1/25/2017

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image credit: Free Thought Project

It is shown right there in the video, a 17-year-old with a knife, boxed in by cops and squad cars and then, as he edges away from them toward a construction fence, an officer emptying his gun into the teenager’s body.

Courts Let Cops Get Away With Murder -- The police can break into your home unlawfully and shoot you dead, and nobody is at fault for that except you.

After being barred from attending the deposition of a Moore police officer she blames for the death of her husband, Nair Rodriguez was feeling particularly desperate and upset one morning right before Christmas, when she decided to vent her frustrations on Facebook, she said.
She's suing, saying police and theater security guards used excessive force against her husband, causing his death.

In a cellphone video Nair Rodriguez took the night her husband died, Luis Rodriguez can be heard saying "I can't breathe" while police held him down.

And all of this is only a small sample of the way things operate in a police state... a state wherein the wealthy elite rule through the military power of a police department.  It is a state wherein individual police officers have the power of 'the law' on their side, they also have the power of life and death and just about everything in between.

The news reports detail police brutality and police murder at every level of 'law enforcement' and in every part of the country.   Although there are 'rules' and 'laws' against such police abuse of the public, the guilty officers are rarely punished for their crimes.

As inequality grows more and more prevalent in this country, the militarized police will increasingly become the 'go to' force for maintenance of control.  Whereas our country already leads the world in incarceration, our prison populations will continue to grow.  More laws and more enforcement are directly in front of us.

When one takes 'law enforcement' as a career path, work with guns is part of the training.  There are dangers in careers with guns.  In reality, it is easy to imagine that person feeling threatened very frequently.  

But to gun someone down when there was virtually no chance of that person attacking or killing the 'law enforcement' officer AND for the officer to then claim that he felt his life was in danger... and, that's the truth !!!

Even Cops Say Police Are not Held Accountable for Their Misbehavior The system is built so police are above the law, a point cops themselves concede. from AlterNet by Kali Holloway Bad cops aren’t punished for their misbehavior, according to police officers. A new national Pew Research Center survey of 8,000 cops around the country found just a little over one fourth of police believe that fellow officers suffer consequences for misconduct. Conversely, the overwhelming majority of cops, 72 percent, said that “poorly performing officers are not held accountable” for bad behavior. The evidence is in countless stories from communities of color whose accounts of oppression and police abuse have, historically and today, been ignored. More recently, the proof is in acquittals and mistrials despite documentary evidence of cops criminally gunning down unarmed black citizens. The criminal justice system’s refusal to hold cops accountable is echoed at the departmental level, a fact confirmed by police officers themselves. This look-the-other-way approach to police misconduct creates a culture of corruption that can have dangerous and deadly consequences. Between 2014 and 2015, investigations turned up corruption scandals involving racism in policing in departments in New Jersey, San Francisco, Ohio, Louisiana, Georgia and perhaps most notoriously, Ferguson, Missouri. Last year, dozens of Oakland, Calif. officers were reportedly part of a years-long sex abuse scandal involving an underage girl. Sex, drug and weapons scandals were also uncovered in departments in upstate New York as well as Illinois. Court papers filed earlier this month by Joseph Pesapane, an officer in Long Island, New York, describes department brass turning a blind eye to domestic violence charges against officers, and a fellow cop’s fatally negligent response to an emergency that left a civilian dead. The suit claims the department has “a long history rife with public corruption where crimes and serious misconduct are condoned.” In 2015, a record number of cops were arrested and charged with murder or manslaughter for their role in fatal shootings, a figure that omitted non-shooting deaths, such as that of Freddie Gray. The year saw zero officer convictions. One high-profile case from that year was the murder of Walter Scott, an African-American man from South Carolina. In footage caught on a bystander’s cellphone, white officer Michael Slager fires eight fatal shots into Scott’s back as he runs in the opposite direction. In December, a mistrial was declared in the case, and Slager walked free. Other findings from the Pew survey are in keeping with responses from the police to social upheaval in recent years, particularly around race and police abuses. Two-thirds of the officers said “the deaths of blacks at the hands of police are isolated incidents.” In some cases, the race of the officer played a key role in the answers. The overwhelming majority of white cops, 92 percent, said “the country has made the changes needed to assure equal rights for blacks,” while just 29 percent of black cops agreed. Kali Holloway is a senior writer and the associate editor of media and culture at AlterNet.

