kpete
kpete's JournalDetroit Schools Emergency Mgr Roberts to leave, says he was told to "blow up" & "dismantle" district
Keith Johnson, president of the Detroit Federation of Teachers, said he had expected Roberts to discuss Monday’s upcoming visit by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.
“When he said, ‘I’m stepping down,’ all of our mouths just dropped,” Johnson said. “I can’t say it’s a bad day. I can’t say it’s a good day, because we don’t know who’s coming next.”
Roberts also told those gathered more shocking news: His initial instructions when he arrived in Detroit were to “blow up the district and dismantle it,” Johnson said.
“He’s got nothing to lose by saying it now,” Johnson added.
http://www.freep.com/article/20130502/NEWS01/305020059/Detroit-Public-Schools-emergency-manager-Roy-Roberts-to-step-down
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/05/02/1206404/-Detroit-Schools-Emergency-Mgr-Roberts-to-leave-says-he-was-told-to-blow-up-dismantle-district
One Reason It’s Hard to Write About the Bangladesh Factory Disaster
Current U.S. treatment of our most vulnerable workforce isn’t exactly an exemplar:
DAVENPORT, Iowa — A jury on Wednesday awarded a total of $240 million to 32 mentally disabled turkey processing plant workers in Iowa for what an expert witness described as years of “virtual enslavement” by the Texas company that oversaw their care, work and lodging…
During the weeklong trial that ended Wednesday, officials testified about the squalid conditions they found during a 2009 inspection of the bunkhouse where the men were housed. The building, which was in a rural area several miles from the West Liberty Foods turkey processing plant where they worked, was falling apart, infested with rodents and full of fire hazards.
Social workers spoke of the physical and verbal abuse the men said they had been subjected to by the Henry’s supervisors who oversaw their work and care. They said they had been forced to work through illness and injuries, denied bathroom breaks, locked in their rooms, kicked in the groin and, in one case, handcuffed to a bed…
“If these men had not been virtually enslaved, they could have enjoyed productive lives with the support of community,” she said. “It was only because they were disabled.”
OMFG:
http://news.msn.com/us/iowa-turkey-plant-workers-awarded-dollar240m-for-years-of-abuse
George W Bush's $250 Million Can of Whitewash - by Jim Hightower
Published on Wednesday, May 1, 2013 by Creators
George W Bush's $250 Million Can of Whitewash
by Jim Hightower
Big doings in Big D — the George W. Bush Presidential Library is open for business!
Somewhere in Texas an idiot has opened his library. (Vernon Bryant, Dallas Morning News)
What a piece of work it is: a $250 million, 226,000-square-foot edifice on 23 acres in Dallas. His brick-and-limestone structure is certainly imposing, but once inside, you quickly see that it's a $250 million can of whitewash. Of course, all ex-presidents want libraries that show their good side, and Bush himself was organizer-in-chief of this temple to ... well, to himself. What's most striking is not what's in it, but what's not.
For example, where's that "Mission Accomplished" banner that he used as a political prop in May 2003, when he strutted out so fatuously on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln wearing a flight suit to pretend like he had won the Iraq war? And how about a video loop of him finally showing up in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, cluelessly praising his infamously incompetent emergency management honcho with the now notorious shout-out: "Heck of a job, Brownie."
Also, while there are 35 featured videos, a replica of W's oval office, narrated presentations by top Bush officials and even statues of the family dogs — where's Cheney? Shouldn't there be an animated exhibit of the perpetually snarling veep in his dark chamber, scheming to shred our Constitution and set up an imperial presidency (or, more accurately, an imperial vice presidency)?
Another essential element of George's tenure that goes unportrayed could be called "The Dead Garden of Compassionate Conservatism." It could feature such mementos as him cutting health care funding for veterans, closing of the college gates for 1.5 million low-income students and turning a blind eye as 8 million more Americans tumbled down the economic ladder into poverty on his watch.
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the rest:
http://www.creators.com/opinion/jim-hightower/george-w-s-250-million-can-of-whitewash.html
We used to be better than this. We used to have leaders that were better than this.
