yurbud
yurbud's JournalARGO v. Reality: Iran's then president wanted hostages free, Reagan campaing didn't
I have a feeling the real narrative is eventually going to win out.
Iran Contra started before Reagan was even president with a behind the scenes deal to delay the release of the hostages until after the election.
For some reason, Democrats never put this knife in the ribs of the GOP.
Or maybe if they tried, the media would suddenly become very interested in some celebrity's dysfunction, violent videogames, or steroid use by Dancing with the Stars contestants.
“Overall, 96 percent of votes in that election were given to candidates who were against [the hostage-taking]. Hence, the movie misrepresents the Iranian government’s stand in regard to hostage-taking. It also completely misrepresents Iranians by portraying us as irrational people consumed by aggressive emotion.”
The October Surprise
However, after becoming president on Feb. 4, 1980, he found his efforts to resolve the hostage crisis thwarted. Bani-Sadr said he discovered that “Ayatollah Khomeini and Ronald Reagan had organized a clandestine negotiation, later known as the ‘October Surprise,’ which prevented the attempts by myself and then-U.S. President Jimmy Carter to free the hostages before the 1980 U.S. presidential election took place. The fact that they were not released tipped the results of the election in favor of Reagan.”
Though Bani-Sadr has talked and written about the Reagan-Khomeini collaboration before, he added in his commentary on “Argo” that “two of my advisors, Hussein Navab Safavi and Sadr-al-Hefazi, were executed by Khomeini’s regime because they had become aware of this secret relationship between Khomeini, his son Ahmad, the Islamic Republican Party, and the Reagan administration.”
http://consortiumnews.com/2013/03/07/october-surprise-and-argo/
Michigan teachers say paycheck cuts qualify them for food stamps
Do you think this will make future college students want to become teachers?
People don't go into education for the money, but we do expect to have a roughly middle class standard of living and not have to stand in line for food stamps to feed our families.
Too many Democrats seem to agree with Republicans that the only time the bucks should flow to education is when some hedge fund manager trust fund baby stands to make a profit from it.
We've got to change that.
The second-grade teacher at Grand Rapids Public Schools’ Burton Elementary was among nearly 150 teachers summoned by their union’s crisis team to pressure school officials Monday, March 4 to settle a pending contract and do something about applying a state law limiting what school districts and other public employers pay for employee health insurance premiums.
Since Feb. 15 when the district began deducting back health insurance premiums over what it’s allowed to pay under the state’s Publicly Funded Health Insurance Contribution Act of 2011, Ratliff said morale among teachers has suffered dramatically and a sort of depression has set in. Some are losing $300 per pay check.
“I am a five-year teacher who brings home $555.39 for two weeks and who currently qualifies for a Bridge Card,” Ratliff told the school board Monday to loud applause from her colleagues. “How is this possible?"
http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2013/03/grand_rapids_teachers_say_sala.html
Tell teachers' retirement fund to DIVEST from standardized testing companies
If you aren't a teacher, but know someone who is, please forward this to them.
The retirement fund just recently set a precedent by divesting from gun companies, but corporate backed education reform is threatening the very existence of public education by buying politicians and policies that benefit Wall Street at the expense of our kids.
We need to make sure they aren't using our money to kill our jobs and our schools. I'm providing contact information for California, but if you post other states in the comments, I'll be glad to add that to the post itself in updates.
In California, you can contact CALSTRS, our retirement system at http://www.calstrs.com/contact-us
800-228-5453 • 916-414-5040 (Fax)
P. O. Box 15275
Sacramento, CA 95851-0275
Feel free to use or modify this brief message:
As a member of CalSTRS, I ask that since you have divested from companies whose guns kill students and teachers, you also divest from the corporations pushing education "reform" that are killing public education so they can cannibalize the corpse.
Start with those pushing endless repetitive high stakes testing, like Pearson, ETS, and McGraw Hill.
As an educator, I do not want to invest in businesses that corrupt our public education policy for the financial gain of a few.
I look forward to hearing your plan of action on this.
You can also tell your union to demand that CalSTRS divest from corporate education reform companies, starting with testing companies. Just change the message slightly:
As a member of CFT (or CTA) I ask that since CalSTRS has divested from companies whose guns kill students and teachers, I ask that you direct CalSTRS to also divest from the corporations pushing education "reform" that are killing public education so they can cannibalize the corpse.
Start with those pushing endless repetitive high stakes testing, like Pearson, ETS, and McGraw Hill.
As an educator, I do not want to invest in businesses that corrupt our public education policy for the financial gain of a few.
I look forward to hearing your plan of action on this.
In the AFT, you can contact:
Gary Ravani
K-12 Council President
cfteck12@aol.com
Administrative Office
California Federation of Teachers
2550 North Hollywood Way, Suite 400
Burbank, CA 91505
818-843-8226, Fax 818-843-4662
If you are in CFT but not a K-12 teacher, contact:
Joshua Pechthalt, President
jpechthalt@cft.org
In the CTA:
President Dean Vogel
E-mail: dvogel@cta.org
P.O. Box 921
1705 Murchison Drive
Burlingame, CA 94011-0921
Phone: (650) 552-5307
FAX: (650) 552-5007
Check back later for a proposal on what we could do WITHOUT testing companies that would also save states a lot of money.
http://equalpayforequalwork.blogspot.com/2013/02/tell-teachers-retirement-fund-to-divest.html
Rahm's DLC, neoliberal, corrupt policies tank him in the polls
Rahm is as close to a pure DLC corporate Democrat as you can get. He is to those who have the reins of Democratic Party what Dick Cheney was to the GOP in the Bush years: the ugly heart of coal that no amount of PR and propaganda can pretty up.