Attacks on police officers would be classified as hate crimes under California bill  from the Los Angeles Times by Patrick McGreevy ​ Alarmed by a wave of shootings targeting police officers, state Assemblyman Jay Obernolte (R-Big Bear) has introduced a bill that would make an attack on law enforcement a hate crime in California, allowing stiffer penalties for those convicted. Obernolte’s bill comes after a series of shootings that have left 62 law enforcement officers dead so far this year, according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund. That is up from 38 officers shot to death in the line of duty by this time last year. Just in July, five police officers were killed by a gunman in Dallas, and three more died in a rampage in Baton Rouge, La. The shootings occurred at a time of high tension between law enforcement and some communities over police killings of unarmed people of color. “Our police officers put their lives on the line every day and it’s deeply disturbing when they are intentionally targeted because of their chosen profession,” Obernolte said Tuesday in a statement. “This law will send a message to criminals targeting law enforcement officers that their reprehensible behavior will not be tolerated.” Offenses committed because of the victim’s race, religion, disability or sexual orientation may currently be prosecuted as hate crimes in California. Conviction of a hate crime can result in an additional one to three years in state prison being tacked on to an offender's sentence, depending on the circumstances. Earlier this year, Louisiana adopted a measure, dubbed the Blue Lives Matter bill, making attacks on police officers a hate crime, and similar proposals are being considered in Texas, New Jersey and Mississippi, as well as in the U.S. Congress, which can change the federal hate crime law. Some groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, have voiced concerns that such laws could dilute the original intent of hate crime measures to protect vulnerable classes of citizens. There are already sufficient strong penalties available for those who attack police officers, said Kevin Baker, legislative director with the ACLU of California’s Center for Advocacy and Policy. ​  “Our hate crime statute is simply not the proper home for these offenses,” Baker added. “Peace officer status is an employment category not analogous to the personal characteristics included in our hate crime statute, including disability, gender, nationality, race or ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation.”

COPS WANT AMERICANS CHARGED WITH
A HATE CRIME FOR CRITICIZING POLICE 

Police across the country are trying to make it a hate crime, to criticize first responders or to resist arrest even if they're innocent! (first responders are police, firefighters and EMS personnel.)

According to Louisiana's new law, citizens who criticize first responders can be sentenced to prison for up to six months and given a $500 penalty. If convicted of a felony, they can receive an additional five years and fines up to $5,000.

What if a cop grabs a protester’s arm and they make a movement the cop considers aggressive, a minor disturbing the peace charge could be bumped up to a hate crime! Once a person is charged with a hate crime, they'll be sentenced to an additional 5 years behind bars. (Lawmakers in eight states are trying to criminalize protesting).

A newly enacted Oklahoma law makes any “assault” on an off-duty cop a felony even if they're acting in self-defense against a drunken off-duty cop. Any physical contact with a cop is considered a felony.  

Still doubt this is really happening? 

Yesterday, an Oklahoma woman was charged with inciting violence because she called police "pigs".

"We don't think it was very nice of her to threaten the lives and safety of our clients," Attorney David Kirk said. (a Google search for "man arrested for criticizing police" returned 9.4 MILLION hits.)

Police also want to arrest Americans, based on 'sentiment analysis' of their Tweets.

According to professor Juan Manuel Corchado, law enforcement could use the tool to detect , threats and areas with concentrations of potentially dangerous people. “It’s based both on the semantic analysis of messages and historical data and their evolution.”

Americans are being arrested for committing future crimes
Special Order S10-06 allows police to arrest Americans before they commit a crime.

"The primary goal of Targeted Repeat-Offender Apprehension and Prosecution (TRAP) is focused on enhanced prosecution to detain, convict, and incarcerate these offenders before they commit further crimes of violence."

Arresting Americans for criticizing police is a mistake
America incarcerates more people than any other country in the world. Each year 636,000 people walk out of America's prisons while nearly half a million haven't even been convicted of committing a crime! Our justice system is one big money-making revolving door.

From coast to coast, police want citizens arrested for criticizing first responders:

Louisiana --- Maryland --- Oklahoma --- Texas  --- New Mexico --- New York --- Pennsylvania --- Missouri --- Wisconsin --- Illinois --- Iowa --- Massachusetts  --- California 
​
Colorado citizens aren't allowed to resist an unlawful arrest

“It is no defense to a prosecution under this section that the peace officer was attempting to make an arrest which in fact was unlawful, if he was acting under color of his official authority, and in attempting to make the arrest he was not resorting to unreasonable or excessive force giving rise to the right of self-defense."

 Law enforcement officers turned politicians want to arrest Americans for criticizing police

Last year, congressmen Ken Buck introduced H.R. 4760, which makes attacking a first responder a federal 'hate' crime. Buck worked as a prosecutor for 25 years, where he arrested and charged hundreds of people with hate crimes.

“I understand the concern about hate crime legislation,” Buck said, adding that he has used hate crimes laws himself when he was a prosecutor. When it was appropriate, I charged cases under the hate crimes laws,” Buck said. 

Also last year, Alan Silvia a former cop turned politician, tried to make it a hate crime in Mass. to criticize first responders.

“I was a police officer for 22 years in Fall River and no one knows better than I the danger faced by men and women who put their lives on the line everyday under dangerous circumstances,” Silvia said in an interview. “They deserve every protection possible.”

