A poverty, not education, crisis in U.S.: Column

A poverty, not education, crisis in U.S.: Column USA Today - Handing out laptops to second-graders in Round Rock, Texas, in 2010.(Photo: Erich Schlegel for USA TODAY file photo) Story HighlightsOne study reveals that nearly half of all American public school students live in poverty. Available on the App Store.

So Much For The 'Mozart Effect'

This seems to be highly misleading. The writer thinks that people believe that just listening to Mozart will make you smarter. I don't know anyone who feels that way. But I do think that people who study art and music do benefit in the long term. But that is just an opinion.  So Much For The 'Mozart Effect' NPR - Music makes the heart grow fonder, but scientists are not so sure that it boosts IQ. The Boston Globe notes: Available on the App Store.

The US Is Exporting Its Extreme Inequality Abroad | The Poverty Line, What Matters Today | BillMoyers.com

http://billmoyers.com/2013/12/11/the-us-is-exporting-its-extreme-inequality-abroad/

The US Is Exporting Its Extreme Inequality Abroad

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In American lore, the United States is the City on the Hill, a beacon of freedom and democracy that sheds its light into every shadowy corner on Earth.

But according to a report last week by Eduardo Porter in The New York Times, there's a darker side to US hegemony. The globalization of American business practices, writes Porter, is leading to increasing inequality and falling economic security for working people in Europe…

Spain has eased restrictions on collective layoffs and unfair dismissal, and softened limits on extending temporary work, allowing workers to be kept on fixed-term contracts for up to four years. Ireland and Portugal have frozen the minimum wage,while Greece has cut it by nearly a fourth. This is what is known in Europe as "internal devaluation."

Tethered to the euro and thus unable to devalue their currency to help make their goods less expensive in export markets, many European countries — especially those along the Continent's southern rim that have been hammered by the financial crisis — have been furiously dismantling workplace protections in a bid to reduce the cost of labor.

The rationale — forcefully articulated by the German government of Angela Merkel, the European Commission and somewhat less enthusiastically by the International Monetary Fund — is that this is the only strategy available to restore competitiveness, increase employment and recover solvency.

These policy moves are radically changing the nature of Europe's society.

"The speed of change has certainly been very fast," said Raymond Torres, the chief economist of the International Labor Organization in Geneva. "As far as I can tell, these are the most significant changes since World War II."

Read the whole story here, and also see this Reuters report on the austerity-induced demise of the traditional Spanish siesta.

Boston Study: What Higher Standardized Test Scores Don’t Mean

Boston Study: What Higher Standardized Test Scores Don't Mean commonhealth.wbur.org - The MIT researchers avoid loaded terms like intelligence, so let me be the blunt one and sum up a provocative new Boston-based study coming out soon in the leading psychology journal Psychological Science: Available on the App Store.

Education

Education walmart1percent.org - Before considering the specific goals and activities of these foundations, it is worth reflecting on the wisdom of allowing education policy to be directed or, one might say, captured by private foundations. There is something fundamentally antidemocratic about relinquishing control of the public education policy agenda to private foundations run by society's wealthiest people.[1] Available on the App Store.

Street Vendors Of Art Targeted By New York City Policy Bring Up Questions About First Amendment Rights

Street Vendors Of Art Targeted By New York City Policy Bring Up Questions About First Amendment Rights untappedcities.com - Meres One, the curator of 5Pointz, has created his first work since the whitewashing of 5Pointz. This black and white piece, featuring his signature light bulbs, is located on the wall of rag & bone/JEAN at Elizabeth Street and Houston Street. Untapped Cities writer Rachel Fawn Alban Sunday night right after the mural was completed. […] Available on the App Store.

Leo the Homeless Coder Finished His App, and You Can Download It Right Now

I am so cynical that this sounds to me like a marketing scheme  Leo the Homeless Coder Finished His App, and You Can Download It Right Now Yahoo! Finance - Leo Grand considers himself lucky when the doorman at the luxury apartment building nearby lets him charge his Samsung Chromebook without issue. Leo's app — Trees for Cars — just launched this morning, and the new coder needs to make sure his computer is ready to go for the day. The guys in the apartment building have been a great help; four months ago when Grand started this venture, it was warm outside. That, unfortunately, is no longer the case. Available on the App Store.

Where's the Money? US Arts and Culture Economy By the Numbers

Where's the Money? US Arts and Culture Economy By the Numbers hyperallergic.com - An unprecedented survey of the role of the arts in the larger economy, last week's breakdown of the GDP contribution of America's creative industries in 2011 is illuminating and depressing, if not entirely surprising in its conclusions. The preliminary report, a joint effort of the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis and National Endowment for the Arts, reveals that advertising dwarfs the economic clout of every single other creative endeavor, followed by arts education in a distant second place. The report finds that the total size of the arts and culture economy is 3.2 percent of GDP, coming in at $504 billion. Among the leisure economy, the report notes, this sector supplants travel and tourism, which clocks in at 2.8 percent of GDP. The report also finds that the national economic recovery has lagged, jobs-wise, in the culture sector. Available on the App Store.

Shifting Perceptions of Houston’s Third Ward

Shifting Perceptions of Houston's Third Ward blog.art21.org - Left: Dowling Theatre exterior, 1963. Courtesy Ray M. Boriski. Bottom left: Dowling Theatre interior, c. 1960. Courtesy Houston Metropolitan Research Center, Houston Public Library, MSS 210. Top and bottom right: Dowling Theatre, c. 2007. Courtesy arch-ive.org Available on the App Store.

D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray faces hostile crowd in debate on education

D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray faces hostile crowd in debate on education Washington Post - Before a packed auditorium at Eastern High School of teachers, union leaders and activists — many of them upset with Gray's current school chancellor, Kaya Henderson — Gray was welcomed with a question that immediately put him on the defensive. Available on the App Store.

At least 194 children have been shot to death since Newtown. Average age: 6.

Omar Sangiovanni shared with you:   At least 194 children have been shot to death since Newtown. Average age: 6. Mother Jones - You've heard this story before, the one that played out again the week of Thanksgiving—this time in Lakeland, Florida—where 2-year-old Taj Ayesh got his little hands on his father's loaded pistol, pulled the trigger, and crumpled to the ground. You may have heard about 9-year-old Daniel Wiley, who was playing outside his house in Harrisburg, Texas, when a 13-year-old mishandled an unsecured shotgun, blasting Wiley in the face. You may also have heard about 2-year-old Camryn Shultz of Forty Fort, Pennsylvania, whose embittered father put a bullet in her head before turning the gun on himself. Maybe you didn't hear about the case in which a child shot others and then committed suicide, but that also happened this year. Twice. Available on the App Store.

Mercedes Schneider: Who Wrote the Common Core Standards?

Mercedes Schneider: Who Wrote the Common Core Standards? dianeravitch.net - Mercedes Schneider has dug deep into the IRS 990 forms of the various organizations that wrote the Common Core standards and is piecing together the history of that effort. Although its advocates portray CCSS as "state-led," that was not quite true. Available on the App Store.

First thing.

I started this blog not only because I am a fierce defender of the 99% but because we are living through dark times. 

The 24601 is and obvious reference to le miserable. I am going to be he first to tell you that I am by no means a writer. I only want to inform. Most of the time I will be reblogging. But times like this I will share some of my thought. 

Dark times call for bright lights and in this age of misinformation it becomes hard for anyone to trust national media sources. It's not that they are biased its that they have completly been bought by the very same people who seem to hold all the cards. So it's up to individuals to sort through the muck.