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[Cin]

America's Dumbest Idea: Creating a Multiple-Choice Test Generation
Standardized testing means more rote memorization and less time for creativity. Students aren't prepared for college and life.

A few years ago, I met with my former high school social studies teacher to catch up over drinks. "Miss F" was one of my favorite teachers and we hadn't seen each other in about 12 years. As we reminisced about our field trips, my other classmates, and my hilariously unfortunate fashion choices, she revealed to me that she and many of my former high school teachers refer to that time as "the golden era". I was shocked. How could it be that the school district had become worse since I graduated?

My high school, which is located in a working class Latino suburb bordering Chicago, was overpopulated, underfunded, and in my opinion, incredibly stifling. Needless to say, I resented going there. I felt we were disenfranchised and were not given the same opportunities that affluent schools provided their students.

I should have realized how lucky I really was when I was in college, however. Unlike many of my classmates, I cranked out papers with little difficulty because I knew how to synthesize information and formulate an argument. Writing a thesis statement was a freaking breeze. But at the time I had no idea that these skills were a luxury.

It wasn't until I reunited with my teacher that I realized I actually received a decent education compared to many students today. I had several talented and passionate teachers who had not been entirely bogged down by a bunch of inane educational requirements. No Child Left Behind hadn't completely ruined our already failing education system. My teachers taught me how to analyze and question texts and write thesis statements. I was taught the symbolism of the Mississippi River in Huckleberry Finn. I was taken on after school field trips to movies, poetry readings, and plays. Some of them even encouraged me to question authority. If it weren't for some of these teachers, I never would have become a writer.

But that has all changed now. According to my teacher, budget cuts have made field trips nearly impossible. Not only that, teachers are now so bogged down by administrative nonsense and standardized testing requirements, that it's very difficult to teach children anything but the rote memorization of information. I hear complaints like these all the time from my friends and family members who are teachers. While they are passionate about what they do, they are not given the agency or resources to flourish and engage their students in higher levels of discourse.

One of my family members is a teacher at our former high school and he is frequently exasperated by the efforts devoted to standardized testing. He says:

With so much riding on these exams, schools try to get kids enthused by even having test pep-rallies, assemblies, and programs to promote test-taking strategies and to underscore the tests' importance. This is how the love of learning is being cultivated? This is how we encourage intellectual curiosity?

No Child Left Behind, which was passed in 2001, mandated that states use test scores to determine whether schools were succeeding or failing. Unfortunately, this emphasis on testing had dire consequences. Even initial supporters, such as Diane Ravitch, an education historian and former assistant secretary of education in George Bush senior's administration, realized how detrimental these measures were. She wrote in a 2010 Wall Street Journal op-ed:

Accountability turned into a nightmare for American schools, producing graduates who were drilled regularly on the basic skills but were often ignorant about almost everything else … This was not my vision of good education.

And Ravitch doesn't believe that Common Core is the solution to this crisis in education either. Now all states must adopt Common Core or similar standards approved by state higher education officials if they want to receive federal waivers from No Child Left Behind. Ravitch feels that these new standards are being imposed on children with little evidence of how they will affect students, teachers, or schools.

"I only see it getting worse", says one of my friends, a fourth grade teacher in Chicago. "Common Core standards have been added to our Illinois testing now, which are much, much more challenging standards. This means learning a whole new test for the teachers and students." Not only are these requirements causing a lot of stress, she says that the materials for the tests are also very expensive. A report from Truthout has outlined Common Core's various corporate connections. Clearly the objective is profit, not a rigorous and nuanced education that will benefit students in the long run.

Why does our education system insist on these kinds of methods when they're clearly not working? Why not emulate Finland, a country with no standardized tests and whose teachers assign less homework and encourage creativity? Finnish students have been turning in some of the highest test scores in the world in the last few years.

Whether it be No Child Left Behind or Common Core, the problem lies in manufactured learning. In teaching English at the university level, I have noticed that students are often ill prepared for the demands of higher education. Students who are used to multiple choice tests lack the skills and the confidence to formulate their own complex opinions and interpretations. It is irresponsible to have these students graduate without the proper skills to succeed.

Rigid curriculums that focus on right and wrong answers teach children to see the world in binaries. These methods don't encourage creativity or innovation. I fear that our deeply flawed education system will produce generations of people who lack critical thinking skills. How can students be expected to become highly skilled or passionate about anything when they're asked to simply regurgitate information? What kind of choices will they make in their adult lives when they have never been taught how to look at the nuances and complexities of situations? Who will have the tools to question authority? Who will question the status quo? How will we compete with other countries when our younger generations have not been encouraged to develop their inquisitiveness and engage with the world?

