At the height of the dreadful debt-ceiling debate, Pastor Rick Warren said this: enlarge Which isn’t any different than what Fox talkers say all the time. Here’s a particularly illustrative clip: With the tax reform debate about to heat up in Washington DC, this recent New York Times editorial struck me as particularly appropriate: Representative Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, and several senators have made similar arguments, variations of the idea expressed earlier by Senator Dan Coats of Indiana that “everyone needs to have some skin in the game.” This is factually wrong, economically wrong and morally wrong. First, the facts: a vast majority of Americans have skin in the tax game. Even if they earn too little to qualify for the income tax, they pay payroll taxes (which Republicans want to raise), gasoline excise taxes and state and local taxes. Only 14 percent of households pay neither income nor payroll taxes, according to the Tax Policy Center at the Brookings Institution. The poorest fifth paid an average of 16.3 percent of income in taxes in 2010. Economically, reducing the earned income tax credit and the child tax credit — which would be required if everyone paid income taxes — makes no sense at a time of high unemployment. The credits, which only go to working people, have always been a strong incentive to work, as even some conservative economists say, and have increased the labor force while reducing the welfare rolls. The moral argument would have been obvious before this polarized year. Nearly 90 percent of the families that paid no income tax make less than $40,000, most much less. The real problem is that so many Americans are struggling on such a small income, not whether they pay taxes. The two tax credits lifted 7.2 million people out of poverty in 2009, including four million children. At a time when high-income households are paying their lowest share of federal taxes in decades, when corporations frequently avoid paying any tax, it is clear who should bear a larger burden and who should not. So what does Jon Huntsman, the so-called “reasonable Republican” wants to do about tax reform ? Here’s a list: Eliminate all deductions and credits, including the EIR, the college tuition tax credit, the child care tax credit, and others in favor of a three-tiered rate structure: 8 percent, 14 percent and 23 percent. Eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax Eliminate all tax on capital gains and dividends Reduce the corporate tax rate to 25 percent Repeal Dodd-Frank and the Affordable Care Act Duct-tape the EPA “Reform” the FDA Kill “Independent Agencies” Like the NLRB Enact patent reform Privatize Fannie and Freddie so the “free markets” can take care of the housing problems Like I said, there are no reasonable Republicans . The Republican agenda is two-pronged. First, shame and demonize the poor for daring to be born (of course, we won’t discuss that whole abortion and Republican thing). Second, make sure they stay poor by forcing them to bear the burden to pull this country away from historical debt. Because clearly, in Republican eyes, the fault lies with the poor. If there were no poor, there’d be no deficit. Or something.
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Thousands more armed forces personnel will be forced to leave service as officials prepare for second wave of cuts The number of compulsory redundancies within the armed forces is likely to soar during the next round of cuts, which will require thousands more people to leave service, defence officials have admitted. As the defence secretary, Liam Fox, sought to justify the first round of job losses, his department was bracing itself for the second wave and the likelihood that most people who wanted to volunteer for redundancy might have done so by now. “By the time we get to rounds three or four, it’s hard to imagine there will be any volunteers left,” said one Whitehall source. Another official added: “It’s hard to tell how things will look, but this is not likely to get any easier.” With Labour and some analysts again questioning the wisdom of the speed and scale of the redundancy programme, Fox and the armed forces minister, Nick Harvey, insisted it was the only way to bring the chaotic budget at the Ministry of Defence under control, and that the government had had no room to manoeuvre. “The responsibility for these redundancies lies with the incompetence of the last Labour government who left the nation’s finances broken and a £38bn black hole in the defence budget,” said Fox. “The tough measures we have taken will bring the budget largely into balance for the first time in a generation. “Of course redundancies are always sad news, but we will continue to have strong and capable forces and we appreciate the hard work of our brave armed forces.” Harvey admitted that the armed forces would not be able to conduct the breadth of military operations in the future, but said the current stretch would ease as the efforts in Libya and Afghanistan wound down. “Over the next three years, the pace of operations should decline,” he said. Sir Menzies Campbell, a member of the Commons foreign affairs committee, said this was the only way the armed forces could cope and that the UK would have to tailor its military ambitions. “The first lesson for the calculation of defence expenditure is to keep obligations and resources in balance,” he said. “It’s just as well we are out of Iraq, Libya is approaching a military conclusion, and that we have a fixed date for withdrawal of combat troops from Afghanistan. Otherwise we could be seriously embarrassed.” Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, said he did not believe the MoD had a “coherent plan”. The RAF is making 930 personnel redundant in the first tranche announced on Thursday – 490 are compulsory job losses. The army has notified 920 people that they have been selected for redundancy, of which 260 are compulsory. The Gurkhas were hit hardest, with 140 of them being told that they were being made redundant against their wishes. It is hoped that some of them will be able to apply for posts within other infantry regiments, though with the army being cut by a fifth by 2020, there are unlikely to be too many openings. Supporters of the Gurkhas reacted with fury and dismay to the news, and said they feared the brigade would be targeted again when the second tranche of redundancies gets under way in the new year. “I just hope the Gurkhas that have been made redundant today get the same support and welfare that other British soldiers are entitled to,” said Tikendra Dewan, of the British Gurkha Welfare Society. “That has not always been the case.” An MoD spokesman said: “No decision has yet been taken on when the second tranche of redundancies will begin, but it will be in early 2012. “There will be up to four tranches to reach the redundancies we need by 2014/15.” Ministry of Defence Military Defence policy Liam Fox Gurkhas Public sector cuts Nick Hopkins guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …WI Sees Mass Exodus of Public Sector Workers After Passage of Walker’s Union Busting Bill
September 1, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media As Keith Olbermann noted in his opening, “The real life impact of Republican Scott Walker’s anti-union wage is now taking shape, manifest in a mass exodus of public workers, choosing to retire in lieu of accepting the draconian cuts in benefits and collective bargaining rights.” APNewsBreak: Wis. teacher retirements double : When students return Thursday for the first day of school across Wisconsin, many familiar faces will be gone, as teachers chose retirement over coming back in the wake of a new law that forces them to pay more for benefits while taking away most of their collective bargaining rights. Documents obtained by The Associated Press under the state’s open records law show that about twice as many public school teachers decided to hang it up in the first half of this year as in each of the past two full years, part of a mass exit of public employees. In the first six months of 2011, overall public employee retirements were double that in all of either 2009 or 2010, according to data provided to the AP by the Wisconsin Retirement System. That includes 4,935 Wisconsin school district employees who started receiving retirement benefits, up from 2,527 teacher retirements in all of 2010 and 2,417 in 2009. Teachers weren’t the only ones heading for the exits. State agency retirements were particularly dramatic, nearly tripling from 747 in all of 2010 to 1,966 through June. Retirements from the University of Wisconsin System more than doubled, up from 480 last year to 1,091 this year. All told, 9,933 public workers had retired by the end of June, a 93 percent increase from 5,133 in 2010. The year before, there were 4,876 retirements. The state Department of Administration said no decision has been made on how many of the government jobs will be filled. “Each agency is looking at the vacancies created by retirements — case by case — and making decisions based on the needs of the agency, as well as with an eye toward keeping costs down for taxpayers,” said DOA spokeswoman Carla Vigue. Keith followed up with Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello who was in Wisconsin earlier this year to join the protests — Tom Morello Rages Against Anti-Union Bill at Wisconsin Rally : Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello spent Monday at the Wisconsin protests, performing acoustic songs at a rally and delivering a fiery speech to the thousands inside of the capital rotunda who are protesting Governor Walker’s attempt to end the right of state employees to collectively bargain. “What’s happened so far might be the most inspiring 24 hours of my life as an activist,” Morello tells Rolling Stone. “I’ve never seen this kind of outpouring of unapologetic, steel-backboned support for union causes in the United States. The Madison police were delivering bratwurst to the protesters inside the capitol, and the kids were thanking them. It was unbelievable.” If Governor Walker’s bill passes, it would effectively destroy Wisconsin’s civil servant unions; many fear that other Republican-controlled states would attempt to follow suit. “I come from a coal-mining town in central Illinois where everybody was union,” says Morello. “For almost 30 years, my mom was a public high school teacher in Libertyville, Illinois. I grew up with a firm belief that the leverage we have as working people is through the union. It’s the only counterweight to the raw greed of corporate power. For the past 22 years, I’ve been a union man in L.A. as a member of the Professional Musicians Local 47.” And as Susie noted back in April : A new anthem for workers from Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine. Visit http://saveworkers.org to join the fight and download “Union Town” for free. The cool video by Revolution Messaging, directed and edited by Robin Bell.
