Following editorial content by I Praetorian


Ladies and Gentlemen. If you heard the crack of bone, numbness and the eventual smell of Gangrene fills the air, would you wait for more information (in a lesser format) to motivate you to seek out a doctor? Folks the stench has been progressing for years. How much more will it take? The tide has turned. Thousands of jobs lost every week. The millions of unemployed are a mask for the millions more that have fallen off the meager unemployment subsidies and thereby left out of the count and left out in the cold.


READ THIS - YOU ARE GOING TO LOOSE YOUR JOB. Our professional association... I mean union... No I was told we're not that... If not this year (2-3 more rounds of cuts this year.) Then within the next two years. By the time the California Deficit is fixed in reality not just on paper, the still out of control national economic recession, (how many times did Bush say "there is no recession"?) will have spiraled down down to depression. Or worse yet, fostered by years of artificially maintained ultra low interest rates, a cycle of prolonged deflation. Ask a real economist. One without a personal political bend or trying to sell a product and you will see that this is not just possible. Probable? More economic variables than I know or care to list have come together in existential harmony to make a shambles of the American Dream and Our middle class. Do you know that the American Middle Class has been steadily decreasing since the Johnson administration. With the exception of a couple of years during Clinton's? Do you know we are dependent on a bloody debauched dictatorship for our national economic future? The Saudi's. Saudi Arabia has by virtue of it's huge oil reserves (read power and dependence related access to our military) keeps OPEC from raising prices or switching payment for that oil from the US dollar to the Euro. Either would bring us to our knees. Either would greatly increase the wealth of the other OPEC nations. Most of which have a burning axe to grind for the U.S.


As for the Saudi's every spare bit of capitol not spent on devaluing US assets to try and maintain some value of their previous investments, is spent paying for US military protection and keeping their own people from over throwing the Saudi family. And for some vary good reasons. According to the organization "Human Rights Watch," the Saudi family which is estimated at over a hundred individuals, still require women to obtain permission from male guardians (usually husband or father) to conduct their most basic affairs, like traveling or receiving medical care, even speaking in the presense of another man. A Juvenile death penalty. Currently, judges evaluate a suspect's signs of puberty... to determine whether to try him or her as an adult. No examination of a child's mental capacity takes place. There is NO minimum age. They import 1.5 million Asian workers each with promises of decent wages to take back home but most are treated and live worse than they did in their native countries. The wages turn out to be grossly substandard and each takes away job that Saudi workers desperately need. Poverty is rampant in SA. Because of the ultra secretive and inaccessible inner circle of the government let alone the Saudi family, it can not be confirmed but some human rights investigators believe that within the Saudi inner circles, men still buy female slaves kidnapped from brothels and off the streets of foreign countries.


NOW, WHAT DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH THE CTA/NEA? Please read the story linked to the title at the top. I am not a Democrat or Republican but I find myself wading through the propaganda of both to assemble bits and pieces of the truth.

Teach for America: Elite corps or costing older teachers jobs?

USA TODAY
By Greg Toppo,

BALTIMORE — In 2007, fresh out of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Chris Turk snagged a coveted spot with the elite Teach For America program, landing here at Cherry Hill Elementary/Middle School in a blue-collar neighborhood at the city's southern tip. For the past two years, he has taught middle-school social studies.

One recent afternoon, during a five-week "life skills" summer-school course, Turk tells his five students that their final project, a movie about what they've learned, has a blockbuster budget: $70.

"We can go big here," he says. "We can go grand."

He might as well be talking about the high-profile program that brought him here. Despite a lingering recession, state budget crises and widespread teacher hiring slowdowns, Teach For America (TFA) has grown steadily, delighting supporters and giving critics a bad case of heartburn as it expands to new cities and builds a formidable alumni base of young people willing to teach for two years in some of the USA's toughest public schools.

Baltimore Superintendent Andres Alonso — who says he has seen "fewer retirements, fewer resignations and just greater stability in terms of our teaching ranks," much of it because of a reluctance to leave a secure job in a recession — has doubled the number of TFA teachers, known as "corps members," in city schools over the past two years.

Next week, more than 160 new TFAers arrive in Baltimore, up from 80 in 2007. They'll make up about one in four new hires.

Nationwide, about 7,300 young people are expected to teach under TFA's banner, up from 6,200 last year. TFA is expanding from 29 regions to 35, including Dallas, Boston and Minneapolis-St. Paul.

But critics say the growth in many cities is coming at the expense of experienced teachers who are losing their jobs — in some cases, they say, to make room for TFA, which brings in teachers at beginners' salary levels and underwrites training.

FULL COVERAGE: Latest news, in-depth reports at schools.usatoday.com

TWITTER: Follow reporter Greg Toppo @gtoppo

In Boston, TFA corps members replaced 20 pink-slipped teachers, says Boston Teachers Union President Richard Stutman. "These are people who have been trained, who are experienced and who have good evaluations, and are being replaced by brand-new employees."

This month, he met with about 18 other local union presidents, all of whom said they'd seen teachers laid off to make room for TFA members.

"I don't think you'll find a city that isn't laying off people to accommodate Teach For America," he says...

FIND MORE STORIES IN: Massachusetts | Baltimore | Princeton University | National Education Association | Amherst | University of California, Los Angeles | Cherry Hill | Teach for America | John Wilson | Michelle Rhee | Wendy Kopp | KIPP: the Knowledge Is Power Program

"Coming to your town soon thanks to the all consuming impotence of the NEA"