I fear that our system is failing children by encouraging them to be mindless consumers. High tests scores do not make someone well-educated or well-rounded and memorizing facts does not equal intelligence. Public education should not be a commodity, but a foundation for children to at least have the possibility of succeeding in the world.

http://www.alternet.org/education/am...age=1#bookmark


For anyone interested in exploring this further:
Flow Chart Exposes Common Core's Myriad Corporate Connections
Flow Chart Exposes Common Core's Myriad Corporate Connections

[Cin]

No, Obama Didn't Lie to You About Your Health Care Plans
The claim that President Obama lied in saying that people could keep their insurance looks like another Fox News special.

http://www.alternet.org/no-obama-did...lth-care-plans

Yet this cartoon is amusing:

[Happy_Go_Lucky]

standardized testing of public school children was carefully crafted by the "smaller government" crowd who wants to ultimately privatize EVERYTHING.

Their dream is public school failure in order to say "I told you so". The teachers are the bad guys now, anyone working in the public sector just feeds off the government teet. School teachers have a barely a squeak of a chance to be able to do their jobs. As was stated eloquently above, creative and critical thinking skills are being overshadowed by studying for tests.

These are challenging times for us who care deeply for progress. The religious right has snuck upon us by winning local elections decades ago and has now maneuvered themselves in positions of governmental decision-making and worse. Case in point Ted Cruz.

I urge everyone who is eligible to vote, please do so. Pay attention to your local elections and spend some time understanding their positions. They don't start out being born Senators and Governors, most started small and benign.

[Cin]

Originally Posted by Happy_Go_Lucky

I urge everyone who is eligible to vote, please do so. Pay attention to your local elections and spend some time understanding their positions. They don't start out being born Senators and Governors, most started small and benign.

Voting is a great idea, of course it was a much greater idea before corporations bought the Supreme Court, the House, the Senate and the President. It hasn’t been the same since corporations achieved personhood and Citizens United put a price tag on freedom of speech. So money gets the last word and the rich can just buy everything.

I used to believe local politics were where you could possibly affect some change. I suppose that is still true but whether politicians start out small and benign or not there is no way in hell they will ever move up the political ladder without selling their souls to the corporate world. It was always a little bit like that, but you can thank the Supreme Court for making sure the rich have the means to control the government.

They don’t hear us anymore. It’s even more difficult to make any difference than it was when Bush stole the election from Gore and the Supreme Court backed him up. Now it isn’t necessary to steal elections. Corporations have everyone in their pocket. And because they need government for a safety net, they are somewhat at odds with tea party republicans and libertarians who want small government, therefore corporations cheerfully through money at Democrats as well, making them as deaf to our needs as the Republicans. Still what other option do we have than to vote.

And as happy_go_lucky already stated, it is important to stay informed. Information is currency and truth is for sale to the highest bidder. Sanity is just out the window. What more is there to say when the media can, with a straight face, tout the governor of New Jersey, a guy who makes Reagan look like a liberal, as a political moderate. We have to remember that the media is not objective they are owned and controlled by the rich and powerful and are busily at work twisting the facts in order to mold our opinions. Everybody has an agenda. Read a variety of news sources encompassing a variety of political and ideological opinions and then you at least have a shot at making an informed decision.

[Cin]

Originally Posted by Happy_Go_Lucky

standardized testing of public school children was carefully crafted by the "smaller government" crowd who wants to ultimately privatize EVERYTHING.

I hope you don't mind my using parts of your post as jumping points.

Privatization removes the necessity of even giving lip service to the idea of equality of service or product. The bottom line is all that matters to private businesses. And that’s fine for most things. It’s a sad but unavoidable reality that we all can’t afford everything or the best of everything. That’s life. But in some instances privatization doesn’t work. Education for example. Privatizing education is a really bad idea. However, we are moving in that direction and along with mandatory standardized testing, there is "contracting out", school vouchers and charter schools which are parts of this same push. We already have a huge difference in what kind of education people can afford to give their children. More government control and funding is needed to even out education so that what is available to all citizens is comparable. Even now the level of knowledge and education available depends on money and geography. It will get so much worse with privatization. With money dictating how much your children can learn it’s not hard to imagine a country with an uneducated lower class stuck forever in low paying, dead end jobs (if they are lucky) where they do not earn enough money to support their families. Pretty much the direction we are heading now. Education should not be turned into a consumer product. It is a social and a public responsibility.

Privatized prisons are good business for their owners, but bad business for everyone else. It’s like putting McDonalds in charge of Weight Watchers. It’s not in McDonalds’ best interest for you to eat healthy. It’s not in the best interest of a privately owned prison for you to become rehabilitated or, if truth be told, for you not to commit a crime in the first place. So let’s keep that war on drugs going. We now have prison lobbyists to make sure crimes stay on the books and punishments are severe. It is in the best interest of private prisons for punishment to always be incarceration. The US has the highest incarceration rate in the world. America makes up 5% of the world's population and 25% of its jailed prisoners. It’s only logical, it’s not personal it’s just business. I mean what can you expect, what kind of business owner works at eliminating his clients.

Prison for profit is insane and immoral for a country to do it to its adult citizens, but to do it to its children is unforgivable. Yet privately owned prisons for children exist. As does privatized foster care and a variety of other privatized child welfare services.

The privatization of water is a chilling idea, but Nestle’s believes it is the way to go. Nestle’s Chairman and former CEO, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, believes that “access to water is not a public right.” Great. I think we should hurry and put him in charge of water.

To put it simply

Privatization bad, government good.

