The Only Democracy in the Middle East™

Three stories of note today.

Pervasive racism infects Israeli schoolbooks

First, a stunning account of racism in Israeli schools from Harriet Sherwood of The Observer:

Nurit Peled-Elhanan, an Israeli academic, mother and political radical, summons up an image of rows of Jewish schoolchildren, bent over their books, learning about their neighbours, the Palestinians. But, she says, they are never referred to as Palestinians unless the context is terrorism.

They are called Arabs. “The Arab with a camel, in an Ali Baba dress. They describe them as vile and deviant and criminal, people who don’t pay taxes, people who live off the state, people who don’t want to develop,” she says. “The only representation is as refugees, primitive farmers and terrorists. You never see a Palestinian child or doctor or teacher or engineer or modern farmer.”

Peled-Elhanan, a professor of language and education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has studied the content of Israeli school books for the past five years, and her account, Palestine in Israeli School Books: Ideology and Propaganda in Education, is to be published in the UK this month. She describes what she found as racism– but, more than that, a racism that prepares young Israelis for their compulsory military service.

We urge you to read the rest.

What makes Peled-Elhanan’s advocacy for tolerance especially compelling are two facts from her own unique personal history:

• First, she’s the daughter of a famous Israeli general.
• Second, and most relevant, her only daughter was killed in 1997 by a suicide bomber in Jerusalem.

Does pervasive racism infect Israeli courts?

Our second story comes from Haaretz reporter Tomer Zarchin. Here’s the opener:

Arab Israelis who have been charged with certain types of crime are more likely than their Jewish counterparts to be convicted, and once convicted they are more likely to be sent to prison, and for a longer time. These disparities were found in a recent statistical study commissioned by Israel’s Courts Administration and the Israel Bar Association.

The study found that 48.3 percent of Arabs who were convicted of violence, property crimes or drug or weapons offenses received custodial sentences, compared to 33.6 percent for Jews. The average prison sentence was nine and a half months for Jews and 14 months for Arabs.

Read the rest.

Haaretz qualifies the findings, noting that other factors might account for much of the gap. But we suspect that racism plays the most significant role, given the harsh findings about our own criminal justice [sic] system, where an endless amount of academic research in the United States has documented that African Americans are victims of similar sentencing and conviction disparities.

And given the portrayals of Arabs in Israeli schoolbooks, we’d be surprised if there weren’t disparities.

Jerusalem Post apologizes to Norway

Just as American bloggers and hardline Zionists delighted in blaming Norway for the murders carried out by Anders Behring Breivik, so too did the editorial writers and columnists at the hardline conservative  Jerusalem Post.

And now they’ve been forced to apologize, declaring in a lead editorial that the Post scribes “hope that the Norwegian government and people will accept the Post’s apology and forgive us for any offense or hurt caused by our editorial and columnists at this sensitive time.”

An op-ed by Norwegian Deputy Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide notes some of the Post’s more egregious rants, including this:

Many Norwegians. . .have been astonished by assertions recently made in The Jerusalem Post by two of its regular columnists, Barry Rubin and Caroline Glick.

For example, Barry Rubin wrote on Monday that “…the youth camp he attacked was engaged in what was essentially… a pro-terrorist program.”

According to Rubin, the camp was “justifying forces that had committed terrorism against Israel” by advocating an end to the blockade of Gaza and recognition of a Palestinian state.

Rubin even implicitly blamed Norway’s Middle East policy for the attacks in Norway. He wrote, “If terrorist murders by Hamas and Islamists did not stop well-intentioned future leaders of Norway from considering them heroic underdogs, an evil local man could think his act of terrorism would gain sympathy and change Europe’s politics.”

This was, Rubin claimed, an example of the “Oslo Syndrome” whereby rewarding terrorists with political gains promotes more terrorism.

Read the rest.

Budget showdown threatens government shutdown

And, no, we’re not talking about Washington.

This battle of the budget is much closer to home, as Abby Sewell reports for the Los Angeles Times:

Officials are threatening a government shutdown in Compton as the city remains without a budget two weeks into the new fiscal year.

The City Council has deadlocked over a proposal that would lay off 91 employees, including some department heads, in an attempt to balance the budget.

For a second time, the council voted down the proposed budget 3-2 Tuesday night. City Treasurer Douglas Sanders warned that the city will be unable to issue paychecks July 21, the next payroll date, because there are no funds appropriated for the new fiscal year.

That could mean a scenario in which the city furloughs all but public safety and essential employees until a budget agreement is reached, City Manager Willie Norfleet said.

Union representatives pointed to a resolution passed in 2009 to give the council power to authorize paying city expenses until a budget was in place, but City Atty. Craig Cornwell said the charter supercedes the resolution.

The fiscal plight came to light earlier this year with the release of an independent audit report that questioned Compton’s continued solvency and with revelations the city was facing a budget deficit of as much as $25 million.

Read the rest.

One suspects that what we’re seeing in one troubled Southern California city will become the rule as the financial crisis continues to reverberate around the
globe.

The crisis in Compton, an impoverished city in the Los Angeles metroplex, also reflects the ongoing legacy of Proposition 13, the Golden State’s property tax limitation initiative and the legacy of corporate libertarian Howard Jarvis [the hapless taxi rider in Airplane].

One good place to begin reform would be in lifting the property tax limit on corporate holdings, given that corporations are the longest-term property owners. The deadly combination of the tax limits combined with the property value crash [which allows corporations to seek revaluation of their holdings] is proving a lethal combination.

The rich get along fine without the government services on which the rest of us depend. Their kids go to private schools, their property is patrolled by private security services, and they certainly don’t need welfare. About the only things they do need are ambulances and fire departments.

As for the rest of us. . .