Continue reading …Study Casts Further Doubt on Jefferson-Hemings Affair. Will Press Notice?
September 1, 2011 No CommentFact: The man who wrote so eloquently about basic human liberty in the Declaration of Independence was himself a slave owner. Unproven theory: That man had a sexual relationship with one of those slaves and fathered at least one of her children. If you’re a liberal journalist, the fact makes you inclined to believe the theory, and ideology and political necessity take you the rest of the way. At least, that has been the case in reporting on the Jefferson-Hemings historical controversy over the last decade and more. It will be interesting to see if a new book that goes a long way toward exonerating Thomas Jefferson receives the same kind of breathless coverage as evidence the media cited to condemn him. Or if CBS produces a miniseries to correct the one it made exploiting that evidence. Back in 1998, DNA testing finally produced something conclusive about the centuries-old question of whether Thomas Jefferson had a sexual relationship with his slave, Sally Hemings. Liberal journalists, then desperate for ways to defend President Bill Clinton during his own sordid sex scandal, pounced on the news that a descendent of Hemings shared some of our third president’s DNA. But that’s all it said about the rumors and legends that had circulated for nearly two centuries. The report stated only that a Jefferson fathered a child with Hemings. And in fact there was a more likely culprit – Thomas’s younger brother Randolf, who did father children by his own slaves and was much closer to Hemings’ age. But the press had its story. In Nov. 1998, the Media Research Center quoted CNN anchor Marina Kolbe saying “new genetic work, coupled with old circumstantial evidence, proves Jefferson fathered at least one child by his slave, Sally Hemings. One of the study’s authors says it suggests, according to history, presidential indiscretions are long-standing.” NBC reporter Bob Faw was even more direct: “ After all, if Bill Clinton’s favorite President could end up on Mount Rushmore and the two-dollar bill, despite being sexually active with a subordinate, it might put Mr. Clinton’s conduct with a certain intern in a different light.” But nobody took the story and rqan with it like the Washington Post. A Post story maintained that Jefferson “almost certainly fathered a child with one of his slaves.” Columnist Bill Raspberry wrote, “After nearly two centuries, Thomas Jefferson’s secret is out.” Story after story took Thomas’ paternity as fact, some even speculating that Jefferson “maybe the father of the other four children as well.” Post coverage was so bad that in July, 1999, new ombudsman E.R. Shipp called the paper to account, writing, “In reporting on the Jefferson-Hemings story these six months, the Post often has failed to make clear what is fact…what is speculation and what is convenient.” Predictably, The New York Times wasn’t any better. A story by Neil A. Lewis was titled “Study Finds Strong Evidence Jefferson Fathered Slave Son.” Don Terry repeated the erroneous conclusion, writing that, “the recent release of DNA evidence indicating that Jefferson had probably fathered at least one child with Hemings,” and used it pick at the scab of black grievance. According to Terry, blacks – even black school kids –possess either a preternatural historical insight or clairvoyance, because they knew about Jefferson all along. “Why, he asked, did '’white society'’ need DNA evidence to accept what ‘ordinary people with common sense like me’ had recognized as fact long ago?” Terry ascribed the reluctance of scholars and white Jefferson defendants to accept the Jefferson-Hemings legend as “trying to hide” something. In an editorial , Brent Staples castigated white Jefferson family members who were reluctant to accept inconclusive evidence as conclusive. “If white Jeffersons cannot reach out to the black people whose ancestors built Monticello — and especially to those who share the founder's blood — then the prospects for harmony in this Jeffersonian Republic seem dimmer for all of us.” The truth and the great man’s reputation be damned. Thanks in no small part to the Times and the Post, assumptions of Jefferson’s guilt aren’t just for black high school students any more – they’ve become conventional wisdom.