However we need to bring back that government that is of the people, by the people, for the people. Because as it stands now it is in deep doodoo. There is a good chance it shall perish from the Earth.

[Cin]

And speaking of prisons, this is truly disturbing.

Life in Prison for Stealing Candy? Thousands of Prisoners Sentenced to Die Behind Bars for Nonviolent Crimes
The number of prisoners serving life for nonviolent crimes is truly staggering.


http://www.alternet.org/life-prison-...mes?page=0%2C3

[Happy_Go_Lucky]

It has been recently revealed that the private prison industry not only wishes to control more prisons, but are lobbying the states to maintain demand for their services. In 2012, CCA sent a letter to 48 states offering to buy up their prisons as a remedy to their “challenging corrections budgets,” in exchange for a 20-year contract and an assurance that the state will maintain at least a 90 percent occupancy at the prison. In the Public Interest, an advocacy group pushing for an end to prison privatization, reviewed 62 state and local private prison contracts.

http://www.mintpressnews.com/private...y-beds/169600/


For-Profit prison is immoral.

For-Profit health care is immoral.

For-Profit education is immoral.

For-Profit local governmental services is immoral.

And on and on....

When profit is not a factor, the consumer citizen receives a better shake.

[Cin]

Chomsky’s right: The New York Times’ latest big lie
More misleading half-truths from a paper too cowed by power and myth to tell the truth about U.S. foreign policy

http://www.salon.com/2013/11/16/chom...atest_big_lie/

[Cin]

Elizabeth Warren: quiet revolutionary who could challenge Hillary Clinton in Democrats' 2016 race
Senator's tough stance against Wall Street is attracting voters on the left who are disenchanted with the party establishment
Not many political "rock stars" inspire audience members to knit, but, even by Washington's sedate standards, the darling of America's new left is a quiet revolutionary.

Senator Elizabeth Warren, a former Harvard professor turned Wall Street scourge, is one of a clutch of unlikely radicals giving hope to those disenchanted with mainstream Democrats.

Hours before a rare public appearance last week, one of the largest rooms in Congress begins slowly filling up with an odd mix of groupies: policy wonks, finance geeks, Occupy activists, and, yes, the type of political conference attendee who brings their knitting in.

Warren proceeds to calmly recite numbers that could inspire even librarians to storm a few barricades. The Wall Street crash has cost the US economy $14tn, she says, but its top institutions are 30% larger than before, own half the country's bank assets and are in receipt of an implicit taxpayer subsidy of $83bn a year because they are deemed too big to fail.

"We have got to get back to running this country for American families, not for its largest financial institutions," concludes Warren, before noting how little President Barack Obama has done to achieve that.

When the same message was delivered to union leaders in September, she had them standing on their chairs. But for the first time since the banking crash, the argument is connecting at the ballot box too. Mayoral elections in Boston and New York two weeks ago saw leftwing candidates with similar messages about economic inequality win by surprising landslides.

Meanwhile, Terry McAuliffe, the former Clinton fundraiser who epitomises the business-friendly Democrat mainstream, saw his substantial poll lead in Virginia all but evaporate under attack from populists on the right.

Whereas the Tea Party has worked relentlessly since the financial crash to recast the Republican party as a perceived challenger to Wall Street, Democrats such as Obama and his potential successor Hillary Clinton rely heavily on financial donors and have veered away from confrontation. But the popularity of senators such as Warren in Massachusetts and Sherrod Brown in Ohio has combined with recent mayoral election wins by Bill de Blasio in New York and Marty Walsh in Boston to raise hopes that the left could yet exert the same pull on Democrats.

"The challenges the Democratic party has faced since 2009 have largely been a result of the public's perception that the party isn't clearly enough on their side," argues Damon Silvers, policy director for union umbrella group AFL-CIO. "Republicans have exploited that very skilfully, even though Republicans are totally owned by the financial class."

"What's happening now is the emergence of politicians – De Blasio and Walsh being recent examples – that are just not interested in that type of politics," adds Silvers. "And those people are being successful. They are stepping into a political vacuum that is all about authenticity in relationship to issues of inequality and the power of financial interests."

Though the similarity only goes so far, the shared interest of America's new left and Tea Party conservatives in challenging the economic status quo also shows how figures such as Warren might attract broader support beyond traditional Democrat voters.

One self-confessed Warren groupie is David Collum, a Cornell University chemistry professor and amateur investor, whose enthusiasm for free market economics previously led him to endorse libertarian Republican candidate Ron Paul. Collum has been exchanging regular emails with Warren since before the crash and says she captured his imagination because her brand of intelligent populism transcends traditional political boundaries.

"If you look at her and Ron Paul, it's the same thing: they appear to speak from the heart," he explains. "Here you have Warren saying the banks are thugs, she supports the consumer which has a natural leftwing sound to it, but I don't think it's putty-headed liberalism, I think she is just an advocate for the small person."

The buzz around Warren reached fever pitch last week with an article in New Republic magazine predicting she could challenge Hillary Clinton for the Democrat nomination in the 2016 presidential election. Widely-read, if not endorsed, across Washington, the piece entitled "Hillary's nightmare" was followed by a similar analysis in Politico describing the prospect as "Wall Street's nightmare".