General strike roundup from London and Athens

First a Sky News report on the 48-hour general strike action now underway in England:

Next, a report from a radical news source, Richard Bagley of the Morning Star:

Hundreds of thousands of public-sector workers the length and breadth of Britain defied slurs and threats today to mount one of the biggest walkouts since the 1926 General Strike.

Defiant chants of resistance could be heard across the country as the strike – officially over pensions cuts – took hold.

Education professionals in the UCU, ATL and NUT unions taught students a vital lesson in trade unionism by withdrawing their labour from 11,000 schools and thousands more colleges.

And public offices including courts and jobcentres were shut or picketed as members of PCS joined the day of action.

Thousands of people furious at having their retirement rights, jobs and services sacrificed following the banking crisis marched in towns and cities.

Tory ministers tried in vain to belittle the massive scale of the protests, aided and abetted by mainstream media outlets.

The images told a dfifferent story, backing up unions which reported a response approaching 100 per cent from members and huge support from fellow members of the public.

Next, an update from Karla Adam of the Washington Post:

Airports, courts and more than 10,000 schools were among the services hit by a massive public-sector strike across Britain on Thursday as thousands of workers staged what they said was the biggest walkout in a generation.

Union organizers said that more than 750,000 public employees — including teachers, lecturers, court staff, passport officers and other civil servants — walked out during the one-day strike over proposed changes to their pension system.

The strikes are the first major uprising over the Conservative-led government’s ambitious plans to slash $128 billion in spending over the next four years.

The rationale behind pension reforms, the government says, is the same for Britain’s austerity program as a whole: Current levels of spending are unsustainable.

But like public-sector employees across Europe, those striking in Britain argue it’s grossly unfair that millions of workers are being forced to carry the burden of reducing a deficit that ballooned following the financial crisis.

Under the current pension reform plans, public-sector workers will have to work longer and contribute more, and generally for smaller pensions.

>snip<

There are more than 7 million trade union members in Britain, down from a peak of 13 million in 1979, during which time widespread strikes led to the “winter of discontent” and famously saw gravediggers walking out on the job.

Worried that the threats of industrial unrest might escalate into what the British media have dubbed the “summer of discontent,” some Conservatives, including the mayor of London, have called for new legislation to make it harder for unions to go on strike.

Britain has an aging population and the government says that the current pension system is unaffordable and untenable, but for many of those picketing Thursday, the proposed changes, like women working an extra six years, seem daunting.

“I don’t want to have to work for another 17 years,” said Alison Palmer, 49, a teacher who was marching along the streets of London. Palmer estimated she stands to lose more than $400,000 if she lives

America’s public schools fall victim to the crash

As the Washington Post notes this morning, most of Barack Obama’s presidential visits to private businesses have been paid to companies promising to market products giving us a cleaner, greener future.

We suspected that would be the case when Obama named Berkeley’s Steve Chu as his energy secretary, given that much of Chu’s tenure as head of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory was spent promoting green energy.

Chu was the fellow who did so much to land Berkeley the $500 million BP funding package for developing so-called green fuels, which really means the transformation of Third World farmland into plantations for growing fuel crops to feed America’s endless love affair with the internal combustion engine.

[The Post article also notes that many of the firms visited by the president of Hope™ have been corporations run or backed by folks who have thrown a lot of Change™ into his campaign coffers.]

So what does this have to do with schools, you might ask?

Simple. Clean tech jobs require an educated workforce, and less education is inevitable at a time when funds for America’s once great public school system are being pared to the bone.

Two stories this weekend illustrate our point.

Los Angeles schools face still more layoffs

Los Angeles Times reporter Jason Song has the latest on the Smogville layoffs:

Last school year, Carson High School students skipped 1,926 days of class. This year, the school reduced that figure by 20%, thanks to an aggressive intervention program that included tracking down students and meeting with parents.

Much of the credit goes to Sally Stevens, one of two school attendance counselors who are responsible for finding chronic truants.

“They’re the ones who deal with the hard-core students, and they find a way to get them to school,” said Ken Keener, Carson’s principal.

But Stevens is among a group of nearly 2,000 Los Angeles Unified School District employees who are in danger of losing their jobs as the nation’s second-largest district wrestles with a nearly $400-million budget shortfall.

Earlier this year, the district issued preliminary layoff notices to almost 7,000 employees. This month, however, the school board rescinded almost 5,000 of those pink slips after the teachers union agreed to a four-day furlough, which saved $42 million.

But that wasn’t enough, and some school positions were funded by federal stimulus money that has now expired. So campus administrators must decide whether to reallocate scarce funding to pay for those counselors, teachers and nurses who remain in limbo or to lay them off.

District officials said they are continuing to look for additional funding to protect as many positions as possible, but they began sending out final layoff notices Friday. Aside from counselors, others who are receiving the notices include teachers, social workers, nurses and psychologists.

Read the rest.

Los Angeles public schools have been struggling for years.

A few years ago, the district reported that a majority of white parents were sending their students to private schools, reducing the attendance numbers on which state funding is based. We have seen recent figures, but we presume the trend hasn’t changed that much — though with the crash, it’s likely that some families are no longer able to pay for private school tuition.

In addition, white flight meant that a large section of the electorate was no longer willing to vote for bond funding, leaving the schools even harder pressed for cash. Now, given the crash in real estate values, many homeowners — especially those who bought at or near the peak — are also paying less property tax, and, given the straitened circumstances, are even less likely to vote for new bonds.

School librarians, a vanishing species?

Our second story comes from Fernandas Santos of the New York Times and reveals another disturbing trend, nationwide layoffs of school librarians.

Way back in the early 1960′s esnl volunteered at the Fort Collins High School library, where we garnered a deep appreciation for the role school librarians can play in the learning process.

A good librarian can be the student’s best ally, pointing out alternative sources of information and teaching the best ways to seek out critical facts and context.

But now, Santos writes, “Budget belt-tightening threatens to send school librarians the way of the card catalog.”

