Our Allies No Longer Trust Us

Our Allies No Longer Trust Us
by dianeravitch
Our European allies no longer trust the U..

The Spy Revolt Against Trump Begins

“In a recent column, I explained how the still-forming Trump administration is already doing serious harm to America’s longstanding global intelligence partnerships. In particular, fears that the White House is too friendly to Moscow are causing close allies to curtail some of their espionage relationships with Washington—a development with grave implications for international security, particularly in the all-important realm of counterterrorism.

“Now those concerns are causing problems much closer to home—in fact, inside the Beltway itself. Our Intelligence Community is so worried by the unprecedented problems of the Trump administration—not only do senior officials possess troubling ties to the Kremlin, there are nagging questions about basic competence regarding Team Trump—that it is beginning to withhold intelligence from a White House which our spies do not trust.”

dianeravitch | February 12, 2017 at 6:09 pm | Categories: Trump | URL: http://wp.me/p2odLa-gv4

Diane Ravitch's blog

Our European allies no longer trust the U..

The Spy Revolt Against Trump Begins

“In a recent column, I explained how the still-forming Trump administration is already doing serious harm to America’s longstanding global intelligence partnerships. In particular, fears that the White House is too friendly to Moscow are causing close allies to curtail some of their espionage relationships with Washington—a development with grave implications for international security, particularly in the all-important realm of counterterrorism.

“Now those concerns are causing problems much closer to home—in fact, inside the Beltway itself. Our Intelligence Community is so worried by the unprecedented problems of the Trump administration—not only do senior officials possess troubling ties to the Kremlin, there are nagging questions about basic competence regarding Team Trump—that it is beginning to withhold intelligence from a White House which our spies do not trust.”

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Why Are School Shootings Different From Other Shootings? They Aren’t.

Why Are School Shootings Different From Other Shootings? They Aren’t.
by mikethegunguy
When we say goodbye to our kids in the morning as they trundle off to school, we all hope they will spend their day in a safe and secure space. But ever since the Sandy Hook massacre near the end of 2012, the issue of school shootings and gun violence in schools is never far from our minds. And while I don’t think that the arming teachers and staff is a smart thing, I can sympathize with parents of school-age kids who fear that their school might be next….
https://mikethegunguy.com/2017/02/10/why-are-school-shootings-different-from-other-shootings-they-arent/#respond

When we say goodbye to our kids in the morning as they trundle off to school, we all hope they will spend their day in a safe and secure space. But ever since the Sandy Hook massacre near the end of 2012, the issue of school shootings and gun violence in schools is never far from our minds. And while I don’t think that the arming teachers and staff is a smart thing, I can sympathize with parents of school-age kids who fear that their school might be next.

              Now we have a detailed report by a research team at Northwestern University who believe that school shootings are ‘significantly correlated’ with increased unemployment and conclude that these shootings reflect ‘increasing uncertainty in the school-to-work transition’ which became more problematic during the Great Recession beginning in 2008.

Not surprisingly, this effort is gaining its usual share of attention from both…

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McCleary Crime Scene Find the Money Word Search

McCleary Crime Scene Find the Money Word Search
by seattleducation2010
A year ago Teacher Retention Advocate Parents (TRAP) hosted a coloring contest to draw attention to Washington State’s criminally under-funded public schools. Today, TRAP is back – because the Legislature STILL can’t find the money. Let’s help them out. Please print out your own copy of the word search, find the money for the Legislature, and then […]

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seattleducation2010 | February 12, 2017 at 1:00 PM | Categories: A Better Way, McCleary Crime Scene, McCleary decision, School Funding | URL: http://wp.me/pNbRQ-6Oi

Seattle Education

A year ago Teacher Retention Advocate Parents (TRAP)  hosted a coloring contest to draw attention to Washington State’s criminally under-funded public schools.

Today, TRAP is back – because the Legislature STILL can’t find the money. Let’s help them out.

Please print out your own copy of the word search, find the money for the Legislature, and then share your work on Facebook: McCleary Crime Scene Find the Money Word Search. (printable link at the bottom of the page)

Once you’ve done that, please mail your word search to the legislator you think needs the most help finding the money.