Like many eventual nominees, Warren is emphatic she does not want to run for the White House (a fact her supporters claim makes her ideal) and the notion resulted in scepticism from some Washington insiders.

But the question of whether it is Warren or one of the other emerging leftwingers who challenges the Clinton orthodoxy in 2016 may prove besides the point if even the talk of her running causes Team Hillary to reassess its rumoured dependence on Wall Street fundraising and helps pull the party away from big business.

Political pundits in the media have often been slow to capture public mood changes, ignoring the Occupy Wall Street movement for months, for example, and were also caught by surprise by de Blasio's win in New York.

The man who took America's biggest city back under Democratic party control for the first time in two decades was not even endorsed by the liberal New York Times, which opted for a more mainstream candidate, Christine Quinn.

Rupert Murdoch's New York Post was predictably blunter, calling de Blasio a pro-Cuban communist, while the Washington Post got into hot water with a column suggesting "people with conventional views" in other states would have to "repress a gag reflex" when considering him because he was married to an African-American who used to be lesbian.

In the end, de Blasio won the support of 73% of New York's voters with an unapologetically leftwing campaign: arguing for tax increases on the rich to pay for better schools and using his afro-haired son to promote a campaign against police harassment of young black men.

The skepticism among political elites that such policies will translate outside liberal bastions like New York may be warranted. Howard Dean, the last such candidate seen as a serious presidential candidate, crashed and burned when he was seen as too "shouty". Ralph Nader, who ran to the left of John Kerry as an independent candidate in 2004 arguably cost him the election that made way for George W Bush.

But what has changed is that mainstream Democrats and Republicans in Washington seem even less popular today than the perceived outsiders on the left and right.

Both Obama and the Republican party hit record lows in the polls recently after the government shutdown and botched launch of healthcare reforms exacerbated a national feeling that Washington is broken.

"I think the lesson that we have to draw from [these polls] is that the American people are not satisfied," said White House spokesman Jay Carney. "[Not satisfied] that we're, all of us, focused on the things that matter to them, and we're not getting the results that they want."

In this atmosphere, anyone who doesn't appear part of the Washington mainstream is by definition a populist.

But whereas rightwing challengers in the Tea Party can lump public dissatisfaction with Washington, Wall Street and the government into one big anti-establishment message, radicals on the left have a finer line to tread, especially after Obama's botched healthcare launch led to such mistrust of their preferred public sector solutions.

Warren does it by pointing out the need for more regulation, both to save capitalism from itself and re-engage the social mobility of the American dream.

Other rising stars such as Maryland governor Martin O'Malley – also tipped as a leftwing challenger to Hillary in 2016 – have done it by marrying liberal policies with managerial success at the state level.

The former mayor of Baltimore, said to be one of the inspirations for the Tommy Carcetti character in The Wire, has introduced gun control legislation, abolished the death penalty and legalised same-sex marriages, all while successfully increasing government spending on areas such as transport.

Nonetheless, compared with Hillary Clinton, both O'Malley and Warren remain virtual unknowns on the national stage and would face a huge challenge to win the Democratic primary let alone the White House.

Warren describes her battle with the banks as a "David and Goliath struggle". Whether David can take on the Goliaths of the Democratic party is a whole other matter.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...ce-white-house

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/zimmerman-arre...195031198.html

Well would you believe it? Zimmerman charged with assault. Go figure.

[Cin]

Is it me or is this just like really messed up?


State Rep. Smashes Homeless Peoples' Stuff With a Sledgehammer
The Rep. roams the streets and looks for homeless people in order to literally smash their possessions.

Much like Batkid, Hawaii has found its own superhero. Except that instead of protecting the powerless from harm, he roams the streets with a sledgehammer and looks for homeless people in order to literally smash their possessions.

Remarkably, this vigilante isn’t just some random Hawaiian, but five-term State Rep. Tom Brower (D).

Noting that he’s “disgusted” with homeless people, Brower told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser about his own personal brand of “justice”: “If I see shopping carts that I can’t identify, I will destroy them so they can’t be pushed on the streets.” Brower has waged this campaign for two weeks, estimating that he’s smashed about 30 shopping carts in the process.

“I want to do something practical that will really clean up the streets,” he explained to Hawaii News Now as he showed off his property destruction skills:

Uncontent to just destroy homeless people’s items, Brower is also on a mission to wake those he finds sleeping and tell them to sleep somewhere else. “If someone is sleeping at night on the bus stop, I don’t do anything, but if they are sleeping during the day, I’ll walk up and say, ‘Get your ass moving,’” he said.

It’s no stretch to assume that if Brower were found roaming middle-class neighborhoods and smashing items in people’s homes, he would find himself both out of office and behind bars. But segments of society view homeless people as less important and undeserving of the dignity of having their possessions kept safe.

One homeless person in Honolulu, Edward Ferreira, witnessed Brower in action. “To see someone banging on stuff like that, it was very scary for me,” he told Hawaii News Now.