The schools superintendent in Lancaster, Pa., said he had to eliminate 15 of the district’s 20 librarians to save full-day kindergarten classes.

In the Salem-Keizer school district in Oregon, all 48 elementary and middle school librarians would lose their jobs under a budget proposal that faces a vote next week.

In Illinois’s School District 90, which spans several rural and suburban communities in the southern part of the state, parent volunteers have been running the libraries in the district’s seven schools since September, in what the schools superintendent, Todd Koehl, described as “a last-ditch effort” to avoid closing their doors.

And in New York City, half of the secondary schools appear to be in violation of a state regulation requiring them to have a librarian on staff, with the city currently employing 365 licensed librarians.

>snip<

Nancy Everhart, president of the American Association of School Librarians, whose membership has fallen to 8,000 from 10,000 in 2006, said that. . .the Internet age made trained librarians more important, to guide students through the basics of searching and analyzing information they find online.

Libraries, Ms. Everhart said, are “the one place that every kid in the school can go to to learn the types of skills that will be expected of them when it’s time to work with an iPad in class.”

>snip<

[A]n analysis of state and city data shows there is one librarian for every 2,146 students this year, compared with 1 per 1,447 in 2005. At least 386 schools serving students from grades 6 through 12 do not have a librarian on staff, the records show. A spokesman for the Education Department said some of those schools shared librarians, though he could not say how many.

Read the rest.

So at the very time the White House is touting high tech solutions to the energy crisis, America’s public schools are devoting the fewest resources to educating the nation’s future scientists and engineers who’ll be responsible for developing and manufacturing all that clean, green tech.

Anyone see a contradiction here?

Scenes from the drug wars: Heroic teacher sings

One of the most dramatic examples of the horrific impacts on Mexico’s endless drug cartels is this remarkable video, taken by a Mexican kindergarten teacher as cartel warriors waged a running gun battle outside her school and she kept her students singing to calm their fears:

One comment posted on YouTube with the video offers some context:

This happened inside a kindergarten in La Estanzuela, NL, MX while outside five men where at a fake taxi base which apparently works as a drug distribution & sales spot when they where shot multiple times by a group of thugs who traveled in two trucks, in La Estanzuela, southern part of Monterrey.

Porfirio Ibarra of the Associated Press reports on more details and an honor bestowed on the teacher today:

A kindergarten teacher in northern Mexico was honored Monday for her courage after a video showed her calmly leading children through a duck-and-cover drill as gunfire rattled outside their school.

A certificate presented by the governor of the northern state of Nuevo Leon said teacher Martha Rivera Alanis showed “outstanding civic courage” in her steady performance during the Friday gunfight in the northern industrial hub of Monterrey.

Rivera Alanis. . . said she wasn’t concerned with fame — only the safety of her 5- and 6-year-old students.

“Of course, I was afraid, but I tell you, my kids get me through it,” she said following the private ceremony.

Rivera Alanis herself used her cell phone to tape the video, in which she is heard coaxing the 15 children to lie flat on the floor.

“No, my love, nothing is going to happen, just put your little face on the floor,” Rivera Alanis is heard telling one worried little girl.

>snip<

In the video, the teacher tries to take the kids’ minds off the gunfire, leading them in a song popularized by the children’s show “Barney & Friends.” The song talks about the sky raining candy — not the bullets that were piercing the air that day.

Read the rest.

H/T to Poor Mojo’s Newswire.

Econowrap: Politics, layoffs, & corporate greed

We’d lead off with a with the introduction to a superb essay that strikes at the heart of the corruption of the American political process, then look at a bit of the grim jobs news, then look at GOP efforts to destroy unemployment compensation, and wrap up with some global news.

A must-read essay on corporate tax games

First, the introduction to a superb dissection of the lies behind the justifications employed by corporations — and their shills in political office and the mainstream media — to sell the gullible on their demands to endless tax breaks.

The author is Richard D. Wolff, Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Visiting Professor in New School University’s Graduate Program in International Affairs. He’s also one of esnl’s favorite economic thinkers [previously].

From today’s edition of The Guardian:

More and more, we hear that nothing can be done to tax major corporations because of the threat of how they would respond. Likewise, we cannot stop their price-gouging or even the government subsidies and tax loopholes they enjoy.

For example, as the oil majors reap stunning profits from high oil and gas prices, we are told it is impossible to tax their windfall profits or stop the billions they get in government subsidies and tax loopholes. There appears to be no way for the government to secure lower energy prices or seriously impose and enforce environmental protection laws. Likewise, despite high and fast-rising drug and medicine prices, we are told that it is impossible to raise taxes on pharmaceutical companies or have the government secure lower pharmaceutical prices. And so on.

Such steps by “our” government are said to be impossible or inadvisable. The reason: corporations would then relocate production abroad or reduce their activities in the US or both. And that would deprive the US of taxes and lose more jobs. In plain English, major corporations are threatening us. We are to knuckle under and cut social programmes that benefit millions of people (such as college loan programmes, Medicaid, Medicare, social security, nutrition programmes, etc). We are not to demand higher taxes or reduced subsidies and tax loopholes for corporations. We are not to demand government action to lower their soaring prices. If we do, corporations will punish us.

Three groups deliver these business threats to us. First, corporate spokespersons, their paid public relations flunkies, hand down the word from on high (corporate board rooms). Second, politicians afraid to offend their corporate sponsors repeat publicly what corporate spokespersons have emailed to them. Finally, various commentators explain the threats to us. These include the journalists lost in that ideological fog that always translates what corporations want into “common sense”. Commentators also include the professors who translate what corporations want into “economic science”.

