Friday, October 30, 2015

“U.S. Descending to Third World” Status: American Jobs Are Gone Because of Offshoring

SHTF Plan - When It Hits The Fan, Don't Say We Didn't Warn You
Link
11 years ago, I declared that the consequence of jobs offshoring would be that the US would be a Third World country in 20 years.

via IFTTT

Breaking: Obama Puts US Boots in Syria – Where is Congress?

LewRockwell » LRC Blog
Link

“I will not put US boots on the ground in Syria.” That was President Obama’s unequivocal statement to the American people just two years ago when he first planned to bomb Syria. He has repeated the statement several times, as he has also repeated his promise that he “will not pursue a long air campaign” in Syria and Iraq. Obama lied. And he lied again. And he lied again today, when it was announced that he was putting US boots on the ground in Syria. This move encapsulates neocon-occupied Washington’s response to foreign policy failure: if an intervention is failing, … Continue reading

The post Breaking: Obama Puts US Boots in Syria – Where is Congress? appeared first on LewRockwell.



via IFTTT

Dragged Across the Classroom Floor: It’s Time to Admit That Schools Are Prisons

The Anti-Media
Link

Here's why.

The post Dragged Across the Classroom Floor: It’s Time to Admit That Schools Are Prisons appeared first on The Anti-Media.



via IFTTT

Thursday, October 29, 2015

Obama Teams Up With Muslims and Forces Shariah Law on U.S. Businesses

Before It's News | ALTERNATIVE NEWS
Link
You are not going to believe what Obama has done now. Obama had crossed the line YET AGAIN! When two Muslims were interviewed for the job of delivery men, they were told that in their capacity as delivery men, they would be required to deliver alcohol as part of the job. They agreed, they were hired, and once the job started, they refused to deliver a shipment of beer. Subsequently they were fired, and they sued their former employer.

via IFTTT

The Dismal Failure of Arne Duncan's 'Race to the Top' Program

AlterNet.org Main RSS Feed
Link
Test scores have been an embarrassment to the Obama and Bush administrations.

Sometimes events happen that seem to be disconnected, but after a few days or weeks, the pattern emerges. Consider this: On October 2, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced that he was resigning and planned to return to Chicago. Former New York Commissioner of Education John King, who is a clone of Duncan in terms of his belief in testing and charter schools, was designated to take Duncan’s place. On October 23, the Obama administration held a surprise news conference to declare that testing was out of control and should be reduced to not more than 2 percent of classroom time. Actually, that wasn’t a true reduction, because 2 percent translates into between 18-24 hours of testing, which is a staggering amount of annual testing for children in grades 3-8 and not different from the status quo in most states.

Disconnected events?

Not at all. Here comes the pattern-maker: the federal tests called the National Assessment of Educational Progress released its every-other-year report card in reading and math, and the results were dismal. There would be many excuses offered, many rationales, but the bottom line: the NAEP scores are an embarrassment to the Obama administration (and the George W. Bush administration that preceded it).

For nearly 15 years, Presidents Bush and Obama and the Congress have bet billions of dollars—both federal and state– on a strategy of testing, accountability, and choice. They believed that if every student was tested in reading and mathematics every year from grades 3 to 8, test scores would go up and up. In those schools where test scores did not go up, the principals and teachers would be fired and replaced. Where scores didn’t go up for five years in a row, the schools would be closed. Thousands of educators were fired, and thousands of public schools were closed, based on the theory that sticks and carrots, rewards and punishments, would improve education.

But the 2015 NAEP scores released today by the National Assessment Governing Board (a federal agency) showed that Arne Duncan’s $4.35 billion Race to the Top program had flopped. It also showed that George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind was as phony as the “Texas education miracle” of 2000, which Bush touted as proof of his education credentials.

NAEP is an audit test. It is given every other year to samples of students in every state and in about 20 urban districts. No one can prepare for it, and no one gets a grade. NAEP measures the rise or fall of average scores for states in fourth grade and eighth grade in reading and math and reports them by race, gender, disability status, English language ability, economic status, and a variety of other measures.