Without a home, homeless people often have nowhere to store their possessions. A shopping cart can be very useful in both its storage space and mobility. Some localities, including New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and others have tried to address this problem by offering free storage space to homeless people.

Hawaii, on the other hand, is garnering a reputation for a less-than-compassionate approach to its homeless population, and it’s not just because of Brower. It’s got the highest rate of homelessness in the country, but rather than build more shelters or offer more services for the poor, lawmakers approved $100,000 over the next two years to offer one-way flights off the islands to any of the state’s estimated 17,000 homeless persons.
http://www.alternet.org/state-rep-sm...f-sledgehammer

[Jar]

Originally Posted by Corkey

http://news.yahoo.com/zimmerman-arre...195031198.html

Well would you believe it? Zimmerman charged with assault. Go figure.

I can't believe this guy is still walking the streets! He's going to kill again one way or the other. I think a judge ordered him to turn in his guns today but duh, he'll find more

[Kobi]

Poll: Overweight people, gays slammed most online



By CONNIE CASS
The Associated Press
November 20, 2013

Most teens and young adults on Facebook, Twitter or other social networking sites see them at least sometimes: slurs, offensive images or mean-spirited video clips that stigmatize groups of people.

Who's targeted most often? Overweight people, according to a poll of Internet users ages 14 to 24.

When does it seem most hurtful? When aimed at transgender people.

What about potshots at blacks or women? Young people mostly take those as jokes.

In the poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and MTV, young people take stock of the discriminatory words and images they see online:

___

Who gets slammed online?

—Those who are overweight (54 percent of young people see them
targeted sometimes or often)

—Gay, lesbian or bisexual people (50 percent)

—African-Americans (46 percent)

—Women (44 percent)

—Men who dress or carry themselves in a feminine way (42 percent)

—Immigrants (34 percent)

—Latinos (32 percent)

—Muslims (31 percent)

—Women who dress or carry themselves in a masculine way (31 percent)

—Transgender people (31 percent)

___

Young people are more likely to view slurs or discriminatory images as mean-spirited rather than as a joke when they target:

—Transgender people (63 percent say it's most often meant to be hurtful)

—Muslims (60 percent)

—Gay, lesbian or bisexual people (54 percent)

—Those who are overweight (53 percent)

—Men who dress or carry themselves in a feminine way (53 percent)

___

Racial insults are less likely to be considered intentionally hurtful. A majority of young people say racial groups are maligned mostly in a joking way:

—African-Americans (64 percent say it's most often meant as a joke)

—Latinos (67 percent)

—Asian-Americans (73 percent)

___

What about sexism?

A big majority — 7 in 10 — say demeaning comments, pictures and videos about women are mostly jokes, not meant to be hurtful. Women are about as likely to feel that way as men are.

About 60 percent of those polled see the word "bitch" used against people online or in text messages at least sometimes. Fewer than 30 percent are very offended by it when it's aimed at someone else.

___

Christianity, the nation's dominant religion, isn't high on the list of online targets.

But when slurs and images malign Christians, they are more likely to be seen as intentionally hurtful than those aimed at racial minorities.

About half said discriminatory stuff about Christians was mostly hurtful; half thought it was joking.

Another target group that got a split decision? Immigrants.

___

Overall, young people say this stuff is mostly an attempt at humor.

The poll ranked four possible reasons why people text or share discriminatory language:

—They're trying to be funny (53 percent think that's a major reason)

—They think it's "cool" to use that language (45 percent)

—They don't realize the language is offensive (32 percent)

—They really hold hateful feelings about the group (30 percent)

Although "hateful feelings" aren't rated as a prime motive, a big majority of young people — 7 in 10 — say hatred is at least a minor reason for posting or texting slurs about a group.

Young people seem jaded to a lot of the offensive stuff they see on the social network sites and online gaming communities. Fewer than half, for example, say they are very offended by online use of the N-word for African-Americans.

But that doesn't mean they think tweeting slurs or posting derogatory videos is all right.

A majority say it's never OK to use discriminatory language, even if you're just kidding.

___

Associated Press Director of Polling Jennifer Agiesta and AP News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius contributed to this report.

http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pb...129969/-1/NEWS

___

[Cin]

Fact Check: Social Security Does Not Increase the Deficit
Bought politicians and pundits continue to spread nonsense about America's best-loved program.

The American people love Social Security, and with good reason. It protects seniors and the disabled from poverty, and it is the most important life and disability safeguard available to the nation's 75 million children. The program is a bargain: Its administrative costs are lower than privately managed retirement plans. Social Security returns in benefits more than 99 cents of every dollar collected, whereas a typical 401(k) could easily eat up 20 cents of that dollar in fees. The program is fiscally sound and prudently managed — a policy triumph.

There are basically two categories of people who want to see Social Security cut: 1) financiers who wish to move us toward privatized retirement accounts so that they can charge us fees; and 2) rich people who do not like to pay taxes. Their main champions are conservatives at the Heritage Foundation, libertarians at the Cato Institute and Wall Street financier Pete Peterson.

