kpete
kpete's JournalOBAMA: “You have pockets of poverty, lack of opportunity, lack of education all across this country"
– Unrest in Baltimore –
Obama also spoke at length about the riots that broke out last week in Baltimore, just an hour’s drive from Washington, after the funeral of a young black man who died of a spinal injury sustained apparently while in police custody last month. Six officers have been charged.
He said there are a “handful of police who are not doing the right thing” in America and that in many inner cities there is no trust between police and the local community.
But most police are doing their best and the broader problem is to address poverty and unemployment that fuels anger among African-Americans, Obama said.
“What you have are pockets of poverty, lack of opportunity, lack of education all across this country, and too often we ignore those pockets until something happens, and then we act surprised,” the president said.
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http://www.rawstory.com/2015/05/obama-discusses-baltimore-on-last-david-letterman-appearance-many-blacks-dont-trust-the-cops/
Replace the TPP with a $100 trillion world trade program
Monday, May 4, 2015
.....the fundamental problem with the idea of free trade is that it was never conceived or implemented as a means to the end of nation building. Rather, the doctrinal basis of free trade were created as a justification for the pillaging, plundering, and outright murder committed by oligarchs: the slave trade, and the opium trade and Opium War of the British East India Company. Free trade was never intended as a justification for sovereign nation states seeking to develop their own economies in their own interests by steering their own course in human affairs in defiance of the international masters of trade and finance. Rather, the doctrine of free trade has always been the excuse used by oligarchs to suppress, subvert, and squash any independently minded program of actual national economic development.
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Someday - after Americans give Republicans one last chance in the White House to totally wreck the economy - we will hopefully hear an American President deliver a speech along the following lines:
Effective immediately, your government of these United States is serving notice that it is withdrawing from the World Trade Organization, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and from all other so called free trade agreements of the past two decades.
In the place of these destructive trade agreements, which history shows have only served to enrich the wealthy and perpetuate in power the privileged, we are beginning negotiations with any and all countries who wish to join us in a $100 trillion program to stop and even reverse climate change.
This $100 trillion program is designed to switch the world economy from its dependence on burning fossil fuels, to totally sustainable renewable energies, within the next 15 years. This program requires the manufacture and building of:
3.8 million 5-Mega-Watt wind turbines;
49,000 300-Mega-Watt concentrated solar plants;
40,000 300-Mega-Watt solar power plants;
1.7 billion 3-kilo-Watt rooftop photvoltaic (PV) systems;
5,350 100-Mega-Watt geothermal power plants;
270 new 1,300-Mega-Watt hydroelectric power plants;
720,000 0.75-Mega-Watt wave devices; and
490,000 1-Mega-Watt tidal turbines.
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This $100 trillion program is actually well within our capability: the entire world economy produces $71 trillion in goods and services each year (of which the U.S. economy produces around $16 trillion). $100 trillion over 15 years is just under $7 trillion a year. That’s just a ten percent increase in world output, right now.
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the rest:
http://real-economics.blogspot.com/2015/05/replace-tpp-with-100-trillion-world.html
NY state police troopers handcuff and shackle 'combative' five-year-old boy after two-hour tantrum
New York state police are defending the actions of two troopers who handcuffed and shackled the feet of a five-year-old boy who they called “combative” and “out of control” after having a two-hour tantrum.
The Watertown Daily Times reports that the boy, named Connor, who was in a class for children with learning difficulties, was taken in a patrol car to the Samaritan Medical Center in Watertown, New York, for a mental health evaluation.
Trooper Jack Keller told the newspaper the boy was “screaming, kicking, punching and biting,” and that he posed a risk to himself, students, school staff and troopers.
But the boy’s mother, Chelsea Ruiz, claimed their son is now emotionally traumatized from the ordeal, and accused the staff of not handling the situation properly and letting it escalate before she and her husband could arrive and calm their son down.
more:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/new-york-state-police-troopers-handcuff-and-shackle-combative-fiveyearold-boy-after-twohour-tantrum-10224090.html
John Oliver: Standardized Testing Enriches Companies, Gets Teachers Fired and Makes Students Sick
John Oliver: Standardized Testing Enriches Companies, Gets Teachers Fired and Makes Students Sick
Posted on May 4, 2015
The “Last Week Tonight” host dedicated the longest section of his HBO show Sunday to discussing the one thing teachers, students and parents all despise: standardized testing.
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"It's not racist"
“When the Negro was under the natural discipline of white authority, white people were safe from the abuse and violence of the Negro, but the Negro was also safe from himself.” – Editorial in The Torch, April 1990
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/05/help-spread-the-word-of-white-revival-kkk-sponsors-another-billboard-in-arkansas/
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