The 2015 NAEP scores showed no gains nationally in either grade in either subject. In mathematics, scores declined in both grades, compared to 2013. In reading, scores were flat in grade 4 and lower in grade 8. Usually the Secretary of Education presides at a press conference where he points with pride to increases in certain grades or in certain states. Two years ago, Arne Duncan boasted about the gains made in Tennessee, which had won $500 million in Duncan’s Race to the Top competition. This year, Duncan had nothing to boast about.

In his Race to the Top program, Duncan made testing the primary purpose of education. Scores had to go up every year, because the entire nation was “racing to the top.” Only 12 states won a share of the $4.35 billion that Duncan was given by Congress: Tennessee and Delaware were first to win, in 2010. The next round, the following states won multi-millions of federal dollars to double down on testing: Maryland, Massachusetts, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, and Rhode Island.

Tennessee, Duncan’s showcase state in 2013, made no gains in reading or mathematics, neither in fourth grade or eighth grade. The black-white test score gap was as large in 2015 as it had been in 1998, before either NCLB or the Race to the Top.

The results in mathematics were bleak across the nation, in both grades 4 and 8. The declines nationally were only 1 or 2 points, but they were significant in a national assessment on the scale of NAEP.

In fourth-grade mathematics, the only jurisdictions to report gains were the District of Columbia, Mississippi, and the Department of Defense schools. Sixteen states had significant declines in their math scores, and thirty-three were flat in relation to 2013 scores. The scores in Tennessee (the $500 million winner) were flat.

In eighth grade, the lack of progress in mathematics was universal. Twenty-two states had significantly lower scores than in 2013, while 30 states or jurisdictions had flat scores. Pennsylvania, Kansas, and Florida (a Race to the Top winner), were the biggest losers, by dropping six points. Among the states that declined by four points were Race to the Top winners Ohio, North Carolina, and Massachusetts. Maryland, Hawaii, New York, and the District of Columbia lost two points. The scores in Tennessee were flat.

The District of Columbia made gains in fourth grade reading and mathematics, but not in eighth grade. It continues to have the largest score gap—56 points–between white and black students of any urban district in the nation. That is more than double the average of the other 20 urban districts. The state with the biggest achievement gap between black and white students is Wisconsin; it is also the state where black students have the lowest scores, lower even than their peers in states like Mississippi and South Carolina. Wisconsin has invested heavily in vouchers and charter schools, which Governor Scott Walker intends to increase.

The best single word to describe NAEP 2015 is stagnation. Contrary to President George W. Bush’s law, many children have been left behind by the strategy of test-and-punish. Contrary to the Obama administration’s Race to the Top program, the mindless reliance on standardized testing has not brought us closer to some mythical “Top.”

No wonder Arne Duncan is leaving Washington. There is nothing to boast about, and the next set of NAEP results won’t be published until 2017. The program that he claimed would transform American education has not raised test scores, but has demoralized educators and created teacher shortages. Disgusted with the testing regime, experienced teachers leave and enrollments in teacher education programs fall. One can only dream about what the Obama administration might have accomplished had it spent that $5 billion in discretionary dollars to encourage states and districts to develop and implement realistic plans for desegregation their schools, or had they invested the same amount of money in the arts.

The past dozen or so years have been a time when “reformers” like Arne Duncan, Michelle Rhee, Joel Klein, and Bill Gates proudly claimed that they were disrupting school systems and destroying the status quo. Now the “reformers” have become the status quo, and we have learned that disruption is not good for children or education.

Time is running out for this administration, and it is not likely that there will be any meaningful change of course in education policy. One can only hope that the next administration learns important lessons from the squandered resources and failure of NCLB and Race to the Top.

 

   

Related Stories



via IFTTT

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Will Not Release Documents To Prove Global Warming

The Burning Platform
Link
Guest Post by Martin Armstrong National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has been subpoenaed to turn over its documentation to prove global warming and they are REFUSING to show the data. They are claiming confidentiality when it is taxpayer money that funds them. How can this be confidential?

via IFTTT

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

The Shooting of Zachary Hammond: Is This What Self-Defense Looks Like?

