Tuesday, February 7, 2017

THE CRONY BANKSTER DEMOCRAT PARTY CONTINUES WAR ON LEGALS, THE AMERICAN POOR AND UNEMPLOYED AND STRUGGLING AMERICAN (LEGAL) WORKERS

THE DEMOCRAT PARTY'S RELIGION IS ONLY CRONY 

DONOR BANKSTER BAILOUTS, OPEN BORDERS, 

AMNESTY TO LEGALIZE MEXICO'S LOOTING, NO E-

VERIFY AND NO DAMNED LEGAL NEED APPLY!!!


"No one was impolite enough to point out the obvious fact 

that while Roosevelt and Johnson, in the interests of 

defending capitalism, implemented policies expanding the 

social safety net, the Obama administration presided over 

cuts to those very programs and the greatest increase in 

social inequality in history."


“Under Obama, not a single leading banker was prosecuted for the criminal activities that led to the biggest financial disaster and deepest slump since the 1930s, destroying the jobs, life savings and living standards of tens of millions of workers in the US and around the world.”


Democratic Party regional forum in Detroit: An exercise in evasion and duplicity

Democratic Party regional forum in Detroit: An exercise in evasion and duplicity
By Shannon Jones
7 February 2017
Contenders for chairperson of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and other national party offices attended a public forum at Wayne State University on Saturday as part of a series of four regional gatherings called by the DNC.
Held in the wake of mass protests that erupted following the inauguration of Donald Trump, whose administration has launched an unprecedented attack on democratic rights, the event drew relatively little interest or enthusiasm outside of party operatives and core supporters of the Democratic Party establishment. Attendance at the event, which drew only a few hundred people, was dominated by union officials and Democratic Party insiders.
On display was the demoralization and perplexity of this big business party in the face of growing social opposition to the Trump administration that it neither anticipated nor welcomed.
In his official greetings, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, who presides over the poorest big city in the United States, with an official unemployment rate near 10 percent, made no mention of the impending layoff of 1,300 workers at the General Motors Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly Plant in the city.
The two leading candidates for the post of DNC chairman addressed the meeting. Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, is the favorite of the nominal “left” wing of the Democratic Party, headed up by former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. Ellison has also received the endorsement of the AFL-CIO on the basis of his espousal of economic nationalism. The National Nurses United (NNU), which sold out the recent strike against Allina Health in Minnesota, sent a large contingent to lobby on behalf of Ellison at the Detroit forum.
Ellison has joined in the right-wing anti-Russian hysteria promoted by the Democratic leadership. He boycotted Trump’s inauguration in solidarity with Georgia Representative John Lewis on the grounds that Trump’s election was not “legitimate” because of alleged Russian hacking of DNC emails.
The other leading candidate for DNC chairperson, Tom Perez, who was labor secretary under Obama, also has considerable support within the party and trade union apparatus, including the endorsement of the United Food and Commercial Workers union. He reportedly has strong support as well within the building trades unions.
The predominant theme voiced by all speakers was “unity.” There was a general avoidance of any substantive discussion of policy issues. No one criticized the record of the

Obama administration or the right-wing 

character of the Clinton campaign, outside of 

occasional talk of the need to “reconnect” 

with blue collar workers.
This included Ellison, whose candidacy is being touted by various pseudo-left groups as a sign that the Democratic Party is moving to the left. Ellison made only a fleeting reference to the working class and issues of “pensions” and “student debt” in his remarks. He avoided any comments on the presidential primary or general election campaigns.
In regard to the anti-Trump protests, the most Ellison could muster was a suggestion that Democratic Party supporters bring coffee to the demonstrators.
The “debate” among the DNC candidates focused on petty tactical prescriptions such as more effective voter registration and more support for local party organizations. There was no attempt to draw any broader conclusions from the Democratic Party election debacle or the implications of the policies of the Trump administration.
Outside of baiting Trump for his alleged Russian ties, there was not a single reference to foreign policy questions. This is because both the Democrats and Republicans support a program of aggressive militarism overseas. The two terms of President Obama were marked by an escalation of US wars and the expansion of drone assassinations, including the murder of US citizens.
The most absurd moment came when the Reverend Wendell Anthony, chair of the Detroit chapter of the NAACP, spoke. He presented the Obama administration as the heir of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society.
No one was impolite enough to point out the obvious fact that while Roosevelt and Johnson, in the interests of defending capitalism, implemented policies expanding the social safety net, the Obama administration presided over cuts to those very programs and the greatest increase in social inequality in history.