The Fraternal Order of Police and the International Association of Chiefs of Police both want to arrest citizens that criticize police.

This legislation would treat any perceived ‘crime’ against first responders an act of hate and add another 5 years to a person’s sentence because of it.
 
As I mentioned last year, the war on cops is a lie. The reality is, the average number of cop killings has been falling since the 1970's. The truth is, the deadliest time to be a cop in America was forty years ago!

image credit: NPR

 Police across the country make "value judgments" about hate crimes

“This is a new world for law enforcement. We have people that monitor social media particularly in and around the things that we think maybe related to hate crimes, and then we make value judgments based on the law” Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said.

It's only a matter of time, before it will be illegal to criticize first responders in America.

Do Not Resist

Obama should have released Leonard Peltier

1/22/2017

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Ex-FBI Agent Pleads for the Release of Leonard Peltier for Humanitarian Reasons  After 40 years in jail (6 in solitary confinement), with his guilt questionable and his health poor, it is time to let Peltier out of prison. ​By John C. Ryan /  AlterNet I was an agent with the FBI when two of my fellow agents were murdered at the Pine Ridge Reservation in 1975. Today I’m calling on President Obama to free the man convicted of killing them. I didn’t know Special Agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams personally, but I felt the same shock and horror everyone in the FBI felt at their deaths. Like former United States Attorney James Reynolds, who handled the prosecution in the critical post-trial period, I believe that clemency for Leonard Peltier “is in the best interest of justice.” I further believe that keeping him incarcerated any longer perverts the system of justice for which the two agents died, and which the agency is sworn to uphold. I do not make this call lightly, and it should not be seen as a criticism of the actions of the well-meaning, patriotic agents of the Bureau, nor as a referendum on the Bureau itself. A benefit of hindsight is that sometimes it provides an opportunity to address an injustice like this. According to the Eighth Circuit, witnesses were coerced and ballistics evidence was withheld from Peltier's attorneys at trial. U.S. Attorney Reynolds has re-emphasized in recent interviews that the government had no proof to support its trial theory that Peltier was the person who shot the two FBI agents, and he remains in jail today on a thin “accomplice” theory. Despite the disturbing number of red flags, judicial criticism of government conduct, and his accomplice status, Peltier has been held in prison for more than four decades, four times longer than former FBI Special Agent Mark Putnam, who had an affair with an informant, murdered her when he learned she was pregnant and then obstructed the investigation into her disappearance. Over the course of those four decades, Leonard Peltier has spent no less than six years in solitary confinement; conditions that the world is coming to understand are cruel and inhuman by definition. Is this justice or vengeance? ​I am not alone in urging clemency. My opinion is shared by the former U.S. Attorney Reynolds who prosecuted the case; Eighth Circuit Judge Gerald Heaney who sat on two of Peltier’s appeals; leading luminaries of the human rights community such as Bishop Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama, the late Coretta Scott King and the late Nelson Mandela; tribal nations from across the country; and more than 112,000 Americans who signed petitions urging the government not to relitigate the case, but to allow closure. ​Peltier is 72 years old and reportedly has diabetes, a heart condition, has suffered a stroke, and

Native American Activist Leonard Peltier Denied Clemency Amnesty International -- Native American activist Leonard Peltier was denied clemency by President Obama today after more than four decades in prison. ​ “We are deeply saddened by the news that President Obama will not let Leonard go home,” said Margaret Huang, executive director of Amnesty International USA. “Despite serious concerns about the fairness of legal proceedings that led to his trial and conviction, Peltier was imprisoned for more than 40 years. He has always maintained his innocence. The families of the FBI agents who were killed during the 1975 confrontation between the FBI and American Indian Movement (AIM) members have a right to justice, but justice will not be served by Peltier’s continued imprisonment.” “Leonard Peltier is in failing health. The failure to act may have condemned him to die in prison.” Leonard Peltier, an Anishinabe-Lakota Native American is serving two consecutive life sentences. When arrested, he was a leading member of the American Indian Movement, an advocacy group and movement concerned with Native American rights. In 1975, during a confrontation involving AIM members, two FBI agents were shot dead. Leonard was convicted of their murders, but has always maintained his innocence. Amnesty International has studied his case extensively over many years and remains seriously concerned about the fairness of proceedings leading to his trial and conviction. Amnesty believes that political factors may have influenced the way in which the case was prosecuted. In 2009, Leonard Peltier’s petition for release on parole was denied by the US Parole Commission. In fact, the Commission has repeatedly denied parole on the grounds that Leonard did not accept criminal responsibility for the murders of the two FBI agents. This is despite the fact that, after one such hearing, the Commission acknowledged that, “the prosecution has conceded the lack of any direct evidence that you personally participated in the executions of two FBI agents.” ​ Today, Leonard is 71 years old. He suffers from diabetes, and was recently diagnosed with an abdominal aortic aneurysm. Amnesty understands that he is not eligible for consideration for parole again until 2024. Given that all available legal remedies have been exhausted and that that Leonard Peltier has now spent over 40 years in prison and is in poor health, Amnesty believes that the US authorities should order Leonard Peltier’s release from prison on humanitarian grounds and in the interests of justice.

recently was diagnosed with an abdominal aortic aneurysm, a life-threatening condition that requires diligent medical attention which cannot be provided by the penitentiary where he is housed.
​
In granting clemency, President Obama will lift a virtual death sentence for Peltier, who is next eligible for parole in 2024.