Of course, there are always two possible responses to any and all threats. One is to cave in, to be intimidated. That has often been the dominant “policy choice” of the US government. That’s why so many corporate tax loopholes exist, why the government does so little to limit price increases, why government does not constrain corporate relocation decisions, etc. No surprise there, since corporations have spent lavishly to support the political careers of so many current leaders. They expect those politicians to do what their corporate sponsors want. Just as important, they also expect those politicians to persuade people that its “best for us all” to cave in when corporations threaten us.

Read the rest.

Federal budget forces layoffs in Berkeley

The Obama/GOP budget has claimed the jobs of most of the workers at The National Writing Project, one of the nation’s most highly praised educational programs.

From Louis Freedberg of California Watch:

Among the first organizations in California to feel the pain of Washington’s drive to slash federal spending is the Berkeley-based National Writing Project, which has issued layoff notices to 60 percent of its employees.

As California Watch noted in March, the project was dealt a major setback when Congress and President Obama agreed to eliminate the $25.6 million the project receives annually from the federal government.

Those cuts have now been approved, forcing the organization to send layoff notices to 45 members of its staff, effective in June. Most are based in its Berkeley offices.

The program works with both college professors and K-12 teachers to enhance techniques to improve the quality of writing in schools and colleges, offering workshops and other training programs at regional centers on campuses across the nation.

The program began as the Bay Area Writing Project at UC Berkeley in 1974.  It has since expanded to 17 sites across California, and to more than 200 in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Its centerpiece is a four-week intensive summer program training 3,300 teachers each year to be more effective writing instructors. The network of teachers trained by the project since its inception now exceeds 70,000.

Along with the National Writing Project, $24.8 million in federal funding for Reading Is Fundamental, which claims to be the largest nonprofit literacy program in the country, was also eliminated.

Read the rest.

For testimonials about the program’s effectiveness, see here and here.

American housing collapse continues

The bad news comes via Reuters:

U.S. home values fell in the first quarter at the fastest rate since late 2008, real estate data firm Zillow said on Monday, suggesting that a bottom will not be seen until 2012 at the earliest.

Zillow said its home value index fell 3 percent in the first three months of the year from the previous quarter, and was down 8.2 percent year-over-year.

The number of homeowners under water—or, those who owe more on the mortgage than their house is currently worth—amounted to 28.4 percent of single-family homeowners, representing a peak since Zillow began calculating the data in 2009.

That was up from 27 percent in the fourth quarter of last year.

Foreclosures also rose, following the moratoriums that had been in

Chris Hedges: The corporate capture of America

One of our favorite contemporary thinkers describes the corporate capture of the nation, laying out in explicit detail the sad history of the last three decades in which administrations of both party complete the sellout of the public interest to profit profit.

RT’s Alyona Minkovski exemplifies the best techniques of the journalistic interviewer, asking clear, concise questions, then stepping aside to allow her subject to answer fully.

Her style is rare in today’s environment of “gotcha” journalism, where rushed reporters ask questions, sometimes resorting to the worst form of bullying, designed to elicit only the answers that fit into a preconceived story.

She allows Hedges to do what he does best, providing insights that are at one concise and thorough, the result of long, considered study of issues that shoudl be of vital interest to us all.

And just a reminder: Hedges has seen the establishment from the inside, from a post at the peak of the journalist’s trade: As a bureau chief for the premiere establishment medium, the New York Times.

The clip is an excerpt from Friday’s edition of RT’s The Alyona Show, available in full here.

Punishing a child for a simple act of kindness

David Murakami Wood, one of Canada’s leading security scholars, reports on a revealing incident in the evolution of the American Orwellian domain at his blog, notes from the ubiquitous surveillance society:

Sometimes, little local stories give us the best insight into what living in a surveillance society is really like. This one is from a school in Virginia, USA. According to the local newspaper (via BoingBoing) a middle school student was suspended from school for opening the main door for a women who they knew who was unable to press the entry button because they had their hands full. The reason given by the school auhtorities is that the school has a secure entry system, in which people are supposed to press the entry button, look into a camera, and request entry. The student was suspended on the grounds that they were all supposed to know the rules, and that these rules were potentially of vital importance.

However this security-bureaucratic reasoning misses the key point that the child knew the adult concerned. Whilst security and surveillance systems are at least in part designed to respond to a supposed decline in social trust and an inceased ‘threat’ (which is very poorly supported by evidence anyway), there is good reason to suppose that placing what were previously matters of social negotiation into the hands of such ‘systems’, ‘rules’ and ‘technology’ further damages social trust.

Many questions then arise: what is this school, through this action and these systems, teaching kids about society? That security comes above all else? That no-one can be trusted? And that individual decision-making or social interaction is better replaced by impersonal systems? Surely, if education is the basis of the future of society, then what should be taught are the opposite lessons. This kind of subordination to systems is a form of training, of disciplinary control, not learning and education.

So, let’s see if we get this right.

We’ve now come to the point where we trust machines more than people to recognize our “real” identities and punish people for simple acts of humanity every reasonable parent encourages of her children?

A cynic might suggest that a society that submits to such idiocy is beyond saving. We hope not.

Econowrap: Budget cuts, soaring profits, abortions

More glum economic news today in our latest roundup of the dismal news from the dismal science.

California budget hits the poor hardest

California’s new budget, enacted Thursday by Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr., inflicts grievous injuries on the poorest in the former Golden State, and worse is to come if emergency taxes passed two years ago when the impact of the current crisis first hit home.

And, as the corporate libertarian Orange County Register noted in gleeful editorial, the tax extension — which must be passed by a majority of California voters — seems likely to fail, presuming the proposal actually makes it onto the March ballot:

A new poll by the Public Policy Institute of California says support for Gov. Jerry Brown’s tax proposal dramatically declined among likely voters, from 54 percent to 46 percent, in just two months.

Support for the five-year extension of 2009 increases in some sales, income and vehicle taxes is declining at a rate reminiscent of the speed that Mr. Brown’s predecessor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, lost public support.