SENATOR DIANNE FEINSTEIN, HUBBY 

LOOTER RICHARD BLUM AND LAP 

BITCH, BARBARA “BRIBES” BOXER…. 

Along with Nancy Pelosi, four of the most 

corrupt and self-serving plunderers of 

America… These Cretans redefine the term 

CRONY CAPITALIST PIGS!


FOR YEARS THEY HAVE SUCKED THE BLOOD OUT OF A DYING NATION!

 “Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par with third-world hell-holes.  This is the way a great country is raided by its elite.” ---- Karen McQuillan  THEAMERICAN THINKER.com


SCORCHED EARTH BANKSTER PLUNDER 

AHEAD!


TRUMP VOWS OB AMA’S CRONY 

CAPITALISM THE PLUNDER OF

OBAMA’S BANKSTERS IS NOT OVER

……….. It’s just begun!!!



“This amnesty for corporate bribery and criminality reveals 

the essence of the Trump administration’s scorched earth 

campaign against business regulations.”


“Under Obama, not a single leading banker was 

prosecuted for the criminal activities that led to 

the biggest financial disaster and deepest slump 

since the 1930s, destroying the jobs, life savings 

and living standards of tens of millions of 

workers in the US and around the world.”


TRUMP BACK-PEDDLES ON LEGALS AND KEEPS 

OBAMA’S ILLEGAL AMNESTY OPERATING…. It’s all about 

keeping wages DEPRESSED!


THE DEMOCRAT PARTY'S PATRON SAINT OF CRONY 

CAPITALISM

GEORGE SOROS:

GLOBAL LOOTER,  GLOBAL PLUNDERER,  GLOBAL 

TERRORIST and one man fascist movement!


FOR THE SUPER RICH:


“The terrorist suspect’s most recent efforts through “open society” 

foundations he funds are bringing globalist gunpowder plots to 

places like Poland and Armenia, in the long march to make the 

world safe for plutocracy.”

OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS:

Build the La Raza Democrat Party base with open borders, no ID to vote Democrat, no E-VERIFY and NO DAMNED LEGAL NEED TO APPLY.

"Republicans should call for lower immigration to stop the 

Democrat voter recruitment.  But more importantly, all 

Americans should call for lower immigration in order to offer a

better opportunity of finding jobs for those millions of their 

fellow Americans of all political persuasions who would like to 

work."

THE DEMOCRAT PARTY PLATFORM:

NO DAMNED LEGAL NEED APPLY!

VIVA LA RAZA FASCISM? THEN VOTE DEM!

"Republicans should call for lower immigration to stop the Democrat voter recruitment.  But more importantly, all Americans should call for lower immigration in order to offer a better opportunity of finding jobs for those millions of their fellow Americans of all political persuasions who would like to work."


TIME TO DEAL WITH REALITY?

AMERICA UNRAVELS:

The Road to Revolution or Civil War II


“Behind this year’s surge is a toxic mix of cuts to social services, unemployment, hopelessness…”


UNDER THE LA RAZA SUPREMACIST OBAMA, THE MEX DRUG CARTELS NOW OPERATE BORDER TO UNDEFENDED BORDER

Mexican cartel smugglers have taken full advantage of the system in order to maximize their profits from human smuggling as well as the smuggling of illegal aliens. In 2014, Mexico’s Gulf Cartel was able to make approximately $38 million in a matter of months off human smuggling alone.