Just about everybody else in America is against cutting Social Security, as poll after poll demonstrates. The people have continued to speak loudly and clearly, and yet Washington can’t seem to get the message. This is obviously because a lot of media people and politicians rely on money from the two groups mentioned above. So they have to come up with arguments to try to convince the public that up is down and red is blue. It’s a war of attrition: repeat lies and distortions often enough and maybe they’ll come to be taken as facts.

The latest volley is a shameful and distorted editorial in the Washington Post which attempts to downplay the retirement crisis faced by Americans and to stoke generational tensions by suggesting that Social Security is a burden on young people instead of a vital safeguard. The editorial actually mocked a sensible bill introduced by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) that would boost Social Security benefits by increasing taxes on the wealthy. The Washington Post's nonsense was blasted by Senator Elizabeth Warren, who spoke out strongly against cuts of any kind, including Obama's "chained CPI" cut which would prevent Social Security from keeping up with seniors' increasing costs.

A favorite tactic of Social Security's foes is to push the notion that the program somehow drives up the federal deficit, an argument that is completely without merit.

In the first place, the federal deficit is shrinking. That’s a highly inconvenient truth for people trying to stoke deficit hysteria, but they’re banking on the fact that a lot of Americans don’t know about the deficit going down. So they go on pretending that the federal deficit is a dire, pants-on-fire problem, even though most of them know that’s a bunch of hot air.

Even if the deficit were rising — which it’s not — the sensible way to deal with that would be to concentrate on putting people back to work and to invest in productive things like education and infrastructure. That gets the economy going and then, guess what? As tax revenues come back, the deficit goes down on its own, which is what’s happening right now.

Taking money out of people's pockets, which is what cutting Social Security would do, actually could have the rerverse effect of increasing the deficit because it means that people can’t buy the stuff they would normally buy with this money, like food and healthcare. When that happens, the businesses trying to sell those items have to scale back and lay off employees, which means less tax revenue for the government. And so on. Not exactly a recipe for a booming economy.

In the second place, it’s a plain economic fact that Social Security is not a driver of the deficit. Nevertheless, irresponsible people continue to confuse the public by using various tricks such as predictions of the future that have little basis in reality and accounting methods applied in devious ways.

We’re going to cut through all of that. By the end of this article, you will be able to confound all Republicans and centrist Democrats who offer up nonsense linking Social Security to the deficit and spread hyperbolic rhetoric.

1. Social Security is a self-financed program.

First, let’s talk about how Social Security works. If you are employed, you most likely pay a certain amount of your paycheck, generally 6.2 percent, to Social Security. Your employer kicks in the same amount. (The exception would be a few state and local workers who get public state pensions instead of Social Security).

The Social Security program has an independent budget that is separate from the rest of the federal government. Social Security is fundamentally a pay-as-you-go system, which means that payments collected today immediately go to pay benefits.

The finances of the Social Security program have been managed extremely well, and until the recent financial crisis and recession, more payments were collected than were needed for benefits and the surplus was placed into a trust fund. The Social Security program has loaned this extra money to the U.S. government, which used it for other things. In return, Social Security gets interest-bearing Treasury securities, or bonds.

The Wall Street-driven financial crisis and recession reduced the payroll collections, and in 2010, Social Security began to tap into its trust fund, which had been built up for just such an emergency.

You might hear some guy from the Cato Institute getting clever by pointing out that Social Security is using interest on the government bonds it holds to help pay for benefits, and therefore adding to the deficit because the government has to pay that interest. That’s a bit like saying that because I was smart and saved money and then loaned it to my profligate neighbor, I am somehow responsible for increasing his debt when I ask him to pay back what he borrowed. Would any reasonable person make such an upside-down claim?

No. Yet people calling themselves “fact checkers” are promoting this absurdity in the mainstream media.

As economist Dean Baker has explained, it’s a perfectly ordinary thing for bond holders to use interest collected on bonds. Grandmothers with pensions do it, and they aren’t generally accused of adding to the deficit. Just for fun, Baker uses the example of Pete Peterson as an illustration: “If Peter Peterson used $5 million in interest on government bonds he held to finance the startup of his Campaign to Fix the Debt, would it be accurate to say that he had contributed to the deficit? I suspect that most of the fact checkers would say that it is not.”

2. Social Security is not in danger of running out of money.

Another thing you hear is that Social Security is going to run out of money sometime in the future. Actually, by the forecasts made on the part of the Social Security Trustees, the program isn’t going to run out of money even if its trust funds — and that’s a big if — get depleted some decades down the road (2033 is the latest projected date).

The Trustees report is based on predictions that are deliberately conservative. Yet even with its worst-case scenario reasoning, the report says that the tax income would still be enough to pay about three-quarters of scheduled benefits through 2085. Does that sound like a crisis? No, because it isn’t. The real crisis is the growing number of Americans who will face retirement without traditional pensions and not enough money in their 401(k)s. Cutting Social Security would only add fuel to that fire.

3. There is no justification for tampering with Social Security’s financing right now.

Economists are not very good with crystal balls. If you don’t believe this, look at how few of them predicted the last financial crisis. Yet they are addicted to making prognostications.