Gitmo Torture Memoir of Mohamedou Ould Slahi
by Taylor Marsh on May 1, 2013
SLATE has published excerpts of a Gitmo torture memoir that should be required reading in Congress and in the Obama administration. It should then be passed to Ron Fournier who recently wrote a sloppy love poem to George W. Bush. The first installment of the torture memoir is here, but hold on, because it unmasks, yet again, our country’s leaders as not fit for their jobs.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2013/04/mohamedou_ould_slahi_s_guantanamo_memoirs_part_1_the_endless_interrogations.html
Here’s an excerpt on the background on the torture memoir by Mohamedou Ould Slahi:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2013/04/mohamedou_ould_slahi_s_guant_namo_memoirs_how_the_united_states_kept_a_gitmo.single.html
Mohamedou Ould Slahi at Guantánamo
Courtesy of the International Committee of the Red Cross [via Slate]
That all this abuse was fruitless is clear from the 2010 decision of U.S. District Court Judge James Robertson granting Slahi’s habeas corpus petition and ordering his release. Once there had been talk of trying Slahi as a key 9/11 recruiter, a capital crime, but no criminal charges were ever prepared against him. The man first assigned to prosecute him, Marine Corps Lt. Col. Stuart Couch, withdrew from the case when he discovered Slahi had been tortured. When Couch’s boss, former Guantánamo chief prosecutor Col. Morris Davis, met with the CIA, the FBI, and military intelligence in 2007 to review Slahi’s case, the agencies conceded they could not link him to any acts of terrorism. During Slahi’s habeas corpus proceedings, the government still alleged he played a role in recruiting the 9/11 hijackers, though by then it was acknowledging, as Robertson notes in a footnote to his opinion, “that Slahi probably did not even know about the 9/11 attacks.” The only evidence the government offered to support allegations of Slahi’s involvement in terrorist plots came, Robertson found, from statements he made in the course of his brutal interrogation.
Slahi testified by closed video link to Washington during the habeas corpus proceedings. What he said remains classified. Until now, one of the few documents we had of Slahi describing his ordeal, in his own words, is the declassified transcript of his November 2005 Administrative Review Board hearing. The document is remarkable for the characteristic clarity and sly humor of Slahi’s voice; a masked interrogator, he tells the board, “had gloves, OJ Simpson gloves on his hands.” It is also exceptionally earnest. Early in his statement, he tells the board, “Please, I want you guys to understand my story okay, because it really doesn’t matter if they release me or not, I just want my story understood.”
The disgrace is on every single politician in Washington, including President Obama, a man who was supposed to make things different, especially on torture and Guantanamo Bay. It hasn’t happened.
We used to be better than this. We used to have leaders that were better than this.
http://www.taylormarsh.com/blog/2013/05/gitmo-torture-memoir-of-mohamedou-ould-slahi/
Capitalism is killing our morals, our future - In a Market Society, everything is for sale
Capitalism is killing our morals, our futurePaul B. Farrell
Commentary: In a Market Society, everything is for sale
“Without being fully aware of the shift, Americans have drifted from having a market economy to becoming a market society ... where almost everything is up for sale ... a way of life where market values seep into almost every sphere of life and sometimes crowd out or corrode important values, non-market values.”
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America transforms from mere market economy to new market society
Sandel’s core message is simple: “The good things in life are degraded if turned into commodities. So to decide where the market belongs, and where it should be kept at a distance, we have to decide how to value the goods in question — health, education, family life, nature, art, civic duties, and so on. These are moral and political questions, not merely economic ones.”
Unfortunately, we never had that debate during the 30-year rise of “market triumphalism. As a result, without quite realizing it — without ever deciding to do so — we drifted from having a market economy to being a market society.”
And “the difference is this: A market economy is a tool ... for organizing productive activity. A market society is a way of life in which market values seep into every aspect of human endeavor. It’s a place where social relations are made over in the image of the market.” The difference is profound.
much more:
http://articles.marketwatch.com/2013-04-29/commentary/38851356_1_capitalism-market-triumphalism-values
Pat Toomey: Background Checks Died Because GOP Didn't Want To Help Obama
Source: Huffington Post
Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) revealed that some members of his party opposed expanding background checks for gun sales recently because they didn't want to "be seen helping the president."
Two weeks ago, only three Republican senators voted for the bipartisan background checks amendment sponsored by Toomey and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), despite overwhelming popular support for such a measure.
"In the end it didn’t pass because we're so politicized. There were some on my side who did not want to be seen helping the president do something he wanted to get done, just because the president wanted to do it,” Toomey admitted on Tuesday in an interview with Digital First Media editors in the offices of the Times Herald newspaper in Norristown, Pa.
The Times Herald noted that in "subsequent comments," Toomey "tried to walk that remark part-way back by noting he meant to say Republicans across the nation in general, not just those in the Senate."
Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/01/pat-toomey-background-checks_n_3192690.html
Extramarital affair website billboard has message for Mark Sanford
http://www.wsoctv.com/news/news/local/extramarital-affair-website-billboard-features-mar/nXc53/
Jason Collins Inspires A Young Sportswriter To Come Out Of The Closet
Jason Collins Inspires A Young Sportswriter To Come Out Of The ClosetBy Outsports on Apr 30 2013, 8:44a
By Tony Jovenitti
I’m gay.
