Tag: corruption

Teachers’ Unions Falling Out of Favor With Americans. Is It Any Wonder?

The debate over schools reopening has affected how Americans view teachers’ unions. It has been well-publicized that the unions in many districts have submitted political demands that have little to do with pandemic safety as a condition of returning to the classroom.

None of the political demands have anything to do with educating children, either. One of the requirements, defunding the police, has actually been getting children killed in cities like New York City, Chicago, and Atlanta. Perhaps the most annoying displays were members of the teachers’ unions protesting school openings in large groups while maintaining that returning to the classroom is too dangerous.

Of course, these protests were done side by side with groups like the Democratic Socialists of America and the Center for Popular Democracy. Hyperbole was on full display, especially considering that over 20 other industrialized countries have opened schools with no significant COVID-19 outbreaks. The coffins were a nice touch, especially for a virus that has a 99.8% recovery rate and where fatalities are most common above the age of 70. Nationally the average age of school teachers is about 40.

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“Feet to the Fire” and Other Lies

When the Democratic Party ends its charade of a primary process and spits out the person most closely aligned with neo-liberal policies, the gas lighting begins.

“The farce always intensifies with a black person on the ticket.”

Democrats love to pretend. They pretend their party advocates on their behalf, even though the leadership makes clear they’ll do no such thing. They have no intention of doing what their voters want; the people subconsciously know and engage in wishful thinking, and every four years we witness a pathetic collusion.

“We will hold their feet to the fire,” is one of the saddest or perhaps funniest of all quadrennial proclamations. When the Democratic Party ends its charade of a primary process and spits out the person most closely aligned with neo-liberal policies, the gas lighting begins. The victims go along with their abusers and announce they will accept what they said they didn’t want. They continue the kabuki theater with self-delusion and an odd promise to hold the intentionally corrupt candidates accountable.

Joe Biden profits from this bizarre dynamic just as much as his predecessor presidential candidates. He is the lowest light of all, a mediocre careerist with a penchant for inappropriate and racist remarks, a record as democratic segregationist in chief, and proud mass incarcerator. His home state of Delaware is well known as the capital of capital and excels at doing the business of the banksters. Biden was always one of the most conservative senate democrats and that is why he was chosen as Barack Obama’s running mate.

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Kevin Clinesmith, Corrupt FBI Attorney Who Falsified Carter Page FISA Warrant, Expected To Plead Guilty

A top FBI lawyer who fabricated evidence in a federal spy warrant against Trump campaign affiliate Carter Page is expected to plead guilty to federal charges brought by U.S. Attorney John Durham. Kevin Clinesmith, who is expected to admit to deliberately fabricating evidence in a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant application, used to spy on a former campaign affiliate of President Donald Trump, was a top attorney in the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Office of General Counsel (OGC) and a key agency attorney under fired former FBI Director James Comey.

Clinesmith is the first individual to be charged as part of U.S. Attorney John Durham’s investigation into the efforts in 2016 and 2017 to spy on the Trump campaign and Trump administration. Both Durham and Attorney General William Barr stated at the conclusion of the OIG investigation of the Page FISA warrants that they had reason to believe the entire investigation of Trump, which allegedly began in late July of 2016, was not legally predicated. Durham was tapped by Barr in May of 2019 to investigate the Russian collusion hoax and determine whether any criminal charges against those who perpetrated it were warranted.

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AS SAN FRANCISCO DISTRICT ATTORNEY, KAMALA HARRIS’S OFFICE STOPPED COOPERATING WITH VICTIMS OF CATHOLIC CHURCH CHILD ABUSE

Fighting on behalf of victims of sexual abuse, particularly children, has been central to Harris’s political identity for the better part of three decades. Harris specialized in prosecuting sex crimes and child exploitation as a young prosecutor just out of law school. She later touted her record on child sexual abuse cases and prosecuting pedophiles in television advertisements, splashy profiles, and on the trail as she campaigned for public office.

But when it came to taking on the Catholic Church, survivors of clergy sexual abuse say that Harris turned a blind eye, refusing to take action against clergy members accused of sexually abusing children when it meant confronting one of the city’s most powerful political institutions.

When Harris became San Francisco district attorney in 2004, she took over an office that had been working closely with survivors of sexual abuse to pursue cases against the Catholic Church. The office and the survivors were in the middle of a legal battle to hold predatory priests accountable, and Harris inherited a collection of personnel files involving allegations of sexual abuse by priests and employees of the San Francisco Archdiocese, which oversees church operations in San Francisco, and Marin and San Mateo counties

The files had been compiled by investigators working under the direction of Terence Hallinan, the radical district attorney who Harris ousted in a contentious election campaign. Hallinan’s team had prosecuted cases of abuse that had occurred decades earlier and had gathered evidence as part of a probe into widespread clergy sexual misconduct.

Just six months before Harris took office, a U.S. Supreme Court decision overturned a California law that had retroactively eliminated the statute of limitations for criminal prosecution of child molestation cases. That shifted the focus to holding predators among the clergy accountable through civil cases and through a broader effort to bring attention to predators who had been shielded by the church.

Hallinan believed that the clergy abuse files were a matter of public record; Harris refused to release them to the public.

In her seven years as district attorney, Harris’s office did not proactively assist in civil cases against clergy sex abuse and ignored requests by activists and survivors to access the cache of investigative files that could have helped them secure justice, according to several victims of clergy sex abuse living in California who spoke to The Intercept.

“It went from Terence Hallinan going hundred miles an hour, full speed ahead, after the Catholic Church to Kamala Harris doing absolutely nothing and taking it backwards hundred miles an hour,” said Joey Piscitelli, a sexual assault survivor, who a jury found had been molested as a student while attending Salesian College Preparatory, a Catholic high school in Richmond, California.

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