Pennsylvania school district contract to cut 15 percent of teachers

Earlier this month, teachers in the Wilkinsburg Education Association (WEA), representing the 128 teachers in the Wilkinsburg School District in Pennsylvania, accepted a contract that will lay off 18 of their fellow workers, or 15 percent of teaching staff. This means 20 percent of the district’s teachers have been furloughed in two years, following the gutting last year of 10 teaching and three support staff positions.
Wilkinsburg, like many small school districts around the country, faces grinding poverty. It has been robbed of funding, first by the generous tax cuts given to corporations and then by the looting of state and local treasuries through the financial bailout of Wall Street.

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/06/27/wilk-j27.html

Chicago Public Schools lays off 1,150 workers

In the latest attack on public education in the city of Chicago, Illinois, the city’s public school system is laying off more than one thousand workers, including teachers, teacher assistants and school staff.
Layoff notices were given to 550 teachers and 600 other workers Thursday. Chicago Public Schools (CPS) encouraged teachers to reapply for jobs elsewhere in the district, positions that typically receive lower pay.

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/06/27/chic-j27.html

Consume, Conform, Obey: About Homeland Security’s Targeting Of Anti-Consumerist Activities

Consume, Conform, Obey: What Homeland Security’s Targeting Of Anti-Consumerist Activities Says About The Government’s Desires.

At some point in time, the DHS and members of its Joint Terrorism Task Force must have viewed John Carpenter’s cult classic “They Live” and saw in it a blueprint for future actions. If you’re not familiar with the premise, an average guy construction worker is given a pair of sunglasses that reveal the world for what it actually is — controlled by aliens who pacify the populace by subliminally pushing them to obey, conform and consume.

Remember a few weeks back when we discussed the DHS Fusion Centers’ use of powerful investigative tools like Twitter searches and The Google to investigate such harmful Occupy Wall Street-related activities like not participating in Black Friday sales or cutting up people’s credit cards (at their request). Anti-consumerist is anti-government, apparently. It makes for a great conspiracy theory — one that implies the government is actually run by corporations.

http://www.freedominfonet.net/consume-conform-obey-homeland-securitys-targeting-anti-consumerist-activities-says-governments-desires/

If the "Tea party" did this there would be 24X7 coverage.

Published on Tuesday, June 24, 2014 by Common Dreams
Moral Movement Launches 'Freedom Summer' in North Carolina
Rev. William Barber: "We have exposed the hypocrisy, now it is time to organize."
- Lauren McCauley, staff writer

Protesters who for over a year have railed against the "extremist" policies of the North Carolina legislature are now bringing their fight to the voting booth as the movement known as Moral Mondays launched a bold initiative to get-out-the-vote this week.

“We have exposed the hypocrisy,” Rev. William J. Barber II, chief organizer of the protests and head of the state chapter of the NAACP, said during a rally outside the General Assembly in Raleigh on Monday. Now is the time to organize.”

Organizers estimate that upwards of 3,500 protesters from across the state attended the mass demonstration before splitting up into smaller factions for "teach-ins" to discuss the group's new voter outreach strategy.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2014/06/24-1

Anyone else having trouble loading http://www.marxists.org?

I don't remember problems loading it before...

When Will It Pay to Take Family and Medical Leave?

When Will It Pay to Take Family and Medical Leave?
by Helene Jorgensen

What does the United States have in common with the countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone, Swaziland, Samoa, and Papua New Guinea? Not much, other than being the only six countries in the world that do not mandate paid maternity leave. In fact, the Unites States does not provide for paid leave to employees who become sick with a serious illness either, nor to parents to care for a sick child or adult children tending to an ailing parent.

In 2012, 2.5 million private-sector workers did not take needed leave for family and medical reasons because they did not have access to paid leave and therefore could not afford to do so. Employees who do take unpaid leave can experience serious financial hardship as result of their leave, and about one in three workers incur debt as result of taking leave without receiving any pay.

The United States lags far behind other high-income countries in terms of workers’ access to leave, duration of leave and pay during leave. After a decade of political wrangling, Congress passed the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) in 1993 to provide job-protected leave for up to 12 weeks. However, the law does not require leave to be paid, and fully 44 percent of all private-sector employees are not even eligible for FMLA leave because they work for a firm with less than 50 employees, have been with their current employer for less than a year, or did not work a sufficient number of hours over the past year.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/06/21-3

The Russia as "Imperialist" Thesis Is Wrong

The Russia as "Imperialist" Thesis Is Wrong and a Barrier to Solidarity With the Ukrainian and Russian People
Wednesday, 18 June 2014 10:46
By Roger Annis, Truthout | Op-Ed

The violent coming to power of a rightist regime in Kyiv, Ukraine in late February 2014 has opened an exceptionally dangerous political period in Europe. For the first time since World War II, a European government has representatives of fascist parties as ministers. These are the ministers of the armed forces, prosecution service and agriculture, and deputy ministers of national security (police), education and anti-corruption.

The rest: http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/24428-the-russia-as-imperialist-thesis-is-wrong-and-a-barrier-to-solidarity-with-the-ukrainian-and-russian-people

Reviving the ‘Successful Surge in Iraq’ Myth

The military offensive by Sunni extremists driving into the heart of Iraq has brought the neocons out of the shadows to blame President Obama, by arguing that they had “won” the war before Obama “lost” it, a deeply engrained false narrative of Official Washington

by Robert Parry

A beloved myth of Official Washington – especially among Republicans, neocons and other supporters of the Iraq War – is the fable of the “successful surge,” how President George W. Bush’s heroic escalation of 30,000 troops in 2007 supposedly “won” that war; it then follows that the current Iraq disaster must be President Barack Obama’s fault.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/06/20-4

Happy Father's Day!

Come hear the crazy holdovers of OAS