Finally, although Peltier has consistently maintained his innocence in the killings of agents Coler and Williams, he has also expressed sorrow and remorse over the events that led to their deaths, as well as his concern for their families. Whatever one may think of the violence at the Pine Ridge Reservation, or the circumstances of Peltier’s conviction, he is clearly not a threat to anything or anyone. He simply wants to go home.

Like the vast majority of FBI agents, I joined the agency out of a desire to make the world a better place. I believed then as I believe now in the American values of justice and fairness, but as I look back over the past 41 years, I see neither in the Peltier case.

For all these reasons and more, I respectively urge President Obama to grant the clemency petition of Leonard Peltier, in the name of reconciliation and compassion, and in the interest of the American system of justice for which my two fellow agents died.
​
John C. “Jack Ryan” was an FBI special agent from 1966 through 1987.

the American people have nothing but hope... 1/21/2017 0 Comments   by E.L. Christianson Jr. Dr. Roberts is correct, "The entire political edifice in the US has insulated itself from the will, desires, and needs of the people."  We can hope he is correct in his interpretation of Trump's inaugural speech.   Dr. Roberts has an 'insider's' view of the American political scene.  He understands the connections between agencies and people and what is required to get things done.  He sees that Trump is not (yet) part of the system and offers hope that Trump can make a difference. As citizens, we don't have anything else to latch onto.  We are hopelessly and helplessly dragged along by whoever our leaders happen to be.  We receive that which the system doles out to us whether good or bad.  Most of us seem to be deceived to the point of not knowing which way is up.  Perhaps Trump will be that pleasant surprise of which our fantasies are created. So far, Trump's appointments leave us a little shaken.  Mostly they seem to be the opposite of what one might have hoped.  Mostly they seem to be at odds with their various departments.  Perhaps Trump sees a larger picture and has a grand scheme in mind. If, in truth, Trump is going to make sweeping changes in our systems of government, then those changes will be welcome regardless of outcomes... we in this country are desperate for a change in those systems and measuring those changes as positive or negative will require serious examination by future generations. We can hope that the CIA (as we all know they are capable of doing) does not 'bump Trump off'!  Otherwise, we may be left without hope and our only actionable course is to follow Dr. Roberts advice regarding Langley. Trump's Declaration of War The entire political edifice in the US has insulated itself from the will, desires, and needs of the people. Now Trump says the politicians will be accountable to the people. This, of course, would mean a big drop in their security in office and in their income and wealth. by Paul Craig Roberts President Trump's brief inaugural speech was a declaration of war against the entirety of the American Ruling Establishment. All of it. Trump made it abundantly clear that Americans' enemies are right here at home: globalists, neoliberal economists, neoconservatives and other unilateralists accustomed to imposing the US on the world and involving us in endless and expensive wars, politicians who serve the Ruling Establishment rather than the American people, indeed, the entire canopy of private interests that have run America into the ground while getting rich in the process. If truth can be said, President Trump has declared a war far more dangerous to himself than if he had declared war against Russia or China. The interest groups designated by Trump as The Enemy are well entrenched and accustomed to being in charge. Their powerful networks are still in place. Although there are Republican majorities in the House and Senate, most of those in Congress are answerable to the ruling interest groups that provide their campaign funds and not to the American people or to the President. The military/security complex, offshoring corporations, Wall Street and the banks are not going to roll over for Trump. And neither is the presstitute media, which is owned by the interest groups whose power Trump challenges. Trump made it clear that he stands for every American, black, brown, and white. Little doubt his declaration of inclusiveness will be ignored by the haters on the left who will continue to call him a racist just as the $50 per hour paid protesters are doing as I write. Indeed, black leadership, for example, is enculturated into the victimization role from which it would be hard for them to escape. How do you pull together people who all their lives have been taught that whites are racists and that they are the victims of racists? Can it be done? I was just on a program briefly with Press TV in which we were supposed to provide analysis of Trump's inaugural speech. The other commentator was a black American in Washington, DC. Trump's inclusiveness speech made no impression on him, and the show host was only interested in showing the hired protesters as a way of discrediting America. So many people have an economic interest in speaking in behalf of victims that inclusiveness puts them out of jobs and causes. So along with the globalists, the CIA, the offshoring corporations, the armaments industries, the NATO establishment in Europe, and foreign politicians accustomed to being well paid for supporting Washington's interventionist foreign policy, Trump will have arrayed against him the leaders of the victimized peoples, the blacks, the Hispanics, the feminists, the illegals, the homosexuals and trans-gendered. This long list, of course, includes the white liberals as well, as they are convinced that flyover America is the habitat of white racists, misogynists, homophobes, and gun nuts. As far as they are concerned, this 84% of geographical US should be quarantined or interred. In other words, does