The budget bill just signed covers $11.2 billion of a $26 billion shortfall, inflicting the most harm of the poor, the aged, and the infirm

As Shane Goldmacher reported for the Los Angeles Times:

State officials will now begin notifying many Californians that their government benefits are to be cut within 90 days — at just about the start of the new budget year. Come July, welfare grants will be reduced by 8%, and parents will be kicked off the rolls after four years instead of the current five.

Assistance for the elderly and disabled, in their homes and at senior centers, will also be reduced. State-subsidized child care for 11- and 12-year-olds will be eliminated.

Brown sought to use the “painful” cuts he signed to make his case that Republicans should support the plan to ask voters to pay more taxes to bridge the remaining shortfall.

“It’s going to be much, much worse if we cannot get the vote of the people and the tax extensions,” Brown said.

Read the rest.

Students walk out to protest program cuts

A massive 18 March protest at one Los Angeles high school already gives an inkling of what lies ahead, an event covered by L.A. Times reporters Richard Winton and Irfan Khan:

At least 1,500 students at Hamilton High School walked out Friday morning to protest layoff notices being issued to some of their favorite teachers.

Students packed the sidewalks around the high school in a show of support for teachers and support staff who were among about 7,000 L.A. Unified School District employees to receive layoff notices recently as the district grappled with cutting its budget.

>snip<

The district said about 1,500 students participated in the demonstration; others doubled that estimate. The school’s marching band led banner-waving student protesters in a march around the campus before listening to a series of student leaders address the gathering on the need to fight to keep their educators.

Although cuts have not been finalized, the directors of two popular and successful Hamilton programs — the humanities magnet and the music magnet — have been informed by L.A. Unified that their positions are being eliminated.

We note that the cuts are coming where they always do, in programs designed to create well-rounded citizens, rather than technocratic servants of the corporate state.

Americans have lost a major part of their wealth

While the rich are carving out ever-larger shares of the country’s remaining wealth, folks in the middle class are losing theirs.

CNNMoney’s Charles Riley reports:

The average American family’s household net worth declined 23% between 2007 and 2009, the Federal Reserve said Thursday.

A rare survey of U.S. households, first performed in 2007 but repeated in 2009 in order to gauge the effects of the recession, reveals the median net worth of households fell from $125,000 in 2007 to $96,000 in 2009.

Titled “Surveying the Aftermath of the Storm,” the report offers a broad look at how the financial crisis impacted individual households.

It is widely known that the 2008 financial crisis resulted in the vaporization of trillions of dollars in household wealth. But Federal Reserve officials said Thursday the new report offers a look at exactly how hard the recession hit families, and how they reacted.

The numbers paint a stark picture.

Families that owned stock saw their portfolios drop by more than a

Massive protests now underway in London

As many as 500,000 people have hit the streets in England to demand preservation of jobs and services and an end to student fee hikes,  and to call for increased taxes on corporateers and banksters.

The campaign, launched by a coalition of unions, students, and other activists, is receiving little media coverage here [CNN has no coverage, Fox a 10-second clip].

UPDATE [08:16 PDT]: Fox is now devoting considerable coverage to protests is London and those starting in New York and other U.S. cities. The expert they brought in to condemn the movement: Henry Kissinger, that bloody-handed old ghoul.

UPDATE II [10:19 PDT]: Another Fox commentary came from Alan Simpson, who poured scorn on “entitlements.” Fox called the crowd at 100,000, or one fifth of number reported by The Guardian.

The Guardian is live-blogging here. The blog of UK UNCUT, which helped organize the protest, is here.

From The Guardian‘s latest:

Activists from Ukuncut, the peaceful direct action group that has closed down more than 100 high street stores accused of tax avoidance, are moving into position on Oxford Street. They are planning 14 different occupations of high street stores accused of tax avoidance, Matthew Taylor writes.

A spokesman just said there were about 200 people moving towards their various targets with more expected to join in the next half an hour.

Meanwhile the main march just gets bigger. People are still streaming across bridges to join from south London while others are making their way from the north.

Bernard Goyder, a veteran of last year’s student protests, said he had been “blown away” by today’s turnout.

“This couldn’t be any better. I have never seen such a wide diverse group of people together. It dwarves anything I have seen before. It is much much bigger than any of us were expecting”

Greek protests Friday drew large crowds

Via From the Greek Streets:

25th of March is a national holiday in Greece as it is the supposed day of the uprising against Ottoman Empire (1821). Every year this day, marches of students take place across the country in front of the local authorities, with most important the Military March that takes place in Athens and some cities near Turkey.

This year groups of students of the schools and the universities, and teachers decided to protest during these marches. In some cases, people demanded government officials to go away or in others they demonstrated after the end of the march.

The government announced some days ago that they will close thousands of public schools across Greece in order to save money, a decision that is extremely unpopular, as each class will have too many students in the remaining schools, the students will have to travel several kilometers in some cases to go to school especially in the countryside, and many teachers will remain unemployed.

Such protests are reported in Lavrio, Peristeri, Ilioupoli, Galatsi, Nikaia, Korydallos, Zografou, Iraklio (neiborhoods of Athens), Ampelokipoi of Thessaloniki, and many other cities.

The video is from the demonstration in the city of Ermoupoli in Syros Island (Cyclades). The protesters had gathered on the opposite side of the street that the authorities were siting. While the students passed in front of the authorities, they turned their head towards the protesters (the usual is to turn with honour to the authorities). After the end of the march, a demonstration took place for 2 hours and passed though the whole city, chanting slogans.

Econowrap: Benefit and college cuts, RE woes

Another skeptical look at the much-hailed economy “recovery,” revealing that beneath all that fervid rhetoric, things continue to look very, very bad for anyone with asserts of less than seven figures.

States slash unemployment benefits

As tax revenues continue to fall, unemployment endures, and the GOP-controlled House in Washington engages in another round of cuts to public programs, states are responding with cuts that will hit hardest at the most vulnerable.