“Mexican drug cartels are the “other” terrorist threat to America. Militant 

Islamists have the goal of destroying the United States. Mexican drug cartels

are now accomplishing that mission – from within, every day, in virtually

every community across this country.” JUDICIAL WATCH

Confirmation vote as farce: Senate approves billionaire enemy of public schools as secretary of education
By Niles Niemuth

8 February 2017
Billionaire Betsy DeVos was confirmed as secretary of education by vote of 51 to 50 in the Senate Tuesday with Vice
President Mike Pence casting the tie-breaking vote, marking the first time in US history that such a vote was necessary to confirm a cabinet secretary.
Tuesday’s vote was the culmination of four days
of stage-managed and increasingly farcical play-acting, in which Senate Democrats pretended to be putting up a ferocious battle against DeVos, while Senate Republicans pretended to be manning the barricades on her behalf.
In reality, the outcome was determined well in advance. The two Republicans who “broke” with their party to oppose DeVos undoubtedly cleared their actions in advance with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who can afford exactly two defections given the 52-48 Republican
majority, and gave them permission.
The Democrats seized on the prospective 50-50 tie to conduct a 24-hour, round-the-clock “debate” highlighted by liberal
Senator Elizabeth Warren’s plea for “just one more  Republican” to defeat the nomination. Throughout this exercise in empty demagogy, in which the Democrats
claimed to be the defenders of public education and oppose its destruction, every Democrat who spoke was aware that DeVos would be confirmed by virtue of Vice President Pence’s tie-breaking vote.
Moreover, the previous 

Democratic administration, with Barack 

Obama in the White House and his Chicago 

crony Arne Duncan as head of the 

Department of Education, was an 

unmitigated disaster for public education. 

More than 300,000 teachers and other school

workers lost their jobs under the Obama 

administration, which through programs like 

Race to the Top encouraged the growth of 

charter schools and other efforts to 

privatize and weaken public school systems.
For all the Democratic chest-thumping about opposing Donald Trump, DeVos is the first of Trump’s cabinet nominees to be confirmed without any Democratic support. Some Democrats have voted for every one of previous six cabinet nominees to be confirmed, and in many cases the
votes have been overwhelming. Fourteen of the 48 Democrats had voted for the first five Trump nominees, only defecting in the confirmation of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and now DeVos.
Trump’s pick to head the Department of Defense, recently retired General James “Mad Dog” Mattis, was overwhelming approved last
month by a vote 98 to 1, receiving the support of nearly every Democrat in the Senate, including so-called “progressives” Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
An ideological opponent of public education, DeVos has donated millions of dollars to politicians and lobbying groups that support the funneling of tax dollars to private and religious schools through voucher programs and removing oversight of education spending through the establishment
of charter schools.
DeVos is associated with some of the furthest right-wing conservative figures and groups in the US.
Her father-in-law Richard DeVos, founder of the Amway pyramid scheme, played leadership roles in a variety of right-wing groups including Focus on the Family, the American Enterprise Institute and the FreedomWorks Foundation. Her brother Erik Prince is the founder of the notorious military contractor and mercenary firm once known as Blackwater.
In 2000, DeVos and her husband, Richard DeVos,
former CEO and heir of the Amway corporation fortune, spent $5.6 million on a ballot initiative that would have amended the Michigan state constitution to create a voucher program. The initiative was overwhelmingly rejected by voters.
DeVos has also spent her money founding a variety of organizations that buy politicians’ support for the privatization of public education including All Children Matter, the Alliance for School Choice and the American Federation for Children. From 1995 to 2005, DeVos funded and sat on the Board of Directors of the Action Institute, a right-wing outfit that has advocated for the elimination of compulsory education and child labor laws.
After decades of pushing for the complete destruction of public education, DeVos will now direct the agency responsible for providing federal funding to public schools, collecting pertinent data, and enforcing privacy and civil rights laws regarding education.
During Senate committee confirmation hearings, DeVos exhibited her complete ignorance regarding federal education laws and made clear her fundamental conflicts of interest.
With no experience in public education, DeVos earned her nomination from President Donald Trump to head of the Department of Education as a result of her ideological hostility to public education; she joins a host of Trump appointees who have expressed opposition to the missions
of their respective departments.
Additionally, DeVos was able to attain her position through the massive amounts of money she and her family have funneled into the coffers of the Republican Party and the campaigns of a host of Republicans candidates. She admitted during Senate committee hearings that she and her family had donated $200 million to Republican candidates over the last few decades.
In the last election cycle, DeVos and her family donated $2.25 million to the Senate Leadership Fund and $900,000 to the
National Republican Senatorial Committee. She personally donated a total of $1 million to 21 of the Republican senators who voted for her confirmation.
As a supplement to the backwardness represented
by DeVos, it was announced at the end of last month that Trump had appointed religious obscurantist Jerry Falwell, Jr., son of the televangelist huckster and founder of Moral Majority, to lead a special panel tasked with eliminating
and curbing federal regulations on education.
Falwell is the president of Liberty University, a private Christian university based in Lynchburg, Virginia, which teaches creationism and maintains a code of conduct that forbids pre-marital sex and homosexual relationships among its student population. Students can be fined for attending a dance, visiting alone with a member of the opposite sex off
campus, or engaging in “inappropriate personal contact.”
The Christian fundamentalist was Trump’s first pick to lead the Department of Education but he turned down the position. He will now essentially join the Trump administration without facing a Senate confirmation vote.
Speaking to the Chronicle of Higher Education, Falwell made clear that he would use his task force to play a leading role in shaping federal education policy. “The task force will
be a big help to [DeVos]. It will do some of the work for her,” he said.