enough good will remain in the population to enable a President to unite the 16% America haters with the 84% America lovers? Consider the forces that Trump has against him: Black and Hispanic leaders need victimization, because it is what elevates them to power and income. They will turn a jaundiced eye toward Trump's inclusiveness. Inclusiveness is good for blacks and Hispanics, but not for their leaders. The executives and shareholders of global corporations are enriched by the off-shored jobs that Trump says he will bring home. If the jobs come home, their profits, performance bonuses, and capital gains will go away. But the economic security of the American population will return. The military/security complex has a 1,000 billion annual budget dependent on "the Russian threat" that Trump says he is going to replace with normalized relations. Trump's assassination cannot be ruled out. Many Europeans owe their prestige, power, and incomes to the NATO that Trump has called into question. The financial sector's profits almost entirely flow from putting Americans into debt bondage and from looting their private and public pensions. The financial sector with their agent, the Federal Reserve, can overwhelm Trump with financial crisis. The New York Federal Reserve Bank has a complete trading desk. It can send any market into turmoil. Or support any market, because there is no limit on its ability to create US dollars. The entire political edifice in the US has insulated itself from the will, desires, and needs of the people. Now Trump says the politicians will be accountable to the people. This, of course, would mean a big drop in their security in office and in their income and wealth. There are a large number of groups, funded by we-know-not-who. For example, RootsAction has responded today to Trump's forceful commitment to stand for all of the people against the Ruling Establishment with a request to "ask Congress to direct the House Judiciary Committee to open an impeachment investigation" and to send money for Trump's impeachment. Another hate group, human rights first, attacks Trump's defense of our borders as closing "a refuge of hope for those fleeing persecution." Think about this for a minute. According to the liberal-progressive-left and the racial interest group organizations, the US is a racist society and President Trump is a racist. Yet, people subject to American racism are fleeing from persecution to America where they will be racially persecuted? It doesn't make sense. The illegals come here for work. Ask the construction companies. Ask the chicken and animal slaughter houses. Ask the vacation area cleaning services. This list of those on whom Trump has declared war is long enough, although there are more that can be added. We should ask ourselves why a 70-year-old billionaire with flourishing businesses, a beautiful wife, and intelligent children is willing to give his final years to the extraordinary stress of being President with the stressful agenda of putting the government back in the hands of the American people. There is no doubt that Trump has made himself a target of assassination. The CIA is not going to give up and go away. Why would a person take on the grand restoration of America that Trump has declared when he could instead spend his remaining years enjoying himself immensely? Whatever the reason, we should be grateful for it, and if he is sincere we must support him. If he is assassinated, we need to take up our weapons, burn Langley to the ground and kill every one of them. If he succeeds, he deserves the designation: Trump the Great! Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and any other country on the CIA's hit list should undersand that Trump's rise is insufficient protection. The CIA is a worldwide organization. Its profitable businesses provide income independent of the US budget. The organization is capable of undertaking operations independently of the President or even of its own Director. The CIA has had about 70 years to entrench itself. It has not gone away. ​ Dr. Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury for Economic Policy in the Reagan Administration. He was associate editor and columnist with the Wall Street Journal, columnist for Business Week and the Scripps Howard News Service. He is a contributing editor to Gerald Celente's Trends Journal. He has had numerous university appointments. His books, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West is available here, and How America Was Lost, can be ordered here. His latest book, The Neoconservative Threat To International Order: Washington's Perilous War For Hegemony, can be ordered here.

Rick Perry, a strange selection for energy secretary...

1/20/2017

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by E.L. Christianson Jr.

If it weren't serious, it would seem to be a joke.  One could laugh.  Here is a person nominated to lead a section of government, a department,  that this person wanted to eliminate from from being a part of the government.  When this person was running for the office of president and was promoting his own ideas of how government would function under his leadership, he stated clearly that he would remove the energy department, except his statement was not clear because under the pressure of debating his opponents, he couldn't remember to which department he was making reference.

Watching the video of his inability to remember a major point of his debate causes one to realize why his presidential candidacy didn't move forward.  Apparently the name of the department was also not in his notes.  Here is a man who was completely unprepared for a televised debate leading to the White House.

And now, we are to believe that he will do a quick study and come up to speed regarding nuclear energy and nuclear weapons.  This will be the guy in charge?

This is not a man who is conversant with the facts.  During the election campaign, he appealed to New Hampshire students who would be 21 years old by election day and was unaware that 18 year olds would also be voting... duh !!!