Democrats like Rahm are why the GOP is still alive instead of long dead and buried. He reinforces the stereotype that all politicians are alike and will do pretty much the same thing on the big issues because in his case, it's essentially true.
We need more choice than one party that gives away our country to corporations while shredding the social safety net and another that gives us a sleeping pill and then shreds quietly.
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Specifically, just 2 percent of Chicagoans surveyed said they strongly approve of the mayor's job performance, with 12 percent somewhat approving and 5 percent leaning that way. At the opposite end, 13 percent strongly disapprove, 9 percent somewhat disapprove and 13 percent lean toward disapproval.
In Chicago, that gives Mr. Emanuel a net minus 16 rating, down from the plus 4 he had in September, when 37 percent approved and 33 percent disapproved.
Notably, the share of those disapproving of Mr. Emanuel's job performance hasn't moved much, going from 33 percent to 35 percent. The big shift has occurred in the “mixed feelings” category — up from 21 percent to 30 percent — and the “not sure” category, which went from 12 percent in September to 16 percent from Feb. 12 to 15, when the survey was conducted.
http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20130221/BLOGS02/130229963/emanuels-poll-rating-turns-negative
RAVITCH: How charter schools exclude kids they don't want & shake down parents of those they do
Charter schools are public schools run by private, mostly for-profit contractors with taxpayer money.
To try to goose their test scores, they exclude kids who are difficult to educate and skim the cream of the crop. In a Reuters investigative report, one of the ways they do this is requiring a fifteen page research paper to get in. If a kid could do that, they should be done with K-12 and applying to colleges.
If this is how they filter applicants, it makes the charters performance even less impressive: only 17% do better than regular public schools, and 37% do worse.
How Charter Schools Exclude the Kids They Don’t Want
by dianerav
Stephanie B. Simon, investigative reporter for Reuters, has written a stunning exposé of the many ways that charter exclude kids who might drag down their test scores.
Getting in to a charter school, she writes, can be a "grueling experience."
Examples: "Students may be asked to submit a 15-page typed research paper, an original short story, or a handwritten essay on the historical figure they would most like to meet. There are interviews. Exams. And pages of questions for parents to answer, including: How do you intend to help this school if we admit your son or daughter?"
And this:
"Thousands of charter schools don't provide subsidized lunches, putting them out of reach for families in poverty. Hundreds mandate that parents spend hours doing "volunteer" work for the school or risk losing their child's seat. In one extreme example the Cambridge Lakes Charter School in Pingree Grove, Illinois, mandates that each student's family invest in the company that built the school - a practice the state said it would investigate after inquiries from Reuters."
And there is much more. Read it. Then ask, are these public schools or private schools subsidized with public money?
URL: http://wp.me/p2odLa-3YA
Will our democracy ever look like the internet?
With far less government secrecy, more people participating in more decision-making, and even wikilegislation?
I suspect that fear of those kind of changes, not for specific crimes they have committed, is why the government has come down so hard on Bradley Manning, Aaron Schwartz, and are so eager to get their hands on Julian Assange.
And they fear it because when information can no longer be the exclusive property of a few, to dribble out or hide to their own advantage, money and power are not far behind.
Will we have the government that the few fear so much in our lifetime?
I hope they select that African bishop as the new pope, just to see Republican Catholics
heads explode like in the Dave Chappelle blind black Klansman skit:
Sorry for the low video quality--I don't have time to fix it up pretty.
Why did Reid fold on filibuster reform?
Frankly, I suspected the jig was up when I saw the story that he was consulting with Mitch McConnell.
After Republicans in the Senate's performance under Obama, it should be clear to the most casual observer that their word is worth less than nothing.
My question is why he folded this time. Did he make the best of a weak hand or was it just a token effort and Senate Dems are glad to have the GOP to play bad cop to give them an excuse not to do what Democratic voters expect and deserve?
RAVITCH: If teachers can divest from guns why not corporations killing public schools?
I'm the reader who sent the email she quotes.
I don't currently have the connections or time to make this happen, but I'm going to try.
Time to Divest?
by Diane Ravitch
A reader sent along a story that the California teachers' pension fund, the second largest in the nation, has decided to divest from corporations that manufactures weapons.
That's a good start. Now how about divesting in Walmart, which is the biggest retail outlet for assault weapons like the one used in the Newtown massacre? Another reason to divest in Walmart is that the Walton family is one of the biggest sponsors of vouchers and charters--all non-union--of course. Why should teachers invest in corporations that want to cut their pay, eliminate their job security, tie their profession to unreliable test scores, and break their union (if they have one)?
Teachers often act powerless but in fact their pension funds wield a lot of power in the marketplace. Others use their economic power to attack public education. Why shouldn't teachers and administrators use their economic power to defend this citadel of democracy?
The reader asked the following question:
Why can't we ask our retirement funds to divest from at least those companies that directly profit from the corporate education reform movement, like testing companies, education management companies, and the for profit charter companies?
Another way to get at the same effect is to move districts and states toward open source textbooks and testing, that are developed by educators collaborating and offered to schools at minimal cost. The state of California passed a law setting up a project to do this at the college level for the most commonly used course textbooks. I can't imagine collaboratively developed tests would be as expensive as the corporate ones, and politicians would have a hard time arguing against the cost savings as well.
We need to stop giving money to companies that are slowly strangling our public schools.
dianerav | January 13, 2013 at 4:56 pm | Categories: Education Reform |
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