THE  GIG JOB – In America, No Legal Need Apply


"Possibly most affected by this shift in the economy is the 

Millennial generation, those  aged 18-30. The report notes that 

more than half of those under age 25 participate in independent 

work, not just in the United States but throughout the European 

Union as well."


AMERICA’S YOUTH STARVE

…… ILLEGALS SUCK IN BILLIONS IN WELFARE… they also get our jobs!



The new reports show that in addition to “traditional” coping strategies of skipping meals and eating cheap food, these teens and pre-teens are increasingly forced into shoplifting, stealing, selling drugs, joining a gang, or selling their bodies for money in a struggle to eat properly.

AMERICA STUDENTS STARVE:

Report on the impact of OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS


GM makes $9.4 billion in global profits as it slashes thousands of jobs

GM makes $9.4 billion in global profits as it slashes thousands of jobs

By Jerry White 
8 February 2017

General Motors made $9.43 billion in global profits last year. The world’s third largest automaker generated most of its net income from its North American operations, which brought in $12 billion in pre-tax profits in 2016, up from $11 billion in 2015. The company lost money in economically stagnant South America and Europe, while profits remained flat in China.
Adjusted North American profit margins for the fourth quarter of 2016 rose to 12.1 percent from 10.5 percent a year ago, and full-year margins were 10.1 percent, down slightly from 10.3 percent in 2015. GM, like the other auto companies, has cashed in from brisk demand for highly profitable pickup trucks and sports utility vehicles in the US where gas prices and auto loan interest rates have remained relatively low. At the same time, GM has cut back on production of slower-selling passenger cars resulting in the loss of thousands of jobs.
Automakers have offered discounts and other financial incentives, long frowned upon by Wall Street, to maintain sales, which hit a record 17.6 million in 2016, up from 17.5 million in 2015. GM has made record profits from the pent-up demand during the Great Recession, which saw vehicle sales plunged to 10.4 million in 2009. The Obama administration’s bankruptcy restructuring of GM and Chrysler halved the wages of new hires and allowed the corporations to dump their retiree health care obligations and slash jobs so investors could profit even as auto sales slowed.
Despite the profit report, GM stocks fell 4.5 percent after the announcement, with investors anticipating that the global slowdown and growing inventories of unsold cars signaled an end to GM’s back-to-back years of record profits.
The number of unsold vehicles at GM’s dealers in the US rose by one-third to 845,000 vehicles by the end of 2016. GM CEO Mary Barra and other top executives assured investors that they would carry out an aggressive campaign to reduce capacity at plants producing small and mid-sized cars and to implement “continued cost-efficiencies.” In addition, GM executives said they were considering further “restructuring” in Europe and other regions.
GM is currently eliminating 3,300 jobs in Michigan and Ohio. January 20 was the last day for 2,000 workers on the third shifts at the Lansing Grand River assembly plant in Michigan’s state capital and the Lordstown Assembly Plant near Youngstown, Ohio. Another 1,300 workers face the loss of their jobs at the GM Detroit-Hamtramck plant, the company’s only plant in Detroit, when GM starts phasing out the second shift on March 6. GM is also cutting 625 jobs at its CAMI assembly plant near London, Ontario, west of Toronto.
The job-cutting has been facilitated by the labor agreement signed by the United Auto Workers in 2015 in the face of widespread opposition from rank-and-file workers, a fact that has been widely acknowledged by industry analysts and the business media.