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Madonna’s jaw-dropping take on the story of Wallis Simpson is a primped and simpering folly, preening and fatally mishandled Whatever the crimes committed by Wallis Simpson – marrying a king, sparking a constitutional crisis, fraternising with Nazis – it’s doubtful that she deserves the treatment meted out to her in W.E., Madonna’s jaw-dropping take on “the 20th-century’s greatest royal love story”. The woman is defiled, humiliated, made to look like a joke. The fact that W.E. comes couched in the guise of a fawning, servile snow-job only makes the punishment feel all the more cruel. Or could it be that Madonna is in deadly earnest here? If so, her film is more risible than we had any right to expect; a primped and simpering folly, the turkey that dreamed it was a peacock. Andrea Riseborough stars as Wallis, the perky American social climber who meets Edward VIII (James D’Arcy) in London, where she is drawn like a magnet to his pursed lips and peevish air. Yet Madonna has also taken the decision to run Wallis’s story in tandem with the story of Wally (Abbie Cornish), a trophy wife in 1990s New York, who totters in and out of the drama like a doped pony. Wally, it transpires, was named after Wallis and is obsessed by the woman to a degree that struck me as deeply worrying, but which Madonna presents as evidence of impeccable good taste. From time to time, the ghost of Wallis even pays Wally a call to dispense beauty tips or comfort her when she’s lying injured on the bathroom floor. “I’m here,” coos Wallis. “I’ll always be here.” And seldom has a promise sounded more like a threat. Madonna wants us to see these two as spiritual twins, in that they are both dazzled by expensive trinkets and searching desperately for love. We know instantly that Wallis’s first husband is a wrong ‘un because he drags her from the bath and beats her, and we are invited to take a similar view of Wally’s spouse when he starts claiming that Wallis and Edward were Nazi-sympathisers, which is patently absurd. “They might have been naive,” Wally scolds him. “That doesn’t mean that they were Nazis.” What an extraordinarily silly, preening, fatally mishandled film this is. It may even surpass 2008′s Filth and Wisdom, Madonna’s calamitous first outing as a film-maker. Her direction is so all over the shop that it barely qualifies as direction at all. W.E. gives us slo-mo and jump cuts and a crawling crane shot up a tree in Balmoral, but they are all just tricks without a purpose. For her big directoral flourish, Madonna has Wallis bound on stage to dance with a Masai tribesman while Pretty Vacant blares on the soundtrack. But why? What point is she making? That social-climbing Wallis-Simpson was the world’s first punk-rocker? That – see! – a genuine Nazi-sympathiser would never dream of dancing with an African? Who can say? My guess is that she could have had Wallis dressed as a clown, bungee jumping off the Eiffel Tower to the strains of The Birdy Song and it would have served her story just as well. Xan Brooks Rating: 1/5 Venice film festival 2011 Venice film festival Festivals Drama Madonna Xan Brooks guardian.co.uk
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Twitter poll on release comes after site publishes 120,000 of its cache of diplomatic cables with almost no redactions WikiLeaks is conducting an online poll of its Twitter followers to decide whether the whistleblowing site should publish in full its unredacted cache of US diplomatic cables. The site last week released more than 120,000 of its cache of diplomatic cables, with almost no redactions to protect the identity of informants and other individuals. The huge scale of the release, compared with 20,000 cables disclosed in the past nine months, prompted fierce criticism from the Australian government and former US state department spokesman PJ Crowley. WikiLeaks appeared likely to use the Twitter responses, which it said favoured disclosure at a ratio of 100 to one, to pave the way for imminent disclosure of the remaining material from its cable archive. The majority of cables published in the past week by WikiLeaks were unclassified but the site released the full archives, including confidential and secret cables, from Sweden and Australia. The Australian cables, which unlike previous releases were not apparently redacted, included a document identifying 23 Australians alleged to have links with al-Qaida, prompting an angry response from Robert McClelland, Australia’s attorney general. “On occasions in the past, WikiLeaks has decided to redact identifying features where security operations or safety could be put at risk. This has not occurred in this case.” “The publication of any information that could compromise Australia’s national security, or inhibit the ability of intelligence agencies to monitor potential threats, is incredibly irresponsible,” he said. In a lengthy statement posted online, WikiLeaks said publishing its full cache of cables was necessary because an encrypted file containing the whole database was available online, and the password was in the public domain. It said the Guardian was responsible for this security