From Sam Williford at EconomyInCrisis.org:

As 32 state governments now owe more than $45 billion to the federal government to cover state unemployment benefits, many now seek to reduce them to limit the impact to local businesses.

“It’s a disincentive to move to the state of Florida with a new business or for a business that’s here to expand if they have to pay all this money per employee,” State Rep. Doug Holmes said. Holmes has sponsored a bill in Florida that would reduce the length of state unemployment benefits by six weeks.

Similar bills are pending in states such as Arkansas and Indiana. Indiana lawmakers have proposed measures such as capping benefits, increasing eligibility requirements and changing the way benefits are calculated. Proposed changes would not affect individuals already receiving state benefits, and would also have no effect on federal unemployment benefits, which kick in once an individual exhaust state options.

Read the rest.

Unemployed women can’t find new jobs

Cuts to unemployment benefits will hit women especially hard, given that nine out of ten unemployed workers able to find new jobs have been men.

Lorraine Mirabella reports for the Baltimore Sun:

It became known as the “mancession” because the recent downturn battered industries dominated by men.

But the economic battle of the sexes has taken a turn. While the nation’s nascent recovery has been slow and bumpy for just about everyone, it has been almost nonexistent for women.

Of the 1.3 million jobs gained in the U.S. in the past year, 1.1 million — nearly 90 percent — went to men, Department of Labor statistics show. Women gained just 149,000 jobs during that time. If you count jobs since the recovery officially started in July 2009, men gained more than 600,000 jobs while women lost 300,000, the figures show.

“The recovery is really not happening for women at all,” said Joan Entmacher, vice president for family economic security at the National Women’s Law Center in Washington. “It’s a slow recovery overall, but it’s really leaving women behind.”

Read the rest.

More bad news for states: Real estate sales fall

First, from CalculatedRisk, news that commercial real sales — transfers of business buildings, office towers, shopping centers — are plunging.

Moody’s reported today that the Moody’s/REAL All Property Type Aggregate Index declined 1.2% in January. Note: Moody’s CRE price index is a repeat sales index like Case-Shiller – but there are far fewer commercial sales and there are a large percentage of distressed sales – and that can impact prices and make the index very volatile.

Below is a comparison of the Moodys/REAL Commercial Property Price Index (CPPI) and the Case-Shiller composite 20 index. Beware of the “Real” in the title – this index is not inflation adjusted.

CRE prices only go back to December 2000. The Case-Shiller Composite 20 residential index is in blue (with Dec 2000 set to 1.0 to line up the indexes).

According to Moody’s, CRE prices are down 4.3% from a year ago and down about 43% from the peak in 2007.

Home sales fall to lowest numbers ever recorded

Another huge blow for local governments, which typically collect a transfer tax on home sales.

From Reuters:

New U.S. single-family home sales unexpectedly fell in February to hit a record low and prices were the lowest since

A plea from the British people to their police

As we noted earlier, UK UNCUT is planning massive demonstrations on the 26th, targeting tax-dodging corporations that are depriving the publkic purse of funds badly needed to fund programs being gutted by the government.

During previous demonstrations, police “kettled” demonstrators, isolating them into easily contained pockets, then targeting alleged ringleaders for arrest.

Now a group of supporters called A Chance To Speak have issued a plea to police we think is worth reprinting in full:

This is a message to every UK police man and woman before the Anti Cuts Demonstration in London on March 26th:

Before the possibility that on the March 26th London demonstration MET police are ordered to kettle us; use their shields as a weapon, or even draw their baton please remember that we are your teachers, your nurses and doctors, your neighbours, your checkout assistant, your child’s best friend’s parent, the disabled, the elderly, the students and the children. We are all here to stand against cuts that affect us all, you included.

We are all marching to say we oppose EVERY cut. Many of us are marching to try to protect our children’s future; knowing that without changes our children can never afford to go into further education; could you afford for your child to go to university on your wages? These cuts in public spending are going to affect everyone who is not either a banker or politician, or has a similar wage packet as either. And to make matters worse, this all comes at a time when the cost of food, fuel, and gas, and electric are rising, when youth unemployment is higher than it has ever been; when thousands face losing their jobs and homes as a result of these cuts.

This government uses the word ‘fair’ to describe what they are doing to our society, yet is it fair that this government indulges in “legitimate” criminal activities? Stealing tax payers money and giving it to corporations to run our services and makes the poor and hard-working pay? Is it fair that huge companies get away without paying their taxes; the tax that Boots alone evade could stop the cuts on the NHS, the £7 billion tax Vodaphone evades could help thousands of families get out of the poverty trap. The tax that banks such as Barclays evades could be spent on police funding and so much more. Billions more is avoided by Tesco and Amazon on their offshore

An absolute must-watch: Chomsky at his best

A searing evisceration of political mythology delivered 13 March in Amsterdam’s Westerkerk. In a wide-ranging discussion, Chomsky begins with a look at the pro-democracy movements of the Arab world, then places them in a wider context of history, economics, and “grand area” politics as pursued by the U.S.

Chomsky’s unique calm, conversational voice makes his message all the more visceral in its impact as he relates an historically rich, deeply insightful panorama of the forces that are shaping today’s world in ways that aren’t conveyed by the mass media — especially here in the United States.

He offers a critical grounding for U.S. policy in the Mideast and North Africa, going back to key decisions reached by the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration during World War II in which American policymakers laid out their designs for control of the world’s resources, especially the oil supplies once controlled by the British Empire.