Social Security’s finances are in perfectly good shape: the Social Security Trust Fund has a $2.7 trillion surplus and will continue to grow until 2021. Perhaps there will be more trouble some decades down the road, but we will be better able to make those assessments when we actually see what the reality is. To cut benefits right now because of a problem that might occur years from now is ridiculous, unless of course your real concern is to cut taxes, which is naturally the desire of America’s Ebeneezer Scrooges.

If you insist on doing something right now, there is a very simple way to generate more revenue for the program, and it doesn’t involve cutting benefits in all the myriad ways the politicians and pundits have proposed: Raise the cap on earnings taxed to pay for Social Security from its current $113,000 to something like, say, $200,000. Presto! You now have loads more revenue and you did not keep grandma from buying medicine.

You don’t hear the greedy rich jumping on board with this idea, because they don’t like to pay taxes, even when doing so might benefit the economy where they make their millions. You don’t hear the financiers cheering this approach, because they really want to see the program destroyed so they can get their mitts on your retirement money. But it would certainly suit everybody else.

http://www.alternet.org/economy/fact...age=1#bookmark

[Cin]

More Heartless Advice from McDonald's to Employees: Sell Your Christmas Gifts
The fast-food conglomerate would do just about anything to avoid paying a living wage.

As the giving season approaches, fast-food giant McDonald’s has found a new way to avoid helping its low-paid workers with a living wage: this time by urging employees to sell their Christmas presents for extra money. The helpful bit of corporate advice was posted on the company’s “McResource” employee webpage in an effort to help staff manage finances and stress as the holiday season approaches. Companies like McDonald's and Walmart are really outdoing themselves with the holidays approaching: Retail giant Wal-Mart's recently requested help with the company's food drive, with proceeds going to their own employees, because Wal-MArt does not pay them enough to afford food.

Of course, McDonald's also recently advised employees break food into little pieces in an effort to feel more full on less food. In yet more helpful tips from this very caring employer, McDonald’s also recommended singing away stress and taking two vacations a year to lower the risk of heart attack. And, of course, selling your possessions is not just good for Christmas presents, they advise “selling some of your unwanted possessions on eBay or Craigslist” for “some quick cash.”

The company recommendations were publicized on Tuesday through Low Pay Is Not OK, an advocacy group for higher wages for fast food workers, arguing that the conglomerate asking its employees to make up for a lack of financial stability because of pitifully low wages was reprehensible. The organization quickly experienced blowback from McDonald’s, with the company flaming that the company-wide advice was taken out of context.

“This is an attempt by an outside organization to undermine a well-intended employee assistance resource website by taking isolated portions out of context,” the company said in a public statement.

The group was in the news earlier this month for releasing a recording of McDonald’s workers calling the company hotline asking for assistance, where the operators then urge the decade-long employee to apply for federal food stamps and Medicaid assistance. According to a recent study, 52% of families of major fast-food employees are enrolled in one or more public assistance programs, compared with the 25% of the whole workforce. The same employee in question was arrested that same month after confronting McDonald’s USA President Jeff Stratton during a speech in Chicago regarding the $8.25 hourly wage that left her unable to purchase clothing from her children, which has since been used as a major rallying cry for those asking for a major overhaul in fast food companies' obligation to their employees.

http://www.alternet.org/labor/more-h...hristmas-gifts

McDonald’s Eating Tip: Break Your Food Into Pieces So You’ll Be Less Hungry

The more we hear about McDonald's HR resource center, appropriately titled McResources, the more we learn about the darkness of the human soul. Almost one month to the day after learning that their help center tells its employees to sign up for food stamps, Mickey D's has struck again. This time their website suggests its hungry, underpaid employees to break their food up into smaller bites so that it "results in eating less and still feeling full." The New York Times's Steve Greenhouse, a labor reporter, tweeted this screenshot of the McResources page that has many people aghast.

http://presstubes.com/mcdonalds-eati...e-less-hungry/

[Cin]

Noam Chomsky | Media Control and Indoctrination in the United States

http://www.truth-out.org/progressive...-united-states

[Cin]

End the 1 Percent’s Free Ride: Taxing Land Would Solve America’s Biggest Problems
Want a real overhaul of the tax code? Here's an elegant way to reduce inequality and mitigate poverty — in one tax.

Appealing to the overwhelming majority of Americans who believe the tax code is so complex that it needs “major changes or a complete overhaul,” Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., have adorably started a joint Twitter handle: @simplertaxes. The bipartisan love fest is no doubt a heartfelt effort, but not very convincing from men who acquired the fancy titles by opening and maintaining loopholes for the ownership class. Baucus’ hot-off-the-presses tax reform proposals predictably simplify the code very little.

At present, neither party advocates the tax code so elegant it can reduce inequality, mitigate poverty, stimulate productivity, prevent asset price bubbles, stem community-shredding gentrification and drain the distended Wall Street cabal of its ill-gotten gains – in just one tax.

