NAYELI PAGAZA, - LosAlamitos-Seal Beach
Stephan: Here is the high school level of the Koch brother's machinations. As you read this remember the fight in Texas over the introduction of Creationism, and the rewriting of the Revolutionary period in the textbooks of Texas. This is pure Orwellian revisionism, and a naked attempt to engender willful ignorance, as social policy -- to shift from a fact based reality. Notice how cleverly this is framed. No one should disagree that both sides of the issue should be discussed. It is the issue of equivalency that is the fulcrum point. The position of the scientists who report based on their research that climate change is happening, and the climate denier view are not equivalent. The Denier side is simply not credible, and that is the way it should be discussed.
These attempts to control education, coupled with the corporate takeover of the Congress constitutes American Fascism, and reminds me very much of my visits to the Soviet Union back in the 1980s, only from the other end of the process. At that time people were struggling to wake up, and begin to make policy based on facts.
Before Los Alamitos High School science teachers can tackle topics such as global warming, they will have to demonstrate to the school board that the course is politically balanced.
A new environmental science course prompted the Los Alamitos Unified School District on Tuesday to rewrite its policy for teaching controversial subject matter. Concerned that ‘liberal’ faculty members could skew lessons on global warming, the board of education unanimously voted to make teachers give an annual presentation on how they’re teaching the class.
‘I believe my role in the board is to represent the conservative voice of the community and I’m not a big fan of global warming,
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LEE FANG, - Think Progress
Stephan: First the Right created think tanks where they could park docile academics, and former government officials to put out the propaganda they wanted. Now they are simply buying universities to get the kind of academics they want, to say the things they want. This is the final Fascist corruption of the educational system, and it is happening with hardly a murmur of resistance. It is part of the Willful Ignorance trend, and it must inevitably result in the corruption of our knowledge base.
Yesterday, ThinkProgress highlighted reports from the St. Petersburg Times and the Tallahassee Democrat regarding a Koch-funded economics department at Florida State University (FSU). FSU had accepted a $1.5 million grant from a foundation controlled by petrochemical billionaire Charles Koch on the condition that Koch’s operatives would have a free hand in selecting professors and approving publications. The simmering controversy sheds light on the vast influence of the Koch political machine, which spans from the top conservative think tanks, Republican politicians, a small army of contracted lobbyists, and Tea Party front groups in nearly every state.
As reporter Kris Hundley notes, Koch virtually owns much of George Mason University, another public university, through grants and direct control over think tanks within the school. For instance, Koch controls the Mercatus Center of George Mason University, an institute that set much of the Bush administration’s environmental deregulation policy. And similar conditional agreements have been made with schools like Clemson and West Virginia University. ThinkProgress has analyzed data from the Charles Koch Foundation, and found that this trend is actually much larger than previous known. Many of the Koch university grants finance far right, pro-polluter professors, and dictate that students read Charles Koch’s book as […]
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Stephan: Here is further detail on the American profile. This is the result of the rise of the Virtual Corporate State. It is clear that the VCSs feel no allegiance to the health and prosperity of the nation.
The dismantling of our economy is happening right in front of our eyes and most of our politicians are not doing a thing to stop it.
The following are 28 statistics about the gutting of the U.S. economy that will blow your mind….
#1 According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, the U.S. trade deficit for the month of March was $48.2 billion. That was up from $45.4 billion in February.
#2 The United States has had a negative trade balance every single year since 1976.
#3 Between December 2000 and December 2010, the U.S. ran a total trade deficit of 6.1 trillion dollars.
#4 The U.S. trade deficit with China in March was $18.1 billion. This is money that is not going to support U.S. businesses and U.S. workers. If that money was actually going to our businesses and to our workers it would increase tax revenues.
#5 Since China entered the WTO in 2001, the U.S. trade deficit with China has grown by an average of 18% per year.
#6 During 2010, we spent $365 billion on goods and services from China while they only spent $92 billion on goods and services from us.
#7 Since 2005, Americans have gobbled up Chinese products […]
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MATT TAIBBI, - RollingStone
Stephan:
They weren’t murderers or anything; they had merely stolen more money than most people can rationally conceive of, from their own customers, in a few blinks of an eye. But then they went one step further. They came to Washington, took an oath before Congress, and lied about it.
Thanks to an extraordinary investigative effort by a Senate subcommittee that unilaterally decided to take up the burden the criminal justice system has repeatedly refused to shoulder, we now know exactly what Goldman Sachs executives like Lloyd Blankfein and Daniel Sparks lied about. We know exactly how they and other top Goldman executives, including David Viniar and Thomas Montag, defrauded their clients. America has been waiting for a case to bring against Wall Street. Here it is, and the evidence has been gift-wrapped and left at the doorstep of federal prosecutors, evidence that doesn’t leave much doubt: Goldman Sachs should stand trial.
The great and powerful Oz of Wall Street was not the only target of Wall Street and the Financial Crisis: Anatomy of a Financial Collapse, the 650-page report just released by the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Democrat Carl Levin of Michigan, alongside Republican Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. Their unusually […]
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STEPHEN C. WEBSTER, - The Raw Story
Stephan: The Japanese, faced with the catastrophe of Fukushima, have finally opened their eyes and seen nuclear power for what it is. You have to ask, why can't our government do the same?
Japan’s prime minister announced yesterday that further expansions of nuclear energy in the nation is now officially off the table, namely due to the ongoing disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, which was crippled in March by a massive tsunami wave.
The announcement means that an additional 14 nuclear plants will not be constructed as planned. There are already 54 nuclear reactors operating in the island nation, which supplies about 30 percent of Japan’s electricity. A prior plan called for nuclear sources to account for 50 percent of all power generated in the country.
Prime Minister Naoto Kan said the country’s new energy focus will be on creating renewable energy technology, with the long-term goal of generating most of the nation’s power from green sources.
‘I think it is necessary to move in the direction of promoting natural energy and renewable energy such as wind, solar and biomass,’ he said, according to The Guardian.
In the wake of Japan’s nuclear disaster, Germany also said it would scale back its nuclear ambitions and focus more on renewable energy. Other nations, like China, India, the U.K. and the U.S., remain set on aggressive expansions of nuclear technology.
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