for a host.  They offer little more than despair as curriculum and debt as a consequence of a sub-prime diploma.  Never do these higher educational outfits mention the fact that there are no jobs and that there may never be, for under capitalism a permanent surplus population has emerged worldwide that may never see work in their lifetimes and if they do, it will be precarious, unsteady low-wage work.

The absurdity of the federal government allowing for-profit colleges to have default rates up to 40% and then to keep all the money they obtain from federal loan programs without penalty or consequence can only be understood in the seedy context of cash, corruption and lobbying.   While the lax rules allow the one percent enough wiggle room to commit criminal acts that are not legally called criminal acts, the corporate government that colludes with them sues the same veterans and low-income students that were commodified and exploited by the sub-prime colleges in the first place. 

There you have it: the corporate government enables capital extraction by the for-profit industry at rates beyond comprehension and eventually shouldered by taxpayers as a result of student defaulted loans while the same corporate government goes after working class, poor and minority students in default with a vengeance. What a racket.

Collecting defaulted student loans

How does the government attempt to recruit the defaulted loans?  The answer is by using questionable corporations who they farm out the job of collection to for a percentage of the take.  Sound like the Mafia collecting on a protection racket?  It should, for on the fortieth anniversary of Francis Ford Coppola’s classic film, ‘The Godfather’, shy-locking has now become a legal part of daily life, not just in the form of pay-day loans, cash checking joints, car title companies, rent-to-own and the rest of the sub predatory economy which is now the main street economy, but in the educational economic sector where some of the most ruthless racketeers are busy extracting billions in capital from the American economy and leaving students like carcasses, on the road with their pockets turned inside out like tramps. 

In fact the entire Mafia is now institutionalized.  Prohibition and the illegal drug trade along with loan sharking and gambling made the Mafia a rich force in America. initially outside of the law.  The profits and revenues from peddling booze and drugs allowed this same Mafia to invest in ‘legitimate businesses’ and ‘investments’ and develop the entire Southwest region of the US with the help of the Savings and Loan industry and some of the most corrupt politicians in the nation. 

When the student loans are not paid the ‘boyz’ are called in and one of the goon squad collection agencies that might be of interest to readers is Allied Interstate, Inc. (http://dailycensored.com/2012/05/02/allied-interstate-inc-student-loan-collection-is-big-business/). 

The Federal Trade Commission’s website discusses a rather substantial fine that was levied against the debt collection company for engaging in egregious and unlawful practices against consumers. (http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2010/10/alliedinterstate/shtm).  Further research, based on numerous consumer complaint websites, leads one to plausibly infer that this company continues to practice many of the behaviors that caused them to be fined in 2010 with impunity.  Alas, fines are simply the cost of doing illegal business in America as the “mordida” is in most parts of Latin America.  Once again, a questionable shylock collection outfit is getting paid by the government with your tax monies to, in this case, grab young people by the ankles and dangle them upside down to collect money from broke and broken disposable students.

The ‘rules’ allowing up to 40% default rates for for-profit colleges is proof positive that the federal government is little more than a corporate kleptocracy devoted to serving the one percent while punishing and prosecuting the ninety nine percent who subsidize the life styles of the rich and famous.    It is also evidence that supports the findings that the rich are more likely to steal candy from children.  The tragedy is that they have not just stolen the candy, the bastards have stolen the whole piñata.

There seems to be little doubt that in the new Carceral State punishment, fear, economic uncertainty and policies linked to ideologies of human disposability have replaced empathy and compassion for our nation’s youth.  Where once American youth were looked at as an investment in the future, they are now visualized as a future for investment and since many will never work, have no money to consume, are not a good debt risk and are considered a problem for the world’s one percent, they will undoubtedly suffer the ravages not unfamiliar to hunted prey; that is unless they fight for a more just and democratic economic and political future.

Monetary and credit reform can be understood with three simple areas of facts taught in basic economics:

1. The US does not have a money supply; we have its Orwellian opposite as a debt supply. This is because the US leading banks won legal right through passage of the 1913 Federal Reserve Act to have private banks and the Fed create debt for what we use as money, and then charge the 99% for its use.
2. The policy choice of a debt supply compounded with interest causes ever-increasing aggregate debt that can never be repaid. It can’t be repaid because this is what we use for money. The US national debt now pushing $16 trillion has a gross annual interest payment over $400 billion a year; ~$4,000 per US family of $50,000 annual income (if your household earns $100,000, then your gross annual interest payment is ~$8,000 every year).
3. Monetary reform creates debt-free money that extinguishes the debt (details here), and allows government to become employer of last resort for infrastructure investment (hard and soft). This creates full-employment, optimal infrastructure, and falling prices because infrastructure historically creates more value to the economy than cost. Credit reform allows for public loans (interest directly pays for public goods/services) as another monetary tool for stable money supply (credit reform details here).