He doesn't know which century we fought our American Revolutionary War against the British Empire. Here is a man who is all over the place, who considered removing his state, Texas, from the United States of America.  What next??? The truth is that he doesn't know a lot of things and does not appear capable of learning quickly.    And, he's to be in charge of our national nuclear policies... that's scary, and that's the truth !!!

---

Rick Perry Is the Wrong Choice for Energy Secretary ​from the New York Times  by Lawrence M. Krauss Much has been made of the irony of Rick Perry’s nomination to be the next secretary of energy. He would oversee a department that he wanted to eliminate as a Republican presidential candidate in the 2012 primaries, though he couldn’t remember its name during a debate. ​ But there are much more serious reasons to be concerned about this nomination. In terms of qualifications, Mr. Perry, a former governor of Texas, doesn’t come close to his immediate predecessors. He would follow President Obama’s two energy secretaries: first, Steven Chu, a Nobel laureate physicist, and then Ernest J. Moniz, a distinguished nuclear physicist from M.I.T. There are reasons the appointment of scientists to this position was and is particularly appropriate, especially now. While investment in new sources of energy (a subject on which both Mr. Chu and Mr. Moniz are experts) is a part of the energy secretary’s portfolio, by far the largest part of the department’s budget involves the stewardship of nuclear weapons, and research and development associated with the nuclear weapons complex. Moreover, the Department of Energy is the chief source of support for research in the physical sciences in the United States, providing far more money than the National Science Foundation, and supporting, among other things, fundamental inquiry in areas ranging from particle physics to cosmology. Presumably Governor Perry wanted to do away with the Energy Department because he perceived it as the source of unwanted regulation in the energy sector, and also because he felt that private enterprise was sufficient to meet the nation’s needs in that area. Whether that view is valid, the energy secretary should be someone who is at least familiar with the strategic issues associated with both nuclear power and nuclear weapons, and ideally someone who is capable of digging down into the complex issues facing the United States in these areas. The next energy secretary should also have at least a modicum of policy experience with some of the vast array of fundamental science supported by the agency.

Rick Perry Uniquely Unqualified to Lead Department of Energy from Common Dreams by Friends of the Earth WASHINGTON - Today the Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee is holding its hearing on Donald Trump’s nominee for the Department of Energy, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Friends of the Earth Senior Political Strategist Ben Schreiber issued the following response: Perry is uniquely unqualified to run the Department of Energy. Perry had no idea that the DOE’s main responsibility was overseeing the U.S.’s nuclear arsenal when he accepted the job. The only conclusion we can draw is that Trump also had no idea what the Department of Energy really does. The Senate needs to perform its important oversight function and reject Perry instead of simply enabling Trump to undermine the pillars of our country. Republicans are showing that they are committed to cracking down on ethics oversight, not on ethical violations. Friends of the Earth is the U.S. voice of the world's largest grassroots environmental network, with member groups in 77 countries. Since 1969, Friends of the Earth has fought to create a more healthy, just world.

One need look back only to the complex negotiations surrounding the Iran nuclear deal, and remember Secretary Moniz huddling with Secretary of State John Kerry, and engaged in long meetings with his Iranian counterpart, another nuclear physicist, to appreciate how important it was to have someone there who actually knew what was required to produce viable nuclear weapons from nuclear reactor products, and what was required to ensure that treaty violations could be detected.

I met Governor Perry once, at the World Economic Forum. He seemed like a genuinely nice guy. After finding out I was a physicist, he singled me out in the audience while he was onstage, saying, “As Professor Krauss knows, you can violate the laws of physics, but only for a while.” My answer was, “Well, actually you can’t,” which was followed by a bit of nervous laughter from the crowd. That exchange came to mind this morning when I learned of his nomination.

Governor Perry may be a nice guy, and his free market instincts may mesh well with those of President-elect Donald J. Trump, but he has not demonstrated that he is the person for this job.

In the present climate, when nuclear tensions are higher than they have been since the height of the Cold War, when the Iran deal is under attack and proliferation in unstable countries like Pakistan and North Korea will affect plans for our own arsenal, we need someone who is better prepared to handle the challenges. This is also the case as the government makes decisions about supporting research that will affect the future of fundamental inquiry for much of this century.

Maybe not a rocket scientist, but not someone who likes to think that the laws of physics can be played with at will.

Lawrence M. Krauss is director of the Origins Project at Arizona State University, chairman of the board of sponsors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and author of the forthcoming “The Greatest Story Ever Told — So Far: Why Are We Here?”

educating our children is important in the extreme...

1/19/2017

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tragically, this appears to be the wrong person for the job ???

by E.L. Christianson Jr.

In truth, there is not much in the world that is more important than the education of our future generations.  The physical and mental health of those future generations would rival education in importance, but there is not much else.  'Our children are the future' is a standard, high sounding phrase that has tilted out of focus in recent decades.

