Friday, November 21st, 2014
, - Reader Supported News/The Michigan Citizen
Stephan: How a law is understood and applied in large measure is a process of precedence. This is one of the most awful precedents on could imagine. Although it is specific to a particular situation you can bet this will be cited in subsequent law suits. I ask you to note that this decision is part of the growing trend of undermining no-tuition public education.
In a blow to schoolchildren statewide, the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled on Nov. 7 the State of Michigan has no legal obligation to provide a quality public education to students (emphasis added) in the struggling Highland Park School District. A 2-1 decision reversed an earlier circuit court ruling that there is a “broad compelling state interest in the provision of an education to all children.” The appellate court said the state has no constitutional requirement to ensure schoolchildren actually learn fundamental skills such as reading — but rather is obligated only to establish and finance a public education system, regardless of quality. Waving off decades of historic judicial impact on educational reform, the majority opinion also contends that “judges are not equipped to decide educational policy.”
“This ruling should outrage anyone who cares about our public education system,” said Kary L. Moss, executive director of the American Civil Liberties of Michigan. “The court washes its hands and absolves the state of any responsibility in a district that has failed and continues to fail its children.”
The decision dismisses an unprecedented “right-to-read” […]
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Friday, November 21st, 2014
Stephan: This is a first indicator of what we can expect from a Republican Congress concerning climate change. It is ironic that a majority of those Red value voters who gave us this moronic delusion Congress live in states whose geography makes them particularly susceptible to the effects of climate change. Here is a prediction: The Blue value states are going to be asked to increasingly underwrite the costs of helping the Red value states recover from the effects of the policies they, the Red value voters, chose.
House Speaker John Boehner
Credit: AP/J Scott Applewhite
Congressional climate wars were dominated Tuesday by the U.S. Senate, which spent the day debating, and ultimately failing to pass, a bill approving the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. While all that was happening, and largely unnoticed, the House was busy doing what it does best: attacking science.
H.R. 1422, which
passed 229-191, would shake up the EPA’s Scientific Advisory Board, placing restrictions on those pesky scientists and creating room for experts with overt financial ties to the industries affected by EPA regulations.
The bill is being framed as a play for transparency: Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Texas, argued that the board’s current structure is problematic because it “excludes industry experts, but not officials for environmental advocacy groups.” The inclusion of industry experts, he said, would right this injustice.
But the White House, which threatened to veto the bill, said it would “negatively affect the appointment of experts and would weaken the scientific independence and integrity of the SAB.”
In […]
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Friday, November 21st, 2014
Felix Kramer and Gil Friend, - The Guardian
Stephan: A reader sent me this story, and I found it quite intriguing. For the price of a few days of war America could buy the entire coal industry. Think about that.
A failing coal mine
Credit: www.thebeardedotter.com
Would you make a one time $50 (£31) investment to save $100-500 each year? Sound good? Add nine zeros to each of those numbers. In other words, invest $50bn once over the next decade, and generate $100-$500bn in benefits every year.
That’s the surprisingly low price to buy up and shut down all the private and public coal companies in the US, breaking the centuries-old grip of an obsolete, destructive technology that threatens our present and our future. It’s a compelling high-return opportunity available now in the US if some farsighted investors merge purpose and private equity in a new way.
How would it work? The deal would phase out coal companies over 10 years, close and clean up the mines, write down the assets, retrain and re-employ some 87,000 workers, and create job opportunities and prosperity for coal-based communities. If at the same time the US accelerates expansion of renewable energy sources and transmission facilities, this could be accomplished with no interruption to electricity supplies, adding only about a penny or two to […]
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Thursday, November 20th, 2014
Travis Getty, - The Raw Story
Stephan: If there was any doubt our government is structured to support the corporate oligarchy, and not the citizens of the U.S. this should dispel it.
Credit: Shutterstock
Seven of the 30 largest U.S. corporations paid their CEOs more last year than they paid in federal income taxes, according to a new report.
The study found that those seven companies — Boeing Co, Ford Motor Co, Chevron Corp, Citigroup Inc, Verizon Communications Inc, JPMorgan Chase & Co and General Motors Co. — reported a tax rate of -2.5 percent despite claiming more than $74 billion in combined pre-tax profits.
They paid their chief executives an average of $17.3 million, according to the study by two Washington think tanks — the Institute for Policy Studies and the Center for Effective Government.
The number of American companies that pay their chief executives more than they pay Uncle Sam is growing, researchers found.
The recently released report, “Fleecing Uncle Sam,” found that 29 of the 100 highest-paid CEOs were paid more in 2013 than the corporations they oversee paid in federal income tax.
That’s up from 25 of the top 100 in 2010 and 2011 surveys.
“Our corporate tax system is so […]
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Thursday, November 20th, 2014
Stephan: We tell ourselves the United States is the "Home of the Brave and the Land of the Free." No question about the bravery. Over a million young men and women answered the call that George Bush and Dick Cheney put out. They bravely went forth to fight, and are still fighting the insane wars that have dominated American foreign policy for over a decade. The fact that these wars were the manifested stupidity resulting from a lethal mix of hubris, greed, and grotesque ignorance about the nature of geopolitics in the Islamic world in no way denigrates their bravery. Their lives were thrown away by their leaders in what I believe will be seen as one of the great failures of foreign policy in American history. But what about Land of the Free?
I am sorry to tell you but that's just a lie we tell ourselves. We are no longer even in the top tier of freedom, as this report from an British research institute, Legatum Institute Foundation, spells out.
The full report is available
here, alternatively, the full set of data and tables is available at
www.prosperity.com.
Legatum Institute Foundation in London
2014 Legatum Prosperity Index™ reveals US public feel they have less ‘personal freedom’ than in 2011, while Norway is the most prosperous country in the world while the Central African Republic finishes bottom of the rankings.
The United States is revealed as the tenth most prosperous country in the world yet the American public feel as though their personal freedom has decreased over the past three years. (emphasis added)
The results of the 2014 Prosperity Index, published by the Legatum Institute, show that while the economy has improved as result of the fall in unemployment and an uplift in economic sentiment, the US comes 21st when it comes to personal freedom, down five places from last year and lagging behind Canada (5th), Uruguay (8th) and Costa Rica (15th). (emphasis added)
In 2012, 86% of Americans felt they had the freedom to choose the course of their own life. Two years later that number has dropped to 79%, far below that of New Zealand […]
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