Get your word search here:

mccleary-word-search-2

More information available at:

Twitter: @McClearyCrime

Facebook: McCleary Crime Scene Find the Money Word Search

hashtags: #McClearyCrime , #FundMcCleary , #ParamountDuty

email: teacher.retention.advocates@gmail.com

-Carolyn Leith & Shawna Murphy

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Friday Fun – What is your piece’s purpose?

Friday Fun – What is your piece’s purpose?
by Wendy E. N. Thomas
Friday Fun is a group post from the writers of the NHWN blog. Each week, we’ll pose and answer a different, get-to-know-us question. We hope you’ll join in by providing your answer in the comments.

QUESTION:

Success is having a flair for the thing that you are doing; knowing that is not enough,

you have got to have hard work and a certain sense of purpose.

Margaret Thatcher

When I teach my writing classes I always devote a few good discussions on identifying a piece’s purpose. Without knowing what the purpose or reason is behind what it is you write, I tell my students, you are …
https://nhwn.wordpress.com/2017/02/10/friday-fun-what-is-your-pieces-purpose/

Live to Write - Write to Live

Friday Fun is a group post from the writers of the NHWN blog. Each week, we’ll pose and answer a different, get-to-know-us question. We hope you’ll join in by providing your answer in the comments.

QUESTION:  

Success is having a flair for the thing that you are doing; knowing that is not enough,

you have got to have hard work and a certain sense of purpose.

Margaret Thatcher

When I teach my writing classes I always devote a few good discussions on identifying a piece’s purpose. Without knowing what the purpose or reason is behind what it is you write, I tell my students, you are simply stumbling blindly in the dark.

Having a consistent purpose is the lifeblood of all writing. When the purpose switches the piece loses its footing. Doubt me?  – take a look at many editorial letters that start off talking about one thing and…

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Take this job and shove it.

Fred Klonsky

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What Was Accomplished in the DeVos Confirmation Process?

What Was Accomplished in the DeVos Confirmation Process?
by janresseger
Public education supporters relentlessly made phone calls and wrote letters to Senators to complain about Betsy DeVos. Despite that the entire Democratic Senate Caucus held an all-night session enumerating problems with the Education Secretary nominee—her ignorance, her ideology of privatization, her entangled finances and potential conflicts of interest, DeVos has now been confirmed and sworn in. Her confirmation was always pretty much a sure thing, because today Republicans have more seats in the Senate and because Cabinet nominee confirmations cannot be filibustered.

But commentators have been noting significant accomplishments from the DeVos confirmation process. Here are three examples…

https://janresseger.wordpress.com/2017/02/10/what-was-accomplished-in-the-devos-confirmation-process/

janresseger

Public education supporters relentlessly made phone calls and wrote letters to Senators to complain about Betsy DeVos. Despite that the entire Democratic Senate Caucus held an all-night session enumerating problems with the Education Secretary nominee—her ignorance, her ideology of privatization, her entangled finances and potential conflicts of interest, DeVos has now been confirmed and sworn in. Her confirmation was always pretty much a sure thing, because today Republicans have more seats in the Senate and because Cabinet nominee confirmations cannot be filibustered.

But commentators have been noting significant accomplishments from the DeVos confirmation process. Here are three examples.

Dana Milbank, opinion writer for the Washington Post, explains that we should all be encouraged by the kind of incompetence Betsy DeVos demonstrated through her confirmation hearing: “Republicans, apparently recognizing the billionaire’s lack of familiarity with the rudiments of education policy, tried to shield DeVos from public view. They scheduled her…

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Episode 19 – Pres. Bannon is “Assaulting the very fundamentals of a democracy” wsg AFT President Randi Weingarten | Eclectablog

‘Episode 19 – Pres. Bannon is “Assaulting the
very fundamentals of a democracy” wsg AFT President Randi Weingarten’, at Eclectablog