Education was seen as important through most of world history and it was certainly seen that way through early American history.   Slaves struggled and risked their lives to learn to read and to write.  Early American leadership at every level supported education in a broad sense.  There has been an understanding of ​the relationship between the public and political purposes and the values involved in education.

It has been recognized that education contributes to community life by facilitating social justice and by promoting ideals of cultural and artistic excellence which all combine to contribute to advancing the human condition.

​Starting in about 3500 B.C., various writing systems developed in ancient civilizations around the world.  Education (writing) brought wealth and power to those civilizations able to grasp the developing technology.  As these systems expanded, one can see the genius of human-kind as various concepts and materials were utilized in the process.  

Surfaces used for early writing include wax-covered writing boards (used, as well as clay tablets, by the Assyrians), sheets or strips of bark from trees (in Indonesia, Tibet and the Americas), the thick palm-like leaves of a particular tree, the leaves then punctured with a hole and stacked together like the pages of a book (these writings in India and South east Asia include Buddhist scriptures and Sanskrit literature), parchment, made of goatskin that had been soaked and scraped to remove hair, which was used from at least the 2nd century B.C., vellum, made from calfskin, and wax tablets which could be wiped clean to provide a fresh surface (in the Roman times).

Leadership in a developing 'America' also knew of the value of education.   As early as ​1647, the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony decrees that every town of fifty families should have an elementary school and that every town of 100 families should have a Latin school.

By 1785 the Continental Congress (before the U.S. Constitution) passed a law calling for a survey of the "Northwest Territory".  The law created "townships," reserving a portion of each township for a local school.

In ​1790 the Pennsylvania state constitution calls for free public education for poor children.

In 1820 the first public high school in the United States, Boston English, opens.  And this is followed in 1827 with Massachusetts passing a law making all grades of public school open to all pupils free of charge.

Only in the most recent times has education fallen on hard times.  Only in the most recent times has education been in the hands of capitalist thinkers.  The result of such, in the United States has relegated education to a series of budget cuts under the guise of efficiency.  Now, the stated goal of educational systems in the United States is profit rather than to enlighten the greatest number of young people.  

We have moved to a system wherein our prison system dominates our system of schools.  As would be expected by any rational being, this has resulted in a 'dumbing down' of our population... We are not doing very well and various studies demonstrate our failings...

​According to the International Centre for Prison Studies, there are 2,228,424 prisoners in the United States. That is enough to make the United States rank first in that category. The second highest number of prisoners is in China, at 1,701,344.

​According to Pearson, the United States has a “cognitive skills and educational attainment” score making the United States rank fourteenth out of forty countries ranked in that category. 

​According to the Pew Global Attitudes Project, 33% of Americans are satisfied “with the way things are going” in their country. That makes the United States rank nineteenth out of forty-four countries ranked in that category. China ranks first, with 87% of Chinese saying that they are satisfied with how things are going in China.

​According to Bloomberg.com, the United States has the forty-fourth most efficient health care system out of fifty-one countries ranked in that category. (Efficiency includes life expectancy and health care costs per capita.) 

​According to the research firm IPSOS Mori, the United States ranks second out of fourteen countries in general ignorance about social statistics such as teen pregnancy, unemployment rates, and voting patterns. Italy is the most ignorant of the fourteen countries.

​According to the 2014 Global Peace Index prepared by the Institute for Economics and Peace, the United States ranks one hundred and first out of one hundred sixty-two countries ranked in that category.  The most peaceful country in the world is Iceland.

As Americans look forward at the future of education in this country, we can only be frightened by what appears to be giant moves against public education and it taints everything else in our future.  

"In fact, the whole machinery of our intelligence, our general ideas and laws, fixed and external objects, principles, persons, and gods, are so many symbolic, algebraic expressions. They stand for experience; experience which we are incapable of retaining and surveying in its multitudinous immediacy. We should flounder hopelessly, like the animals, did we not keep ourselves afloat and direct our course by these intellectual devices. Theory helps us to bear our ignorance of fact." -- George Santayana, and he was telling the truth !!!

This cuneiform text dates back to the 6th year of prince Lugalanda who ruled about 2370 B.C. in southern Mesopotamia. It is an administrative document concerning deliveries of three sorts of beer to different recipients (to the palace and to a temple for offerings) and gives the exact quantities of barley and other ingredients used in brewing. Credit: Max Planck Society

