marmar
marmar's JournalLos Angeles: Gate dilemma will keep Metro rail riders on honor system
(Los Angeles Times) Julio Maciel was headed home on the Expo light-rail line in downtown L.A. on a recent weekday. He entered at the Pico station, sat down and waited for a train headed south.
But when he walked inside, he didn't pay.
Maciel thought he had paid, he said, because he had bought an unlimited day pass. He didn't know he needed to tap it against a shiny, metal validator by the entrance.
"I didn't see any signs," Maciel said.
The Pico station is long and slender and has two entrances at either end where the validators stand. There are no turnstiles or gates. Riders may enter without paying. .................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-gate-locking-20131118,0,7196112.story#axzz2l0Jhc6tX
Truthdigger of the Week: Jeremy Hammond
from Truthdig:
Truthdigger of the Week: Jeremy Hammond
Posted on Nov 17, 2013
By Alexander Reed Kelly
Every week the Truthdig editorial staff selects a Truthdigger of the Week, a group or person worthy of recognition for speaking truth to power, breaking the story or blowing the whistle. It is not a lifetime achievement award. Rather, we’re looking for newsmakers whose actions in a given week are worth celebrating.
The national security state claimed another victim, and the international struggle for civil liberties a living martyr Friday when Anonymous-affiliated computer hacker and political activist Jeremy Hammond was sentenced to 10 years in prison for liberating 3 million email exchanges that indicate the U.S. government routinely uses anti-terrorism laws to criminalize nonviolent protesters and falsely link dissidents to international terrorist groups. Simultaneously, Hammond committed the dubious and plainly illegal act of accessing 60,000 credit card numbers that were then used at his urging by his supporters to make reportedly as much as $700,000 in fraudulent donations to charity groups.
The emails were contained in the computer servers of Strategic Forecasting Inc., or Stratfor, a private security firm that does work for the Department of Homeland Security and other security arms of the U.S. government. The messages confirmed the company infiltrated and spied on participants of Occupy Wall Street on behalf of other corporations and the state. Hammond, who says he was goaded into the hack by an FBI informant, called his sentence a “vengeful, spiteful act” intended to intimidate others who would consider hacking as a form of political action.
.....(snip).....
Though unrepentant, Hammond has expressed a willingness to bear the punishment the state has ordered for him. If indeed he does not respect the law, what is it he does respect? In a statement to the court made before his sentence was read, he said: “The government celebrates my conviction and imprisonment, hoping that it will close the door on the full story. I took responsibility for my actions, by pleading guilty, but when will the government be made to answer for its crimes?”
He continued: “The U.S. hypes the threat of hackers in order to justify the multibillion dollar cybersecurity industrial complex, but it is also responsible for the same conduct it aggressively prosecutes and claims to work to prevent. The hypocrisy of ‘law and order’ and the injustices caused by capitalism cannot be cured by institutional reform but through civil disobedience and direct action. Yes I broke the law, but I believe that sometimes laws must be broken in order to make room for change.” ......................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/truthdigger_of_the_week_jeremy_hammond_20131117?ln
Chris Hedges: Feeding the Flame of Revolt
from truthdig:
Feeding the Flame of Revolt
Posted on Nov 17, 2013
By Chris Hedges
NEW YORK—I was in federal court here Friday for the sentencing of Jeremy Hammond to 10 years in prison for hacking into the computers of a private security firm that works on behalf of the government, including the Department of Homeland Security, and corporations such as Dow Chemical. In 2011 Hammond, now 28, released to the website WikiLeaks and Rolling Stone and other publications some 3 million emails from the Texas-based company Strategic Forecasting Inc., or Stratfor.
The sentence was one of the longest in U.S. history for hacking and the maximum the judge could impose under a plea agreement in the case. It was wildly disproportionate to the crime—an act of nonviolent civil disobedience that championed the public good by exposing abuses of power by the government and a security firm. But the excessive sentence was the point. The corporate state, rapidly losing credibility and legitimacy, is lashing out like a wounded animal. It is frightened. It feels the heat from a rising flame of revolt. It is especially afraid of those such as Hammond who have the technical skills to break down electronic walls and expose the corrupt workings of power.
“People have a right to know what governments and corporations are doing behind closed doors,” Hammond told me when we met in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan about a week and a half before his sentencing.
........(snip)........
I disagree with Hammond over tactics, but in the end this disagreement is moot. It will be the ruling elites who finally determine our response. If the corporate elites employ the full force of the security and surveillance state against us, if corporate totalitarian rule is one of naked, escalating and brutal physical repression, then the violence of the state will spawn a counter-violence. Judge Preska’s decision to judicially lynch Hammond has only added to the fury she and the state are trying to stamp out. An astute ruling class, one aware of the rage rippling across the American landscape, would have released Hammond on Friday and begun to address the crimes he exposed. But our ruling class, while adept at theft, looting, propaganda and repression, is blind to the growing discontent caused by the power imbalance and economic inequality that plague ordinary Americans at a time when half of the country lives in poverty or “near poverty.” ..........(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/feeding_the_flame_of_revolt_20131117
Cutting Dept. of Education spending on the backs of student loan borrowers
The U.S. Department of Education says it has been working to help borrowers who are struggling under the weight of crushing student loan debt. But as Washington focuses on reducing annual federal budget deficits, the huge profits off those same borrowers may prove too alluring for Education Secretary Arne Duncan.
In the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, his department reaped more than $42.5 billion in profit from federal student loans, according to federal budget documents. That total was roughly a third higher than in 2012 and the agency’s second-highest ever profit haul after a $47.9 billion gain in 2011, according to a Huffington Post analysis. The Education Department confirmed the 2013 profit figure.