You may view the latest post at
http://www.eclectablog.com/2017/02/episode-19-pres-bannon-is-assaulting-the-very-fundamentals-of-a-democracy-wsg-aft-president-randi-weingarten.html

Source: Episode 19 – Pres. Bannon is “Assaulting the very fundamentals of a democracy” wsg AFT President Randi Weingarten | Eclectablog

#RESIST by supporting a political artist’s statement against the fascism & bigotry of the Bannon/Trump administration | Eclectablog

Source: #RESIST by supporting a political artist’s statement against the fascism & bigotry of the Bannon/Trump administration | Eclectablog

‘#RESIST by supporting a political artist’s statement against the fascism & bigotry of the Bannon/Trump administration’, at Eclectablog

You may view the latest post at
http://www.eclectablog.com/2017/02/resist-by-supporting-a-political-artists-statement-against-the-fascism-bigotry-of-the-bannontrump-administration.html

 

ICE Raids and the Targeting of the Immigrant Community in West Michigan

Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy

Reports are now coming in about new ICE raids taking place in some parts of the US. The Trump administration’s Executive Order around immigration, the border and deportation will likely come to many communities, like West Michigan. 

So what will we do in response? What do we need to do to be prepared? Plans in are in the works right now, but one thing we can all do is learn from what other communities have been doing, looking at best practices, strategies and tactics that we can use to mobilize people quickly to prevent harm being done to immigrant community, particularly those that are undocumented.

There are several useful toolkits being used across the country. One Rapid Response toolkit being used in New York City provides lots of great resources and uses popular media and graphics to communicate what people can do, what your rights are and how to mobilize…

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How contact with the poor affects actions of the wealthy – Journalist’s Resource Journalist’s Resource

A new study suggests Americans are less likely to support a tax on the wealthy after seeing a poor person in an affluent setting.

Source: How contact with the poor affects actions of the wealthy – Journalist’s Resource Journalist’s Resource

A new study suggests Americans are less likely to support a tax on the wealthy after seeing a poor person in an affluent setting.

The issue: Since the 1970s, U.S. income distribution has grown more concentrated, with more of the nation’s wealth going to the top 1 percent of earners, according to research from two prominent scholars at the University of California, Berkeley. Over the years, policymakers at the federal and state levels have introduced a range of proposals aimed at helping redistribute income. Many of those proposals focus on changes in taxation – primarily, raising taxes on the rich.

An academic study worth reading: “Exposure to Inequality Affects Support for Redistribution,” published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, January 2017.

Study summary: Melissa L. Sands of the Harvard University Department of Government looks at how coming into contact with poverty while in an affluent setting affects an individual’s political behavior. As a part of Sands’ experiment, individuals who were walking in an affluent area were asked to sign a petition after passing by a professional actor who was dressed as either an impoverished person or a rich person. To gauge whether the race of the actor affects behavior, Sands used one white and one black male actor.

On each day of the experiment, an actor portrayed poverty or wealth at randomly scheduled times. The petitioner rotated between two petitions – one that asked individuals to support a higher tax on incomes of $1 million or more and one that, for comparison purposes, focused on a policy to reduce the use of plastic bags. A total of 1,335 pedestrians were asked to sign the millionaire’s tax petition, the majority of whom lived in high-income ZIP codes, according to the addresses they reported on the petition.

Key takeaways:

• Pedestrians were 4.4 percentage points less likely to support the tax policy in the presence of a poor person, regardless of the person’s race.
• Individuals who were asked to support a policy on plastic bags did not appear to be affected much by the presence of a poor person.
• White men were slightly more likely to support the tax while in proximity to a poor black person compared with a poor white person.
• Sands asserts that the results of the study “suggest that the presence of poverty, particularly in a place of affluence, decreases support for policies aimed at alleviating those conditions, a worrisome conclusion given that the general population increasingly resides in urban environments where contact with low-income individuals is likely. Homelessness, the most visible manifestation of rising urban poverty, may perversely discourage citizens from favoring social safety nets.”
• READ MORE HERE – https://journalistsresource.org/studies/economics/inequality/tax-wealthy-support-poverty-influence-research