breach, due to a password published in the Guardian’s book WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy, published in February 2011. The Guardian urged WikiLeaks not to publish the unredacted documents or to release any further details pointing to where they might be found, and denied involvement in their publication. “The Guardian calls on Wikileaks not to carry through its plan to release the unredacted state department cables. We believe this would be grossly irresponsible,” it said in a statement. “The paper utterly rejects any suggestion that it is responsible for the release of the unedited cables. The Guardian’s book about WikiLeaks was published last February. No concerns about security were expressed when the book was published or at any stage during the past seven months.” The statement added that WikiLeaks had contacted the Guardian’s editor-in-chief, Alan Rusbridger, within the last month about future projects – despite the site’s claim that it had been aware of security concerns for at least that long. Rusbridger and Assange met on 4 August, the statement reveals. “The two-hour meeting, which was filmed by Assange’s colleague, was cordial. Not only did Assange never mention the supposed security leak, he proposed working with the Guardian again on specific future projects. “The Guardian and its partners went to great lengths to protect potentially vulnerable sources identified in the WikiLeaks documents throughout their collaboration with the organisation. WikiLeaks should take responsibility for its own pattern of actions and not seek to deflect it elsewhere.” WikiLeaks’ allegations centred on details of how the Guardian’s investigations editor, David Leigh, obtained the cache of cables from Assange. The Guardian book revealed the diplomatic files were placed by WikiLeaks on a secure online server in July 2010, which it was agreed would only be online for a matter of hours. This server held a heavily encrypted file containing the unredacted embassy cables database. Assange had given Leigh the password to unlock this file once he had obtained it, and this password was included in the book – seven months after the temporary file was taken offline. No trace could be found through web links or Google’s archives of this file ever being visible through this secure server. However, at a later stage the same encrypted file and at least one other encrypted with the same password was posted on the peer-to-peer file-sharing network BitTorrent. One of these files was first published on 7 December 2010, just hours before Assange’s arrest. In the days running up to his arrest, Assange had spoken of “taking precautions” in the event of anything untoward happening to him. This file, it was later discovered, was the same file that had been shared with the Guardian via the secure server. It shared the same file name and file size, and could be unlocked using the same password as that given to Leigh. Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a former member of staff at WikiLeaks who is attempting to set up a rival whistleblowing website, discovered this republished file and shared information on WikiLeaks’s security breach with a small group of journalists. Avoiding the re-use of passwords and avoiding republishing temporary files are both considered basic security procedures among online security experts. However, the file was not discovered or downloaded by the public. By 10am on Thursday it had been accessed once in the previous 31 days, despite mounting speculation about its existence. Initial news stories did not give details of the location of files or of passwords. Later, WikiLeaks and some of its supporters published a series of hints about the passwords and files. At about 11pm on Wednesday an anonymous Twitter user discovered the published password and opened a separate file – not the one shared with the Guardian – that had also been circulating on file-sharing networks for several months. There was no evidence that any member of the public had sufficient information to find and decrypt the files even hours before their discovery. In the hours immediately before the document cache was unencrypted, the WikiLeaks twitter feed urged users to download a different encrypted file from BitTorrent, without giving any details as to its contents or password. WikiLeaks The Guardian Julian Assange Alan Rusbridger Newspapers & magazines National newspapers Newspapers The US embassy cables United States Twitter US foreign policy US national security Australia Sweden Europe Internet James Ball guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Twitter poll on release comes after site publishes 120,000 of its cache of diplomatic cables with almost no redactions WikiLeaks is conducting an online poll of its Twitter followers to decide whether the whistleblowing site should publish in full its unredacted cache of US diplomatic cables. The site last week released more than 120,000 of its cache of diplomatic cables, with almost no redactions to protect the identity of informants and other individuals. The huge scale of the release, compared with 20,000 cables disclosed in the past nine months, prompted fierce criticism from