1, At some point America came to the end of an egalitarian dream birthed and nurtured by the New Deal of the 1930s, the creation of social security in the 1940s, and the Great Society programs of the 1960s. It’s now popular to say that, as president, Richard Nixon was to the left of Barack Obama, but what that means is that our society was then closer to a social democracy.
Two or three decades ago, however, we didn’t think of an education as being part of the landscape of predation upon the poor. Now, as Astra Taylor and Hannah Appel explain, when it comes to a new crew of “for-profit” colleges, higher education has gone hyena and is tearing at the financial flesh of the poor.
1,’What’s it worth to you?’ Just how much English do you need to know to work an underpaid job in the Portland-area? Workers who lack mastery of English earn some of the highest median wages for such workers: $29,000, which ranks in the Top 10 among the nation's 50 largest metro areas.
The study by the Brookings Institution (Yes! That Bookings Institution, spawn of the Frank Luntz lexical loins), "Investing in English Skills," delved into labor statistics for 89 metro areas to see how many workers can't speak English very well, how much education those workers have, what industries they cluster in and how much they earn.
2, In Seattle A group of African American workers is suing the companies hired to dig Sound Transit's light rail tunnel between the University of Washington and Capitol Hill in Seattle. What they say is , they were assigned demeaning tasks and quickly fired because of their race. Sound Transit's light rail tunnel between the University of Washington and Capitol Hill in Seattle, saying they were assigned demeaning tasks and quickly fired because of their race.
The eight workers filed a complaint in U.S. District Court this month, years after first raising the issue. While 82 percent of white workers dispatched there remained employed after five weeks, just 43 percent of black workers did, according to a statistical analysis commissioned by the agency.
3, Hundreds of students walked out of classrooms around suburban Denver on Tuesday in protest over a conservative-led school board proposal to focus history education on topics that promote citizenship, patriotism and respect for authority, in a show of civil disobedience that the new standards would aim to downplay. The youth protest involving six high schools in the state's second-largest school district follows a sick-out from teachers that shut down two high schools in the politically and economically diverse area that has become a key political battleground. Student participants said their demonstration was organized by word of mouth and social media. Many waved American flags and carried signs, including messages that read "There is nothing more patriotic than protest."
4, A letter signed by 43 veterans of an elite Israeli military intelligence unit declaring their refusal to continue serving the occupation has sent shockwaves through Israeli society. But not in the way the soldiers may have hoped. Unusually, this small group of reservists has gone beyond justifying their act of refusal in terms of general opposition to the occupation. Because of their place at the heart of the system of control over Palestinians, they have set out in detail, in the letter and subsequent interviews, what their work entails and why they find it morally repugnant. Veterans of the secretive Unit 8200, Israel’s NSA, say it is drummed into new intelligence recruits that no order is unlawful. They must, for example, guide air strikes even if civilians will be harmed.
5, Nine Syrian military targets have been hit by Israeli jets and guided missiles, the IDF says, claiming it was a decisive response to a series of cross-border shootings to protect the citizens of Israel. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group, “at least 10 members of the Syrian army were killed,”
- KBOO