Had Congress and President Barack Obama not agreed over the summer to temporarily lower student loan interest rates, the Education Department’s 2013 profits would have been about $8 billion higher, according to the Congressional Budget Office, and they would have set a new record.
In a sign of just how important student loan profits have become for the Education Department’s bottom line, its reported gains off lending to students and their families over the last year comprised nearly half of the agency’s total outlays, the biggest share since at least 1997. .......................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/18/federal-student-loan-profits_n_4283765.html?ncid=txtlnkushpmg00000037
Transgender Texas student's tuxedo photo banned
HOUSTON — Jeydon Loredo, a South Texas transgender teenager, wants to be remembered in his high school yearbook wearing clothing that he says reflects his identity.
But the 18-year-old, who grew up female but now identifies as male, and his mother say that his school district is refusing to allow a picture of Jeydon in a tuxedo to appear in the yearbook because it violates "community standards."
Now Jeydon and attorneys with the Southern Poverty Law Center are threatening legal action against the La Feria school district if it does not include the photo in the yearbook. La Feria, a town of about 7,300 residents, is located about 30 miles east of McAllen.
"I've lived here my whole life, and I've grown up with the kids here. ... Denying my tuxedo photo would be a way for the district to forget me and everything I've brought to this community. The yearbook is for the students, not the faculty or the administration. It is a way for us to remember each other," Jeydon, a senior at La Feria High School, said in a statement. .......................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://news.msn.com/us/transgender-texas-students-tuxedo-photo-banned
Calif. high school will keep 'Arabs' nickname
THERMAL, Calif. – School officials in Southern California say the "Arabs" name is here to stay, but the divisive costumed mascot that represents them may be changing.
The Coachella Valley Unified School District held a special meeting Friday night to address the recent dustup over the Coachella Valley High School Arabs and their bearded, snarling mascot who wears a headscarf.
Superintendent Darryl Adams said changing the "Arabs" name used since the 1920s by the school in this town east of Palm Springs is off the table, the Desert Sun reported.
"It is a name we will keep," Adams said during the board meeting. ...................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://news.msn.com/us/calif-school-to-keep-arabs-name-may-change-mascot
Mass.: Racist graffiti prompts cancellation of HS football game
A high school football game has been canceled in a suburban town northwest of Boston and the FBI is reportedly investigating after racist graffiti was painted on the side of a player's house.
Lunenburg High School's freshman team had been scheduled to play Oakmont Regional on Friday night before the parents of an eighth grader who plays for the Lunenburg freshman team reported the graffiti to police, who then notified the school, according to reports.
The superintendent of the school district then ruled the game would be indefinitely postponed, local media have reported.
Andrea Brazier, the mother of Isaac Phillips -- who had been granted permission to play for the school's freshman and junior varsity football teams -- told reporters her family awoke Friday morning to see their home's foundation had been spray-painted. ............(more)
The complete piece is at: http://espn.go.com/boston/story/_/id/9991841/high-school-football-game-canceled-racist-graffiti-surfaces-reports-say
Dana Perino, stupid shill
Climate change discussions in the aftermath of a record-shattering deadly typhoon serve as "an excuse" to avoid helping people living in the storm's path, according Fox host Dana Perino, who argued that instead of taking action on climate change, we should provide developing nations with "more fossil fuels." Perino's concern for affordable electricity starkly contrasts with the network's usually dismissive attitude toward those living in poverty and ignores the fact that fighting climate change and keeping energy prices in check for low-income families are attainable and confluent goals.
Super Typhoon Haiyan devastated the island nation of the Philippines last week. The storm may be the most powerful typhoon in recorded history, and the death toll left in its wake is still rising, estimated to be between 2,300 and 10,000.
On the November 14 edition of Fox News' The Five, co-host Dana Perino attacked environmentalists who express concern that manmade global warming could impact the strength of major storms like the super typhoon that devastated the Philippines. Perino argued that discussing global warming "is the perfect excuse not to do anything for people living in the Third World." Perino later doubled down, saying, "it's an excuse to not help people in poverty."
Instead of focusing on global warming, Perino's solution to help those vulnerable to the impacts of climate change would be to "help provide affordable electricity to people that are living there, so that they could've had more information so that they could've gotten out of harm's way. With more affordable electricity that is steady, you have better education, you have better health care, you have better well-being and you have the possibility of trade, which will actually help everybody." Perino concluded, "What we should be doing is providing them with more fossil fuels." ......................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/11/15/foxs-perino-philippines-needed-more-fossil-fuel/196914
The Cheney Bunch
Mary Cheney, the openly gay daughter of former vice president Dick Cheney and younger sister of Wyoming U.S. Senate candidate Liz Cheney (R), said Sunday that her sister is on the "wrong side of history" by opposing same-sex marriage.
Earlier Sunday, Liz Cheney appeared on "Fox News Sunday" and was asked to clarify her position on gay marriage.
"I don't believe we ought to discriminate against people because of their sexual orientation. If people are in a same-sex relationship and they want their partner to be able to have health benefits or be designated as a beneficiary in your life insurance, there's no reason we shouldn't do that," Cheney said.
She continued, "I also don't support amending the Constitution on this issue.. I do believe it's an issue that's got to be left up to states. I do believe in the traditional definition of marriage." .......................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/17/mary-cheney-liz-cheney_n_4292857.html?ncid=txtlnkushpmg00000037
Richard Wolff: Global Capitalism: November 2013 Monthly Update
Published on Nov 12, 2013
In addition to our usual shorter updates on major economic events in the news over the last month, major attention will be devoted to the following:
The federal government's austerity policy, compromises with the Republicans over social security, medicare, Obamacare, etc.
The state and local governments' austerity policies (summary of a major new report on state and local cutbacks)
How and why changes in federal, state and local taxes could remove the need for austerity and achieve tax justice.
Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he taught economics
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