Among the bases covered:

• The expansion of NATO as the primary instrument of U.S. military policies after the reason for its creation die in 1989 with the collapse of the Soviet Union
• The Clinton administration declaration of the U.S. right to use unilateral military force to protect resources and markets “to protect our livelihood and security.” [“The main difference between Clinton and Bush was style. . .Clinton said it politely so everyone was happy.”]
• The determined resistance of the United States to the prevention of any authentic democracy in the Arab world.
• The failure of U.S. media to report on polls conducted in the Arab world which reveal that “by overwhelming majority, Arabs regard us and Israel as the major threats they face. In Egypt 90 percent of the population see us major threat,”while only 10 percent see Iran as the major threat, while 80 percent of the Egyptians say Iranian nuclear weapons would help regional security.
• “In the real world elite dislike of democracy is very strong,” revealed dramatically by the WikiLeaks disclosures.
• When in 1958, President Dwight Eisenhower directed the National Security Council to look into what he called a“campaign of hatred against the us” in the region, the NSC reported back that Arab populations felt the U.S. supports dictatorships to preserve energy, concluding that those opinions were accurate and “that’s what we should be doing.” Pentagon studies after 9/11 reached same conclusion, but Washington concluded “Who cares what arabs think as long as the dictators support us.”
• Comparisons of the current Arab uprising to events in Eastern Europe in 1989 are specious, given that the Soviet government tolerated the satellite rebellions. At the same time as events played out in Europe without intervention, the United States was busily suppressing movement in Latin America which espoused precisely the same aims.

Chomsky examines the growing and alarming concentration of U.S. wealth into the hands of a small elite, which resulted from a combination of financialization of the economy of the export of production by American corporations, leaving the rest of us to work longer hours while accumulating ever more debt.

“The wealthy benefit from a government insurance policy; it’s called too big to fail,”a regular process since the Reagan years, he observes.

To distract attention from the alarming concentration of wealth, public sector salaries are attacked. “Teachers are a particularly good target in the United States; it’s part of a deliberate effort to destroy the public education system” to pave the way for privatization.

“Another fine target, as always, is immigrants,” which has been true throughout U.S. history. Yet many of the immigrants are themselves victims of Reagan era wars in Latin America, while many other are victims of NAFTA, that wonderful legacy of the Clinton era. In 1994, the same year NAFTA was rammed through Congress, Clinton “initiated the  militarization of Mexican border,” knowing that Mexican campesinos wouldn’t be able to compete with the heavily subsidized U.S. agricultural industry. The irony, of course, is that the racist backlash comes from U.S. workers victimized by the same process of corporatization.

He also notes the rise of neofascism and anti-immigrant sentiment in Europe, charting the rise of extremist political movements in Hungary, France, and Germany, adding that “racism regularly becomes more virulent in times of economic crisis.”

And he notes a point regularly made in posts here: That business leaders in their institutional roles are mandated to maximize short-term profits and market share, even when they know the results will create great harm in the form of what economists blithely dismiss as “externalities.”

There’s a lot more. . .

H/T to Information Clearing House.

Michigan joins Wisconsin in anti-union push

The Koch Brothers are getting a lot of bang for their buck. While the debacle in Wisconsin has been getting all the headlines, a similar war on unions and the commons is underway in Michigan.

First from David Coates and CBS News:

Michigan lawmakers are on the verge of approving a bill that would enable the governor to appoint “emergency managers” — officials with unilateral power to make sweeping changes to cities facing financial troubles.

Under the legislation, the Michigan Messenger reports, the governor could declare a “financial emergency” in towns or school districts. He could then appoint a manager to fire local elected officials, break contracts, seize and sell assets, eliminate services — and even eliminate whole cities or school districts without any public input.

The measure passed in the state Senate this week; the House passed its own version earlier. The two versions of the bill are expected to be reconciled next week, and Republican Gov. Rick Snyder has said he will sign the bill the bill into law.

Democrats and their allies are decrying the legislation as a power grab and say it’s part of a wider effort taking place in several states, such as Wisconsin, to weaken labor unions.

“It takes every decision in a city or school district and puts it in the hands of the manager, from when the streets get plowed to who plows them and how much they are paid,” said Mark Gaffney, president of the Michigan State AFL-CIO. “This is a takeover by the right wing and it’s an assault on democracy like I’ve never seen.”

Here’s the take of one well-known Michigan native, Michael Moore:

The call has gone out and I’m asking everyone who can to take Wednesday off and head to the State Capitol in Lansing to protest the cruel and downright frightening legislation currently being jammed down our throats.

What is most shocking to many is that the new governor, who ran against the Tea Party and defeated the right wing of his party in the primaries — and then ran in the general election as “just a nerd from Ann Arbor” who was a moderate, not an ideologue — has pulled off one of the biggest Jekyll and Hyde ruses I’ve ever seen in electoral politics.

Governor Snyder, once elected, yanked off his nice-guy mask to reveal that he is in fact a multi-millionaire hell-bent on destroying our state and turning it over to his buddies from Wall Street.

In just 8 short weeks he has:

* Gotten the House and Senate to pass bills giving him “Emergency Management” powers such as the ability to appoint a corporation or a CEO who could literally dissolve town governments or school boards, fire the elected officials, nullify any local law and run your local governmental entity. That company then would have the power to immediately declare all collective bargaining contracts null and void.

* Proposed giving business a whopping 86% tax cut while raising personal taxes by 31%! And much of that tax hike he believes should be shouldered by — I kid you not — senior citizens and the poor! He says these two groups have not been “sharing the sacrifice” the rest of us have been burdened with. So his budget proposes a $1.8 billion tax CUT for business and a $1.75 billion tax INCREASE for the rest of us, much of it from the poor, seniors and working people — even though the top 1% in Michigan ALREADY pay a lower state tax rate than everyone else does!

* Together with the legislature, introduced over 40 anti-labor bills in just the first two months of this session! They have wasted no time and have caught most people off guard. Much of this is being rushed through right now before you have a chance to raise your voice in objection.

Read the rest.