​Betsy DeVos May Defund Public Ed — But Wants Guns in Schools to Fight Grizzlies In a rushed confirmation hearing, billionaire Betsy DeVos's attempts to dodge tough questions occasionally entered the realm of absurdity ​ ​from Common Dreams by Nika Knight Billionaire heiress and school privatization advocate Betsy DeVos faced withering scrutiny Tuesday at a rushed confirmation hearing for her nomination as secretary of education, often betraying her inexperience with education policy as she dodged Democrats' questions. As she attempted to avoid the line of questioning, at one point DeVos refused to say whether or not she'd defund public schools. Watch NBC News' footage of DeVos refusing to answer a series of questions about her donations to the Republican Party, her privatization agenda, and her total lack of government and policy experience: DeVos was also the first of President-elect Donald Trump's cabinet picks to sit for a hearing without completing a full ethics review, a fact not lost on Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who noted that without that review, the senators are unable to question the billionaire about how she stands to personally profit from education policy. Democrats were also dismayed when Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, announced that he was limiting the questioning to "one round of five minutes for each senator," the New York Times writes, noting that the questioning in previous hearings had included two rounds. During the hearing, Warren pointed out that DeVos has no experience at all with managing loans or grants—particularly on the scale of the federal loan and grant system, a system upon which poor, working- and middle-class students depend to pursue higher education: And DeVos faced many pointed questions about her myriad conflicts of interest, such as when Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) asked DeVos if her family's contributions of hundreds of millions of dollars to the Republican Party perhaps played a role in her nomination for education secretary. When Sanders went on to ask if DeVos would work with him to push for free college tuition, DeVos, who personally inherited billions, said, "I think that's a really interesting idea, and it's really great to consider and think about, but I think we also have to consider the fact that nothing in life is really free." DeVos also refused to answer Sanders' questions about to how she plans to help people paid less than $15/hour—and the Republican Party is against raising the minimum wage, he points out—as they struggle to pay for the skyrocketing costs higher education and childcare: At times DeVos even appeared entirely unfamiliar with major education laws, such as when Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) asked DeVos whether her plan to decrease federal funds for schools meant she wouldn't enforce the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. DeVos had apparently never heard of it:

Whoah Say What?!? Betsy DeVos Diligently Loves Congress and States' Rights and Potential Grizzlies But Schools - Not So Much (Also, Actually, Not Crazy About Kids With Disabilities) ​from Common Dreams by Abby Zimet, Man, watching the crumbling of the republic is gonna be tough. Tuesday's accelerated confirmation "hearing" - ie a strictly allotted five-minute evening questioning so nobody could find out just what a debacle it represents for our democracy - on super-rich right-wing zealot Betsy DeVos to head the Department of Education even though she hates it, knows nothing about it, and has spent her uber-privileged life working against it was unreal, aka "low, insulting burlesque and a revolting dumbshow of the arrogance of monied ignorance." ​The  deep-pocketed, God-and-conversion-therapy-loving lobbyist, best known for helping destroy Michigan's public education system and once conceding, "We are buying influence and we do expect something in return" kept a bizarre Stepford smile plastered on her face while hedging and dodging and repeatedly failing to answer questions about fraud, student debt, disability rights and fundamental educational philosophy from a host of Democratic notables who actually know their stuff. Because you probably, understandably don't have the will or iron stomach to watch it all, some highlights: Bernie does his forthright thing by asking if she'd be there if not for giving the Repubs $200 million. Al Franken raises his disbelieving eyebrows while hammering her for not knowing the difference between the debated-for-decades educational standards of "proficiency" vs "growth." Elizabeth Warren quickly tires of her vaguely saying sure she's against Trump-University-style waste, fraud and abuse and you can bet she'll be vigilant about working with Congress to make sure it doesn't happen and blah blah diligent blah, to which an exasperated Warren who's heard it all before snaps, "Yeah, I'm asking how." ​Tim Kaine and Maggie Hassan both get her to reveal she knows nothing about existing federal laws protecting the rights of kids with disabilities but what the hey she'll just let states decide if they get wheelchair ramps. And when Chris Murphy - Senator of the state that endured Sandy Hook - asks about guns in schools, she again hems and haws about states' rights before allowing as how maybe some schools need guns to protect against "potential grizzlies." Yes. Grizzlies. This would all be wildly entertaining if our kids didn't ultimately have to pay for it. But they will.

That was far from the most absurd moment of the hearing, observers noted: at one point, DeVos argued in favor of allowing guns in schools—citing the necessity of defending schools from grizzly bears. She mentioned a school in Wyoming that had a fence to protect it from wildlife, and said, "I think probably there, I would imagine that there's probably a gun in the school to protect from potential grizzlies."

"It's hard to imagine someone less qualified to oversee the nation's schools than Betsy DeVos," argued public education advocate Diane Ravitch earlier this month. "DeVos did not attend public schools, nor did her children. She has never been a teacher, administrator, practitioner or scholar of education. In fact, one wonders whether she has ever actually set foot in a public school."

"Betsy DeVos is a dedicated enemy of public education," Ravitch said on MSNBC Tuesday, "and 85 percent of this country's children are in public schools."
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"Reason, knowledge, ethics—none of that matters here," wrote teacher and advocate Steven Singer after the hearing. "We are truly in the age of the plutocrats where money has arrogantly attempted to buy governmental power outright. Right in front of our noses."

Roman students with teacher