the Australian government and former US state department spokesman PJ Crowley. WikiLeaks appeared likely to use the Twitter responses, which it said favoured disclosure at a ratio of 100 to one, to pave the way for imminent disclosure of the remaining material from its cable archive. The majority of cables published in the past week by WikiLeaks were unclassified but the site released the full archives, including confidential and secret cables, from Sweden and Australia. The Australian cables, which unlike previous releases were not apparently redacted, included a document identifying 23 Australians alleged to have links with al-Qaida, prompting an angry response from Robert McClelland, Australia’s attorney general. “On occasions in the past, WikiLeaks has decided to redact identifying features where security operations or safety could be put at risk. This has not occurred in this case.” “The publication of any information that could compromise Australia’s national security, or inhibit the ability of intelligence agencies to monitor potential threats, is incredibly irresponsible,” he said. In a lengthy statement posted online, WikiLeaks said publishing its full cache of cables was necessary because an encrypted file containing the whole database was available online, and the password was in the public domain. It said the Guardian was responsible for this security breach, due to a password published in the Guardian’s book WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy, published in February 2011. The Guardian urged WikiLeaks not to publish the unredacted documents or to release any further details pointing to where they might be found, and denied involvement in their publication. “The Guardian calls on Wikileaks not to carry through its plan to release the unredacted state department cables. We believe this would be grossly irresponsible,” it said in a statement. “The paper utterly rejects any suggestion that it is responsible for the release of the unedited cables. The Guardian’s book about WikiLeaks was published last February. No concerns about security were expressed when the book was published or at any stage during the past seven months.” The statement added that WikiLeaks had contacted the Guardian’s editor-in-chief, Alan Rusbridger, within the last month about future projects – despite the site’s claim that it had been aware of security concerns for at least that long. Rusbridger and Assange met on 4 August, the statement reveals. “The two-hour meeting, which was filmed by Assange’s colleague, was cordial. Not only did Assange never mention the supposed security leak, he proposed working with the Guardian again on specific future projects. “The Guardian and its partners went to great lengths to protect potentially vulnerable sources identified in the WikiLeaks documents throughout their collaboration with the organisation. WikiLeaks should take responsibility for its own pattern of actions and not seek to deflect it elsewhere.” WikiLeaks’ allegations centred on details of how the Guardian’s investigations editor, David Leigh, obtained the cache of cables from Assange. The Guardian book revealed the diplomatic files were placed by WikiLeaks on a secure online server in July 2010, which it was agreed would only be online for a matter of hours. This server held a heavily encrypted file containing the unredacted embassy cables database. Assange had given Leigh the password to unlock this file once he had obtained it, and this password was included in the book – seven months after the temporary file was taken offline. No trace could be found through web links or Google’s archives of this file ever being visible through this secure server. However, at a later stage the same encrypted file and at least one other encrypted with the same password was posted on the peer-to-peer file-sharing network BitTorrent. One of these files was first published on 7 December 2010, just hours before Assange’s arrest. In the days running up to his arrest, Assange had spoken of “taking precautions” in the event of anything untoward happening to him. This file, it was later discovered, was the same file that had been shared with the Guardian via the secure server. It shared the same file name and file size, and could be unlocked using the same password as that given to Leigh. Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a former member of staff at WikiLeaks who is attempting to set up a rival whistleblowing website, discovered this republished file and shared information on WikiLeaks’s security breach with a small group of journalists. Avoiding the re-use of passwords and avoiding republishing temporary files are both considered basic security procedures among online security experts. However, the file was not discovered or downloaded by the public. By 10am on Thursday it had been accessed once in the previous 31 days, despite mounting speculation about its existence. Initial news stories did not give details of the location of files or of passwords. Later, WikiLeaks and some of its supporters published a series of hints about the passwords and files. At about 11pm on Wednesday an anonymous Twitter user discovered the published password and opened a separate file – not the one shared with the Guardian – that had also been circulating on file-sharing networks for several months. There was no evidence that any member of the public had sufficient information to find and decrypt the files even hours before their discovery. In the hours immediately before the document cache was unencrypted, the WikiLeaks twitter feed urged users to download a different encrypted file from BitTorrent, without giving any details as to its contents or password. WikiLeaks The Guardian Julian Assange Alan Rusbridger Newspapers & magazines National newspapers Newspapers The US embassy cables United States Twitter US foreign policy US national security Australia Sweden Europe Internet James Ball guardian.co.uk
