At the Capitol in Springfield, Illinois last Tuesday. Photo: Fred Klonsky
Norm Scott points out that charter operators are allowed to close their schools for a politically driven protest while public schools being invaded by these charters had to hold their protests/rallies at their schools after school.
More than 1.1 million students in the United States were homeless last year, a record high, according to new data released by the U.S. Department of Education.
U.S. CEOs break pay record as top ten take home over $100 million in yearly compensation.
CPS changes the enrollment process. Pre-school enrollment drops. Was that the plan?
David Koch: “Chris Christie is my kind of guy.”
Smiley: The can, Doc, has been kicked down the road until after the holidays, obviously, but what did you make of this so-called not so, they say grand bargain, I’ll say a not so grand bargain that the president was finally able to work out with Congress?
West: I think we see both the moral bankruptcy of conservatives on the one hand and neo-liberalism on the other. Both parties are complicitous in a fundamental way. Of course Republicans must take more responsibility than the Democrats, but the Republicans now have a right wing populous and that’s running far astray from the big business elites who are trying to control the party, so it’s interesting to see that kind of internal destruction taking place, but we’ll see what Democrats have to offer.
Obama and company are still talking about cuts in Social Security, they’re still going to talk about serious cuts in social programs for the poor. They’ve already frozen wages for federal workers. They refuse to support trade unions and their various work in any substantive way. We’ll see the bankruptcy of both parties in this regard.
Because when Wall Street was talking loudly and big business Republicans and big business Democrats got together and said we’ve got to somehow gain some control over these right wing populists, you’re absolutely right. So that what you get now is the big business Republicans who know the party still needs that big money trying to gain some control over the Tea Party people but having tremendous difficulty in doing that. We’re going to see the money shift even more so to the Democrats. But it’s already shifted to the Democrats.
We saw that in 2008. It shifted a bit to Romney in 2012 but it’s already shifting to the Democrats. People say well what about JP Morgan? Looks like the Democratic Party is coming down hard. Thirteen billion dollars is still a drop in the bucket. You notice no one is going to jail, you notice they’re sipping tea together, they’re negotiating as gentlemen. You think that happens when the Justice Department goes at other folk who have committed crimes of that scope. Tavis Smiley and Cornell West.
Fred Klonsky 