“CEO Mary Barra has accelerated cost cuts by using levers within GM’s labor contracts to lay off workers making struggling models such as the Camaro sports car or Cruze compact,” Bloomberg wrote. “To keep profits humming, Barra needs to address inventory that would take about 108 days to work through at January’s selling rate—more than a month’s worth of extra supply compared with this time last year.
“Boosting profits in spite of the supply challenges may be doable because GM can cut temporary workers at its US plants without paying costly buyouts. The carmaker has already eliminated entire shifts at factories making the Cruze and Camaro, as well as the LaCrosse and Cadillac CT6 sedans.”
In a conference call with investors Tuesday morning Barra said, “By nearly every measure, 2016 was a great year. This underscores the progress we are making in strengthening our brands and putting our customers first in everything we do.”
In fact, top executives like Barra—who was paid $28 million in total compensation in 2015—were single-mindedly focused on driving up share values for the company’s richest investors. Last month GM’s board of directors voted to add $5 billion to the company’s existing stock repurchase program. This brings the total value of the stock buyback program to $14 billion since 2015 when former Obama auto task force member Harry Wilson, who represented a group of hedge funds, pressed for a larger share of GM’s cash hoard of $25 billion.
At the time Cindy Estrada, UAW vice president in charge of relations with GM, praised the deal, saying the “strategic process outlined today leaves room for our members to prosper, strong product investment for customers, and a healthy, well-positioned company.” The UAW praised the deal because the union-controlled retiree health care trust—a slush fund for the union bureaucracy—controls the largest block of GM shares, some 140 million, or a 9.34 percent ownership stake in the company. Former UAW Vice President Joseph Ashton has been on the company’s board of directors since 2014.
On Tuesday, UAW officials boasted about the profit-sharing check being sent out to the company’s 52,000 hourly employees. “Today’s performance bonus announcement of a maximum of $12,000 each rewards our members’ dedication and commitment to building some of the most popular and high-quality vehicles in the world,” Estrada said. “They deserve every penny of that collectively bargained bonus check.”
Several things must be said about the profit-sharing checks, which, in any case, will be taxed and greatly reduced before workers see them. First, the $12,000 is a pittance compared to what workers have given up due to the UAW’s abandonment of annual wage improvements, cost of living adjustments, paid holidays, the eight-hour day, current and future health and pension benefits and countless other hard-won gains.
The UAW-imposed concessions have enabled GM to make more than $50 billion in profits since the 2009 bankruptcy. Rather than improving the living standards of workers, the company is squandering $14 billion on stock buybacks and dividend payouts for its wealthy shareholders and executives. If this amount was divided among the 52,000 hourly workers who produced the bulk of these profits, every worker, including the ones losing their jobs, would get a bonus of $269,230—not a miserly $12,000. To add insult to injury, many of the temporary workers being laid off in Michigan and Ohio do not have enough time to qualify for the full bonuses.
Since it was introduced in the early 1980s, “profit-sharing” has always been used as a device aimed at concealing the fundamental conflict between 

"Over two decades, the family has spent millions of dollars funding pro-privatization organizations and buying legislators."

It was under President Obama that the most sweeping attacks on public education occurred. Despite the unions’ claims to the contrary, Obama and Duncan doubled down on NCLB. More than 300,000 teachers and other school jobs were permanently eliminated during Obama’s eight years.

