Tag: corruption

School Reopenings Linked to Union Influence and Politics, Not Safety

School closures have affected over 55 million K–12 students in the U.S. since March as the nation deals with the coronavirus pandemic. Although numerous private schools and day care centers have adjusted to the pandemic and reopened, many public school districts and teachers unions are fighting to remain closed in the name of safety. In fact, 85 percent of the country’s 20 largest public school districts have already announced that they will not be reopening schools for any in-person instruction as the school year begins.

Some have noted these reopening decisions often appear to be driven by politics rather than public health. Unfortunately, many teachers groups are contributing to this appearance. In their report on safely reopening schools, for example, the Los Angeles’ teachers union went beyond detailing the safety needs of teachers and students, also calling for politicians to enact a wealth tax, Medicare for All, and a ban on charter schools. 

Similarly, 10 teachers unions across the country joined a coalition that included the Democratic Socialists of America to “Demand Safe Schools.” But rather than focus on student and teacher safety, they demanded a ban on new charter schools and voucher programs as well as the cancellation of rents and mortgages. 

When a reporter asked Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser if trends in the city’s COVID-19 cases justified the all-virtual start to the school year, Bowser responded, “No. I wouldn’t say the attention to the health metrics is the only thing that’s leading to our decision today” and that “clearly we want to work with our workforce.”

New data suggest these anecdotes—and the underlying theory that reopening has more to do with power dynamics than safety—have some merit.

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Are You Ready For The “No One Could Have Known” Routine?

Ready for another rendition of the “no one could have known” routine made famous by all the self-proclaimed liberals who shamelessly went along with the Neo-Cons planned and lie-supported destruction of the Middle East nearly two decades ago?

As in “no one could have known” that by shutting down life as we know it to focus obsessively on a virus mostly affecting what is still a relatively small number of people at the end of their lives (yes, oh squeamish ones we must summon the courage to talk about Quality Adjusted Life Years when making public policy) we probably would:

1. Cause economic devastation and hence excess deaths, suicides, divorces depressions in much larger numbers than those killed by the virus.

2. Provide an already monopolistic and predatory online retailing establishment with competitive advantages in terms of capital reserves and market share that will make it virtually impossible at any time in the near or medium future for the country’s and the world’s small and even medium-sized businesses to ever catch up to them. And that this will plunge huge sectors of the world-wide economy into serf-like ruin, with all that this portends in terms of additional death and human suffering.

3. Cause greatly increased misery and countless additional deaths in the so-called Global South where many people, rightly or wrongly, depend on the consumption patterns of us relatively fortunate sit-at-homers to make it through the week.

4. Destroy much of what was attractive about urban life as we know it and lead to a real estate collapse of extraordinary proportions, turning even our few remaining showplace cities into crime-ridden reserves of ever more desperate people.

5. Force state and local governments, already struggling before the crisis, and unable to print at money at will like the Feds, to cut their already insufficient budgets at a time when their broke and stressed constituents need those services more than ever.

6. Push “smart” monitoring of our lives, already intolerable for anyone still clinging to memories of freedom in the pre-September 11th world, to the point where most people will no longer understand what people used to know as privacy, intimacy or the simple dignity of being left alone.

7. Train of a generation of children to be fearful and distrustful of others from day one, and to view bending to diktats “to keep them safe”, (no matter how empirically dubious the actual threat to them might be), rather than the courageous pursuit of joy and human fullness, as the key goal in life.

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Company Set To Manufacture COVID-19 Vaccine For US Intentionally Sold Faulty Biodefense Products

Evidence of the corruption of the company Emergent BioSolutions has emerged yet again as the firm, set to play a key role in the manufacture of four leading COVID-19 vaccine candidates, has been caught selling the US government a biodefense product it knew was non-functional.

Internal documents and e-mails from the “life sciences” company Emergent BioSolutions reveal that the company was aware that its biodefense product for the treatment of nerve gas exposure, sold under the brand name Trobigard, was both non-functional and untested for safety or efficacy while it was actively marketing the product to the U.S. government.

The firm was well aware of the fact that Trobigard’s functionality and safety in humans had never been tested several months before it was awarded a no-bid $25 million contract in October 2017 and a subsequent $100 million contract in 2019 to supply troves of the product to the State Department. Indeed, the results of the company’s first study on Trobigard’s efficacy in treating exposure to nerve gas were not even available until six weeks after Emergent had won the contract with the State Department and, even then, those results could “not be directly extrapolated to the human situation,” per the study’s authors.

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CA Democrats Author Bill to Protect Sex Offenders Who Lure Minors

State Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) and Assemblywoman Susan Eggman (D-Stockton) introduced recent legislation “to end blatant discrimination against LGBT young people regarding California’s sex offender registry.”

However, under their bill, SB 145, the offenders would not have to automatically register as sex offenders if the offenders are within 10 years of age of the minor.

Wiener claims the current law “disproportionately targets LGBT young people for mandatory sex offender registration, since LGBT people usually cannot engage in vaginal intercourse.”

Existing law, the Sex Offender Registration Act, amended by Proposition 35 by voters in 2012 (Ban on Human Trafficking and Sex Slavery), requires a person convicted of a certain sex crime to register with law enforcement as a sex offender while residing in California or while attending school or working in California.

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Cop Who Allegedly Kneed a Subdued Suspect in the Eye ’20 to 30 Times’ Gets Qualified Immunity

A police officer who allegedly kneed a suspect 20 to 30 times in the eye after the man had been restrained is entitled to qualified immunity and thus cannot be sued over the incident, a federal court confirmed Monday.

Charles McManemy, who law enforcement suspected was making a drug delivery, claims that Deputy Bruce Tierney of Iowa’s Butler County Sheriff’s Office violated his Fourth Amendment rights by using excessive force after McManemy had surrendered with at least four cops already on top of him. Following the incident, McManemy says he suffered lasting damage in his eye with increased light sensitivity and “floaters.” But while a majority of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit held that Tierney did indeed violate McManemy’s rights, his suit “fails for a different reason: the absence of a clearly established right.”

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