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Education secretary seeks to stem ‘erosion of adult authority’ by recruiting former male soldiers to the classroom Ministers are scrapping a requirement for teachers to record instances when they use physical force, as part of a wider move to “restore adult authority” in the wake of the riots in England. The education secretary, Michael Gove, said that he wanted greater numbers of men teaching, particularly in primary schools, so as to provide children with male authority figures who could display “both strength and sensitivity”. In a speech delivered at Durand academy, in Stockwell, south London, Gove said the regulations on the use of force inhibited teachers’ judgment. He said: “So let me be crystal clear, if any parent now hears a school say, ‘sorry, we can’t physically touch the students’, then that school is wrong. Plain wrong. The rules of the game have changed.” Gove said men considering teaching were deterred by a fear of rules that made contact between adults and children “a legal minefield”. The government was planning to start a programme this autumn encouraging former members of the armed forces to take up teaching, specifically to ensure more male role models, Gove said. In a speech that sought to address the causes of the riots in August, Gove began by making a moral distinction between what he called a “hard-working majority” and a “vicious, lawless, immoral minority”. But he went on to examine what he said were the policy failures that lay behind the creation of the “educational underclass”. He said: “To investigate where the looters came from is not to make excuses because of background. It is to shine a light on failures that originated in poor policy, skewed priorities, and the deliberate undermining of legitimate authority.” Gove said he was haunted by the thought that, if circumstances had been different, he might have been a part of this underclass. The education secretary highlighted his own family background. “I was born to a single parent, never knew my biological father and spent my first few months in care. “Thanks to the love of my adoptive mother and father, and the education I enjoyed, I was given amazing opportunities. So I know just how much the right parenting, the right values at home, and the right sort of school matter in determining a child’s fate.” Gove said there had been a slow erosion of adult authority, subverted by a culture in which young people felt able to ignore civilised boundaries. “The only way to reverse this dissolution of legitimate authority is step-by-step to move the ratchet back in favour of teachers.” Gove also spoke of an “iron-clad link” between illiteracy, disruption, truancy, exclusion and crime. More than 430,000 children were absent for 15% of school time, and more than a million pupils missed 10% of the academic year, he said. He added that only a third of those students who missed between 10% and 20% of school got the “basic minimum” of five good GCSE passes. The government is asking Charlie Taylor, a headteacher and Gove’s adviser on behaviour, to look at improving “alternative provision” units for children with behavioural problems. Taylor will be asked to work with Lord Harris of Peckham, who sponsors academies, to speed up the ability of those entities to create provision for excluded and disruptive pupils. Brian Lightman, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, welcomed Gove’s statement concerning the use of force against pupils. He said: “ASCL is delighted that the secretary of state has responded to our advice with the wise decision not to proceed with these regulations. The requirement would have imposed yet another bureaucratic burden that did nothing to improve discipline or safeguard children. “The use of physical restraint is thankfully required very rarely in schools. On occasions where it is needed, detailed guidance exists and staff fully understand the need to follow it to the letter. Schools already keep records of breaches of discipline.” Michael Gove Education policy Schools Academies UK riots Liberal-Conservative coalition Jeevan Vasagar guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Education secretary seeks to stem ‘erosion of adult authority’ by recruiting former male soldiers to the classroom Ministers are scrapping a requirement for teachers to record instances when they use physical force, as part of a wider move to “restore