How the Democrats paved the way for Betsy DeVos
By Jerry White
10 February 2017
The Senate’s confirmation Tuesday of Betsy DeVos has placed a sworn enemy of public education and a proponent of for-profit charter schools and religious schooling at the helm of the US Department of Education. Like Trump’s other 
cabinet appointees, DeVos is committed to 
dismantling the very department she heads 
and to lifting any restrictions on private 
businesses seeking to cash in on America’s 
$1.3 trillion “education market.”
With the confirmation of the Michigan billionaire, the American oligarchy has installed one of its own. The beneficiary of the merger of two family fortunes in Michigan—the former Prince auto parts empire and the Amway Corporation pyramid scheme—DeVos and her husband have an estimated net worth of $5 billion. Over two decades, the family has spent millions of dollars funding pro-privatization organizations and buying legislators.
Michigan has the country’s highest percentage of charter schools run by for-profit management companies and among the weakest regulations on the publicly funded and privately run schools. Under the state’s school “reform” law, nearly half of Detroit’s public schools are currently targeted for closure and potential transformation into private charters.
Trump has pledged to promote anti-teacher “merit” pay and spend $20 billion on school “choice.” The voucher policy in the state of Indiana is being suggested as a national model. In 2013, then Indiana Governor and now Vice President Mike Pence expanded the program, initiated by his Republican predecessor as a “social justice” initiative for poor children, to provide vouchers for up to half of their tuition to more affluent middle-class families with children already in private schools. Almost all the private schools eligible for vouchers are religious.
Millions of school teachers, parents and students are rightfully alarmed and realize that the coming months and years will require the most serious fight to defend public education. The prerequisite for developing a strategy for such a battle is a political understanding of what produced Trump and DeVos.

As the World Socialist Web Site has explained, the coming to power of a government of billionaires, ex-generals and ultra-reactionaries marks a qualitative change. However, Trump is not a sudden departure from the otherwise healthy development of US political and social life. On the contrary, he is the outcome of the long decay of American capitalism and the rise to the pinnacle of economic and political power of a corporate and financial aristocracy, which has sought to defend its global domination through endless wars overseas and a war against the social rights of the working class.
Perhaps nowhere in the realm of domestic policy is the continuity of Trump with previous administrations, Democrat or Republican, seen than in the decades-long assault on public education.
Before the 1980s, the proponents of “free market” education policies were only to be found on the most right-wing fringes of the Republican Party. In the mid-1950s, Chicago economist Milton Friedman first put forward his proposal for school vouchers to spend public money on private and religious schools, thereby creating “competition” for the public-school system.
Efforts by Ronald Reagan to introduce vouchers in the early 1980s failed due to popular support for the democratic and egalitarian principles embodied in public education.
Friedman’s voucher plan was, however, instituted by the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1981.
It took the Democrats, under President Bill Clinton in the mid-1990s, to rebrand this right-wing attack on public education as “school choice” for poor families. The Democratic president sharply increased federal spending for so-called public charter schools, whose numbers increased between 1992 and 2000 from 1 to more than 1,700.
“We should reward the best schools, and we should shut down or redesign those that fail,” Clinton declared in 1996, the same year his wife, Hillary Clinton wrote in her memoir, “I favor promoting choice among public schools.” Also in 1996, Milton Friedman and his wife launched the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, an organization Betsy DeVos would subsequently fund and promote.
Coming in the aftermath of the 1990-91 dissolution of the USSR and the capitalist triumphalism that followed, the Clintons spearheaded the Democratic Party’s repudiation of the social reforms associated with the New Deal and Great Society periods. Their free-market education policies coincided with the destruction of welfare as a federal entitlement program, a law-and-order crackdown on the poor, and Wall Street deregulation, which led to an explosion of financial speculation, the bursting of the dot.com bubble in 2000 and the Crash of 2008.
In 2002, George W. Bush would sign into law the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), coauthored by Democratic liberal icon Edward Kennedy. Under the scheme, schools that failed to improve under test-based Annual Yearly Progress assessments could be closed, turned into charter schools or “reorganized” by state officials. Various punitive “accountability” schemes scapegoated teachers for educational problems caused by poverty and decades of budget cutting.
In 2000, the DeVos family spent $13 million 
to push a referendum to amend Michigan’s 
constitutional ban on vouchers. However, like 
a similar measure in California that year, 
Michigan voters defeated the plan by a more 
than 2-to-1 margin.
The Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), a political action committee run by hedge fund managers including Teach For America cofounder Whitney Tilson, was formed between 2005-07 to promote their interests in the charter and edubusiness sector. Democrats representing Anchorage Capital Partners ($8 billion under management), Greenlight Capital ($6.8 billion), and other for-profit companies signed up to promote the legislative assault on public education. Congressman Barack Obama was a speaker at the inaugural meeting, and Arne Duncan was later recommended by DFER for Education Secretary.
It was under President Obama that the 
most sweeping attacks on public 
education occurred. Despite the 
unions’ claims to the contrary, Obama 
and Duncan doubled down on NCLB. 
More than 300,000 teachers and other 
school jobs were permanently 
eliminated during Obama’s eight years.