Reason.com Full Feed
Link
No matter what prosecutors say, killing a teenager during a penny-ante pot bust cannot be justified.


via IFTTT

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Senate passes CISA, strikes down four pro-privacy amendments

RT - Daily news
Link
Preview The Senate on Tuesday passed CISA, a controversial bill encouraging companies to share private user data with the government that is worrying to civil liberties advocates. Four amendments were proposed to address privacy concerns, but they all died on the floor.
Read Full Article at RT.com

via IFTTT

Facebook Caught Secretly Lobbying for Privacy Destroying “Cyber Security” Bill

SGTreport - The Corporate Propaganda Antidote - Silver, Gold, Truth, Liberty, & Freedom
Link

by Michael Krieger, Liberty Blitzkrieg:

Before I get into this post, I want to thank everyone for all the congratulations and kind well wishes on the recent birth of our first child. Mom and baby are doing great, and we couldn’t be happier. Now let’s get back to the business of liberty.

There’s a [...]

via IFTTT

‘Untouchables': Obama Cronies “Protected Wall Street’s Most Criminal From Prosecution”

SGTreport - The Corporate Propaganda Antidote - Silver, Gold, Truth, Liberty, & Freedom
Link

by Mac Slavo, SHTFPlan:

The slow motion financial holocaust has been underway for some time now.

Goldman Sach recently commented that we are in the third wave of the great crisis. What happened in 2008 remains directly relevant to the personal financial risk that most Americans face at the brink of the next phase [...]

via IFTTT

BEST OF THE WEB: Alternate reality? CNN broadcasts U.S. Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard telling the truth about Syria

Signs of the Times
Link
Comment: Did we wake up in an alternate universe?! It's reassuring to see there is at least one American member of Congress who has a functioning brain. Gabbard pretty much tells it like it is. If only there were more like her. Speaking with Wolf Blitzer on CNN, Tulsi explains why the US allying with Islamist extremists to overthrow Syrian President Assad is an illegal, counterproductive war that will cause even more human misery in the region and help ISIS and other Islamist extremists take over all of Syria. Instead of once again being distracted by trying to get rid of a secular dictator, Tulsi explains, the US must stay out of counter productive wars and focus on defeating the Islamist extremists who have declared war on America.

via IFTTT

Monday, October 26, 2015

Why, Oh Why, Does Everyone BELIEVE Big Pharma’s Shtick?

Activist Post
Link


via IFTTT

Revealed: Army Scientists Secretly Sprayed St Louis With ‘Radioactive’ Particles For Years To Test Chemical Warfare Technology

SagaciousNewsNetwork.com
Link
(Daily Mail) The United States Military conducted top secret experiments on the citizens of St. Louis, Missouri, for years, exposing them to radioactive compounds, a researcher has claimed. While it...

[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]


via IFTTT

Why is Wheat Such a Problem in the Modern Diet?

Activist Post
Link


via IFTTT

Uncovered Government Docs Prove Chemtrails Real-Dane Wigington

SGTreport - The Corporate Propaganda Antidote - Silver, Gold, Truth, Liberty, & Freedom
Link

from USA Watchdog:

Lead researcher Dane Wigington for the global climate engineering informational website, GeoengineeringWatch.org, says newly discovered U.S. government documents prove global climate manipulation, commonly referred to as chemtrails, is real.

Not only that, but the document, that originated in the U.S. Senate, also proves weather manipulation has been going on around the [...]

via IFTTT

Bacon, sausages and ham rank alongside smoking as cancer causes, says WHO

Network Front | The Guardian
Link

UN health body says cured and processed meats are among top five most carcinogenic substances along with cigarettes, alcohol, asbestos and arsenic

Bacon, ham and sausages rank alongside cigarettes as a major cause of cancer, the World Health Organisation has said, placing cured and processed meats in the same category as asbestos, alcohol, arsenic and tobacco.

The report from the WHO’s cancer arm, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), said there is enough evidence to rank processed meats as group 1 carcinogens, because of a causal link with bowel cancer.

Continue reading...

via IFTTT