Dennis was gerrymandered out of his district because of his acts to legislate for 100% of humanity rather than be a minion to the criminal 1%.

Given the King family civil trial verdict that the US government assassinated Dr. Martin Luther King for his stand against the 1%’s wars and avarice, and mountains of evidence this is how the 1% does business, Dennis Kucinich is a hero to the 99%. Perhaps in a new and coming political climate after the 1%’s arrests, Dennis will be in position to express leadership in politics.

Premier Mussolini knows what they are being trained for.  He, at least, is frank enough to speak out. Only the other day, Il Duce in “International Conciliation,” the publication of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said:

“And above all, Fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace… War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the people who have the courage to meet it.”

“Millionaires and billionaires unite, you have nothing to lose but your gold chains”, could be the mantra for the Whales that run the capitalist economy and the lap-dancing politicians like Governor Walker who carry their water.

We are beyond neo-liberalism now as a stage in capitalism.  We are now at the stage of what Mussolini called “fascism” – the merging of the state and the government.

This is very important, for no longer is neo-liberalism an efficient or descriptive tool to describe the actions of the ruling class.  Certainly the government is little more than a corporate board room for the ruling class, but corporate fascism is more efficient and this is what we see in Wisconsin as dress rehearsal for the nation.  Of course, we also see it in Michigan and elsewhere, but Wisconsin is the big battle now and we must remember it is a defensive battle.  It is time we mount offensive battles as well.

It is a very scary time in America and a necessity like never before to organize massive amounts of people to take to the streets, occupy and defy the one percent.

Remember:  The one percent is the ‘capitalist class and the 99% is the working, disenfranchised and media-named “middle class”. 

Do you really think that these plutocratic fascists will allow another New Deal or organized resistance?  The last thing they want is pesky democracy or the hoi poloi looking over their shoulders.  Of course not and with the economic collapse still on the installment plan, we will see massive austerity moves with drastic consequences if allowed to go through.

The ruling class is out to take the country now lock, stock and barrel and their dramatic actions are evidence for this conclusion.  There will be no Roosevelt New Deal for the ‘center’ has collapsed.  The viciousness of the assaults will escalate.  As crisis becomes a daily centerpiece of life, only capitulation or resistance are options.  You make that choice.

Readers should become familiar with the work of George Seldes and his writing about JP Morgan, the banksters and the goons who worked for the corporations in their attempt to bring down Roosevelt and even assassinate him during the 30′s.  Seldes chronicles how the ‘goon squads, former Pinkertons, Mafia members, and just plain old authoritarian fasicsts did the work of the capitalist class: breaking unions, killing resistance leaders, beating socialists and communists, reinforcing Jim Crowe and spreading fear and hatred to divide, conquer and plunder.

This is the same JP Morgan who subsidized Hitler when he was rising to power.  The Times Magazine cover with Benito Mussolini was coveted, for it was Mussolini’s policies that the American ruling class really admired.  Again, Seldes is salient here.

The rap group, “Ded Prez” is right: “we are living behind enemy lines.”

From Larry Miller’s blog:

Larry Miller’s Blog: Educate All Students!

The Educational Management Corporation (EDMC) is the second Largest for-profit college chain in the United States. It owns and operates over 100 schools through its subsidiary branches: The Art Institutes, Argosy University, Brown Mackie College, and South University.

John McKernan, former Governor of Maine and Senator Snowe’s husband, is currently EDMC’s board of directors chairman and their former CEO.

Is Snowe the right fit for USM’s Commencement?

Given her unwillingness to help most students and her enthusiasm in ripping off others—especially veterans—is Senator Snowe really the kind of person who person who should be speaking at USM’s Commencement?

 Either you or your loved one is graduating today with an average of $25,000 in debt. That kind of debt is an undue burden on any economy and on any family.

 To make matters worse, the economy is at its worst since the depression, partly thanks to Snowe’s patron and investor Goldman-Sachs.

 Student debt now tops $1,000,000,000,000 but Snowe won’t even vote to keep interest rates down!

Goldman-Sachs — the bank that engaged in some of the most irresponsible practices of the sub-prime mortgage crisis — holds a 41% share in EDMC.

1.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/14/

goldman-sachs-for-profitcollege_

n_997409.html

2. http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/

contrib.php?cycle=2012&type=I&cid=N000004

80&newMem=N&recs=20

3. http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll

_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=10

7&session=1&vote=00069

4. http://bangordailynews.com/2012/05/04/

news/midcoast/u-s-senators-from-mainecalled-

upon-to-keep-student-loan-interestrate-

lower/

5. http://truth-out.org/news/item/8885-goldman-sachs-political-contributions-tainted-by-money-from-swindled-veterans-and-other-misdeeds