There, I said it.
Well, I didn’t say it. I wrote it.
I was always better at writing than speaking, anyway. So it’s only fitting that I’m doing this in writing. I’ve been a writer my whole life, throughout high school and into college. I’ve also known I was gay for a good portion of my life. But I did my best to hide it, quell my emotions and lie to myself and everyone around me.
Not anymore.
I got into sports writing during my junior year of college after writing for the music section and the news section of my college newspaper. I covered NCAA football and basketball before landing an awesome internship with the Pittsburgh Penguins.
So naturally, I’ve been paying close attention to the You Can Play project and the amazing work that Patrick Burke has done. And then, yesterday, the inevitable finally happened. An active player in one of the four major North American professional sports came out of the closet.
I was overjoyed to see Jason Collins invite us to know the real Jason Collins. I posted it on my Facebook to let my friends hear the news, but thanks to my internal censor, I couldn’t really reveal just how excited I was. I couldn’t let people know exactly how much this meant to me, they might find out my secret!
But then I thought about it for a while. The thing I admired most about Collins’ story is that he came out in his own words, by writing his own story.
Now, I love sports, but I don’t really care for the NBA. I’ve never even heard of Collins. I honestly thought that, with all the work Burke has been doing, the NHL would have the first openly gay athlete. But here we are, an NBA player blazing the trail. (Did Collins ever play for the Trailblazers? No? Bummer.)
The fact that he wrote his coming out story so elegantly and in such a matter-of-fact way inspired me. I’m nowhere near as big of a deal as Collins. Heck, I’m barely a sportswriter anymore; I just do it on the side. But I want to tell my story and tell the truth to anyone who cares to listen – if only for my own sake.
I’m tired of putting on the charade of being straight. I grew up in a very small town that isn’t too accepting of diversity. There was one gay kid and one black kid in my school and both were bullied mercilessly. I didn’t partake in the bullying – I’m the kind of person who stays away from conflict, even when I probably should confront something – but I just stood by and let the jocks tease the only gay person in town who had the guts to be himself. For that, I’m ashamed. I wish I could go back and do it all over. But I can’t. All I can do is offer my apologies.
I also apologize to my family and friends to whom I’ve been lying. If there’s one thing that my parents taught me growing up, it’s that lying is wrong. And I let them down. But I know that they will accept and love me no matter what. They’ve even told me this when we’ve had discussions about homosexuality. I don’t know why I’m so scared to come out to the world.
I know all my friends will be supportive, and I know they will all still think of me the same way they did before they read this. My friends are some of the most accepting and rational people that I know. I really don’t know what I’ve been waiting for.
Perhaps I’m afraid to hurt people around me – like I said, I shy away from conflict and I go out of my way to please people. I’ve dated women, including one serious relationship in college. I lied to her. I honestly did love her; she’s the nicest girl you’ll ever meet. But she didn’t deserve being lied to. I almost don’t want to write this because I don’t want to hurt her.
But this needs to happen.
Yes, being a closeted writer in the macho world of sports was difficult. It was tough to keep my guard up the whole time. But I’m professional. I was there to do a job and do it well. (And yes, Don Cherry, I did see a penis in the locker room. But guess what? I didn’t care.) I think my coworkers can attest that I did the job well. Shockingly, my sexuality has nothing to do with how good of a sportswriter I am. Just like Collins’ sexuality has nothing to do with his basketball skills.
A few people would crack homophobic "jokes" and blurt out gay slurs at the office and in the locker room. I know they didn’t mean it, but that doesn’t make it right. I’m sure they’re reading this now saying, "Oh no, I didn’t know he was gay, I wouldn’t have said that!" It shouldn’t matter if someone’s gay or not; we shouldn’t be using those words. I’m not mad at these people and still consider them my friends, but I just hope they learn from this and stop using hateful words. Again, I know they didn’t mean it, but – much like Tyler Seguin’s unfortunate tweet a few days ago – we need to learn from things like this to clean up our vocabulary.
I moved away from my friends and family for a good job. I made new friends, but I kept up the charade. Now, it’s time to tear down the walls I’ve spent my entire life building. I’ll never find happiness if I keep this up. So it’s time to do the right thing.
I’m sorry to everyone I’ve lied to.
But, I’m Tony. I love sports. I love hockey. I love the Penguins.
And I’m gay.
I can’t make up for the lies I’ve told in the past, but hopefully, everyone will forgive me and we can all move toward the future together and find happiness.
Thank you, Jason Collins.
http://www.outsports.com/2013/4/30/4284028/jason-collins-gay-nba-inspires-young-sportswriter-to-come-out-of-closet
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