adult authority” in the wake of the riots in England. The education secretary, Michael Gove, said that he wanted greater numbers of men teaching, particularly in primary schools, so as to provide children with male authority figures who could display “both strength and sensitivity”. In a speech delivered at Durand academy, in Stockwell, south London, Gove said the regulations on the use of force inhibited teachers’ judgment. He said: “So let me be crystal clear, if any parent now hears a school say, ‘sorry, we can’t physically touch the students’, then that school is wrong. Plain wrong. The rules of the game have changed.” Gove said men considering teaching were deterred by a fear of rules that made contact between adults and children “a legal minefield”. The government was planning to start a programme this autumn encouraging former members of the armed forces to take up teaching, specifically to ensure more male role models, Gove said. In a speech that sought to address the causes of the riots in August, Gove began by making a moral distinction between what he called a “hard-working majority” and a “vicious, lawless, immoral minority”. But he went on to examine what he said were the policy failures that lay behind the creation of the “educational underclass”. He said: “To investigate where the looters came from is not to make excuses because of background. It is to shine a light on failures that originated in poor policy, skewed priorities, and the deliberate undermining of legitimate authority.” Gove said he was haunted by the thought that, if circumstances had been different, he might have been a part of this underclass. The education secretary highlighted his own family background. “I was born to a single parent, never knew my biological father and spent my first few months in care. “Thanks to the love of my adoptive mother and father, and the education I enjoyed, I was given amazing opportunities. So I know just how much the right parenting, the right values at home, and the right sort of school matter in determining a child’s fate.” Gove said there had been a slow erosion of adult authority, subverted by a culture in which young people felt able to ignore civilised boundaries. “The only way to reverse this dissolution of legitimate authority is step-by-step to move the ratchet back in favour of teachers.” Gove also spoke of an “iron-clad link” between illiteracy, disruption, truancy, exclusion and crime. More than 430,000 children were absent for 15% of school time, and more than a million pupils missed 10% of the academic year, he said. He added that only a third of those students who missed between 10% and 20% of school got the “basic minimum” of five good GCSE passes. The government is asking Charlie Taylor, a headteacher and Gove’s adviser on behaviour, to look at improving “alternative provision” units for children with behavioural problems. Taylor will be asked to work with Lord Harris of Peckham, who sponsors academies, to speed up the ability of those entities to create provision for excluded and disruptive pupils. Brian Lightman, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, welcomed Gove’s statement concerning the use of force against pupils. He said: “ASCL is delighted that the secretary of state has responded to our advice with the wise decision not to proceed with these regulations. The requirement would have imposed yet another bureaucratic burden that did nothing to improve discipline or safeguard children. “The use of physical restraint is thankfully required very rarely in schools. On occasions where it is needed, detailed guidance exists and staff fully understand the need to follow it to the letter. Schools already keep records of breaches of discipline.” Michael Gove Education policy Schools Academies UK riots Liberal-Conservative coalition Jeevan Vasagar guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Willie Nelson’s Effective Critique of Agribusiness for Chipotle Mexican Grill Chain
September 1, 2011 No CommentWillie Nelson covers a Coldplay song for the Chipotle restaurant chain. In the creative video, there is a strong critique of big agribusiness and the effects the big companies have on farmers and the food that is produced in the United States. It’s part of their Food With Integrity campaign: It means serving the very best sustainably raised food possible with an eye to great taste, great nutrition and great value. It means that we support and sustain family farmers who respect the land and the animals in their care. It means that whenever possible we use meat from animals raised without the use of antibiotics or added hormones. And it means that we source organic and local produce when practical. And that we use dairy from cows raised without the use of synthetic hormones. Food With Integrity is a journey that started more than a decade ago and one that will never end. Chipotle may not have a spotless record when it comes to workers rights and providing healthy foods, it seems the company does a better job than most and is moving in the right direction in recent years, particularly after its association with McDonald’s ended.
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