Under the Race To The Top (RTTT) program, cash-starved school districts were encouraged to compete for “performance-based” grants based on their level of “innovation.” The markers of such innovation were merit pay, the adoption of Common Core (highly lucrative for testing companies and other edubusinesses) and the promotion of charter schools.
Obama hailed the 2010 firing of teachers and other school employees at Central Falls High School in Rhode Island after they rejected a “turnaround” plan authored by Duncan that would have torn up their contracts and forced them to work longer hours without additional pay.
During the eight years of the Obama’s assault on public education, the teachers’ unions—the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA)—all but ended teacher strikes, which had long been a regular feature of American life. When a strike was called, as in Chicago in 2012, the unions quickly shut it down to prevent a confrontation with the Obama administration, leading to mass school closings in Chicago, Philadelphia and other cities.
Far from opposing corporate-driven school reform, the unions insisted that it could be implemented more efficiently if state and local authorities used the services of the AFT and the NEA to suppress resistance. In Detroit, the AFT, working with local Democrats, shut down a series of sickouts, launched in defiance of the union, and facilitated the restructuring of the public school district under a Republican plan largely shaped by DeVos.
During DeVos’s confirmation hearings, Democrats staged a publicity stunt on the floor of the Senate before Vice President Pence cast his tie-breaking vote for DeVos. Afterwards, AFT President Randi Weingarten hailed the “movement for children” that would supposedly “serve as a check and balance” on the new education secretary. Weingarten held open the AFT’s “invitation” to DeVos to “work with educators,” but lamented that “it was more likely we’ll now hear the same trashing of public schools that the disrupters, the privatizers and the austerity hawks have used for the last two decades.”
There is no doubt that major battles are on the horizon. As this brief summation makes clear, however, the privatizers and austerity hawks have long included the Democratic Party, with which the unions are aligned. The struggle to defend and vastly improve public education therefore requires the building of a mass political and socialist movement independent of both big-business parties. Such a movement must be based on the working class, whose social interests are inseparably bound up with the fight to end social equality and the economic and political dictatorship of the oligarchy.

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[03 June 2016]


[06 June 2016]

AMERICA’S YOUTH STARVE

FOR EIGHT YEARS BARACK OBAMA AND HIS HAREM OF CORRUPT

DEM POLS HAVE  SABOTAGED OUR BORDERS TO EASE TENS OF

MILLIONS OF ILLEGALS INTO OUR JOBS, WELFARE OFFICES AND

VOTING BOOTHS. 

What is left for Legals is only the tax bills for La Raza's looting!
The new reports show that in addition to “traditional” coping strategies of skipping meals and eating cheap food, these teens and pre-teens are increasingly forced into shoplifting, stealing, selling drugs, joining a gang, or selling their bodies for money in a struggle to eat properly.
DEFUNDING THE BABY KILLERS
Hill Republicans plan to kill Obama's order on taxpayer funding of Planned ParenthoodHouse Republicans will vote next week to liberate states from an Obama rule requiring them to subsidize Planned Parenthood. In one of his last actions, Obama effectively forced states to fund Planned Parenthood. Many states have policies barring state funds for the abortion giant, and Obama's 11th-hour executive order prohibited such policies. Next week, the House plans to use the Congressional Review Act to repeal that Obama regulation — a first salvo in their fight to roll back Obama's legacy on abortion. According to congressional aides, the vote is scheduled for late next week and will specifically axe Obama's Title X rule. During his final weeks in office, Obama finalized the regulation, explicitly barring states from pulling federal grant money from clinics that provide abortion. Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., told The Washington Examiner that the effort is about protecting life and stopping the federal government from forcing states to support abortion.