Land value. If we want a real overhaul/simplification of the tax code, the way to do it is to tax land value. It might be the only tax we need. No sales tax. No income tax. No payroll tax to fill a Social Security trust fund. No corporate income tax that, as we can plainly see, offshores profits. No need to tax labor and industry at all. Just tax the stuff that humans had nothing to do with creating, and therefore have no basis to claim ownership over at all. You’ll find that almost all of it is “owned” by the fabled 1 percent.

And boy are they sucking a lot of money out of it. By far the most valuable asset form in the U.S. is real estate, and the majority of that is the value of the land, as distinct from the value of the human-made buildings. Economist Michael Hudson has assessed that the land value of New York City alone exceeds that of all of the plant and equipment in the entire country, combined. No one put any enterprise or cost into producing the land’s value – they simply bought it when it was cheap, sold it when it was dear, and waited for the check. “They” are the Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) sector, and they capture 40 percent of the United States’ profits, despite the complete passivity of their profit-accumulation method.

Not only would a land value tax (LVT) drastically shrink that Wall Street bloat, it would have prevented the housing bubble in the first place. Land, after all, was the speculative commodity at play, not the houses themselves, which, as “Arrested Development” incisively suggested, were a bunch of crap. With an LVT, the cookie-cutter McMansions in suburban housing developments would only be worth the cost of their cheap paneling, artificial marble and the rest of it. Without one, they were wrongly assessed as being worth the value of the land they stood upon, which speculators bid up and up and up.

An LVT would stimulate urban property development without incurring the socially catastrophic ethnic displacement pattern we call “gentrification.” As that noted far-left rag the Economist notes, “Property developers … would be less inclined to hoard undeveloped land if they had to pay an annual levy on it.” Despite this, the new developments wouldn’t push rents up throughout the rest of the neighborhood, because the increased land value would be taxed. The rest of the apartment buildings in the area didn’t get any nicer. So why should they cost more? Urban land, scarce by definition, is very valuable. There is no reason to let a small group of rich landlords extract its value, when what created the value are parks, subways, local restaurants and other things the landlords didn’t provide.

Nothing could simplify and demystify the taxation experience for Americans like making sure that the vast majority of us who don’t own the resources, who don’t collect rent and capital gains, who have to work to get our paychecks, wouldn’t ever have to mark April 15 on the calendar again.

In contrast to its tiny tax base, the amount of revenue that can be raised by taxing the land is huge. Enough, for example, to support truly liberatory social spending, like a universal basic income, without risking inflation. Or the money could be devoted to starting a sovereign wealth fund to collectivize ownership claims on capital (the dividends to provide a UBI). Or it could go to local public banks capable of investing in the needs of their communities and regions.

If this sounds like it’s a little too far outside the box, the solution is to collapse the box. Capitalism requires pretending that individuals’ private ownership of the land, minerals, gases and oils that nature provided is not a completely ludicrous idea. And as long as our political parties are both capitalist parties, there is little hope for a land value tax. But the day is coming, and soon, when it will no longer be so.

http://www.alternet.org/tax-land-end...age=1#bookmark

[Cin]

Sarah Palin is really going to be upset this time. She's had to speak out about her concern over his liberal agenda already. This is going to push her over the edge. Citizens should be guaranteed dignified work, education and healthcare. What is wrong with this guy. Must be a socialist. And clearly he doesn't understand what god is really concerned about and what religion's role is supposed to be.

Pope Francis Attacks 'Idolatry of Money,' Says Inequality 'Kills'
Pope Francis called on politicians to guarantee “dignified work, education and healthcare” to their citizens.

Pope Francis launched a broadside against inequality and out-of-control capitalism in a 84-page document released Tuesday.

In what is known as an “apostolic exhortation,” which means communication from the Pope of the Catholic Church, Francis called on politicians to guarantee “dignified work, education and healthcare” to their citizens and also criticized the “idolatry of money,” according to Reuters. Francis “beg[ged] the Lord” to deliver politicians who were more concerned with the poor and inequality.

Francis blasted the current economic system as one that is profoundly unequal.

“Just as the commandment 'Thou shalt not kill' sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say 'thou shalt not' to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills,” the Pope wrote. “As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world's problems or, for that matter, to any problems.”

He also repeated his calls for reform in the Catholic Church, though still said that women could not become priests. He did say that women should have more influence in the church.

Francis himself has made it a point to practice what he preaches. He lives in a guest house at the Vatican rathan the usual, lavish Apostolic Palace. Last month, Reuters notes Pope Francis suspended a bishop who spent millions on his residence.

http://www.alternet.org/pope-francis...and-capitalism

[Cin]

How Wall Street Turned America Into Incarceration Nation
Transforming poorer neighborhoods into desirable real estate for the new elites often requires getting rid of the poor: jail becomes the new home for many.

http://www.alternet.org/corporate-ac...eration-nation

[Andrea]

Florida woman in warning-shot case released

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/11/28/justice/florida-stand-your-ground-release/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

"A Florida woman who was sentenced to 20 years for firing a gun to scare off her allegedly abusive husband has been released from prison as she awaits a new trial, her attorney said.

Marissa Alexander was released Wednesday night, attorney Bruce Zimet said."