Graphics of the day: Privatized higher education

From educationinformation.com, two stunning graphics about the impact of the corporate beast on higher education and the burdens it inflicts on both students and taxpayers.

First, the relative debt burdens of graduates of public and private institutions.

Second, comparing the student loans debt default rates of the two institutions. Given that these are federal loans, ultimately covered by the taxpayers, why not simply finance public schools instead of paying the profiteers?

Facebook: Big Brother is watching the children

While the mainstream media are all a-Twitter about social media’s role in the events in North Africa and the Middle East, proclaiming them a new bastion of freedom of thought and action for opposing tyrannical regimes, an ominous new warning is sounding closer to home.

Consider this: Children are being disciplined, even expelled from schools, for saying on their Facebook pages precisely the same things kids have always said about teachers who’ve aroused their outrage.

Emil Protalinski, who writes the Friending Facebook blog for ZDNet, writes of the latest incident:

Two students have been suspended, and one student has been expelled, over negative Facebook postings they made about a teacher. The individuals are in seventh grade at Chapel Hill Middle School, meaning they are either 12 or 13 years old, according to My Fox Atlanta. The children are accused of violating a portion of the school code that is a “level one” offense, the worst possible: “Falsifying, misrepresenting, omitting, or erroneously reporting” allegations of inappropriate behavior by a school employee toward a student, according to AJC.

Read the rest.

What were the sins of these suburban Atlanta schoolchildren?

Their posts all dealt with the same teacher. One student called him a rapist, another declared him a pedophile, and a third labeled him “bipolar.”Oddly, it was the last student who was expelled, meaning apparently that it’s worse in the eyes of Georgia school officials to suffer from a mental health problem than it is to a child molester or a rapist.

It’s fair to say that the children were being, well, childish in making their posts. But they were doing nothing more than schoolchildren have always done. We can recall teachers that we and other classmates call “perverts,” baby-rapers, lechers, and, well, just plain nuts.

None of us was ever caught, because in those bygone low-tech days, kids communicated with by word of mouth or through discretely passed notes. But for today’s schoolchildren, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and other social media are the forums for just such exchanges.

Yeah, the young people were being childish, or “inappropriately” in the modern vernacular. And, yes, they deserved to be scolded, if for no other reason than to make them aware that new media bear new consequences which could impact them severely later in life.

What happened to those young people should give us all pause about our Brave New World of social media. Few of us are truly aware of the consequences of the modern mediascape, where the slightest whisper can be amplified into a global shout, and where everything that’s said winds up on hard drives, electronic specters than can return at any time to haunt and harm us.

Autism rates skrocket in California schools

A very troublesome report comes from Joanna Lin at California Watch:

Special education students with autism in California have more than tripled in number since 2002, even as overall special education enrollment has remained relatively flat, according to an analysis of state education data released yesterday.

More than 680,000 students – 11 percent of all California public school students – are enrolled in special education. The number of students diagnosed with autism climbed from 17,508 in 2002 to 59,690 in 2010, the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health found.

Students with autism represented 8.8 percent of all special education enrollment last year, up from 2.6 percent in 2002. Other health impairments – defined by the state as “limited strength, vitality or alertness, due to chronic or acute health problems,” such as a heart condition, asthma, epilepsy or leukemia – are also on the rise, comprising 7.9 percent of disabilities among special education students.

At the same time, the number of special education students with a learning disability – the most common diagnosis – is falling. In 2002, 52.4 percent of students had a learning disability, compared to 42.3 percent in 2010. Speech or language impairment affects about one-quarter of special education students.

The data do not explain these shifts in disability diagnoses. The foundation has asked the public to provide perspective on the trends, which track with special education figures nationwide. Autism is the fastest-growing student disability in the country, and learning disability rates are declining, according to a 2009 report [PDF] by the Public Policy Institute of California.

Disability and special education data by county and school district are available at kidsdata.org.

The skyrocketing rate raises a host of questions. While the scientific consensus holds that vaccines aren’t the cause, and recent reports have raised serious questions about the physician who has made a good living by promoting that claim, clearly something is happening that is locking in the minds of a growing number of children across the country.

Two suspects come to mind: Soaring exposures to environmental toxins or a newly mutated micro-organism.

We live in a chemically saturated environment, eating, breathing, inhaling,  and absorbing through our skins a panoply of human-crafted compounds never before seen on the planet, unleashed without adequate testing and without the slightest idea of how they interact with each other.

Econowrap: From jobs and fracking to poppies

Today’s wrapup is heavy on the labor side, but there’s lots more, so bear with us.

But first the labor news.

BBC hacks staff at online unit

For folks in the news business, online has been hailed as the fix-all to the media’s woes.

But that’s not proving the case at the BBC, where declining revenues have forced the layoffs of hundreds at their online shop.

Jemima Kiss reports for The Guardian:

The BBC today confirmed that 360 staff in the corporation’s online operation are to lose their jobs as the department’s budget is cut by 25% to £103m by 2013.

BBC Online cuts have been in the pipeline since last summer, but come as the corporation gears up for far more sweeping job losses across the organisation in order to meet savings targets imposed following the licence fee deal negotiated with the government in October.

In July last year the BBC Trust approved the cuts following a strategic review of BBC Online, along with further cutbacks in the corporation’s web output including scrapping half the corporation’s websites.

Management said the job cuts break down across the corporation and only a small number relate to currently vacant positions. Of 360 posts to be cut, 120 are from Future Media & Technology, up to 90 from BBC Vision, up to 39 from Audio & Music, 17 from Children’s, 24 from Sport and 70 in journalism from national news and non-news posts on regional news sites.

More troubles for the public schools: Detroit

Colossal public school cuts are in the works at one of the nation’s most economically devastated cities, spelling numbing class sizes and the closing of nearly half of Motor City’s public schools.

Jennifer Chambers reports for The Detroit News:

Detroit Public Schools would close nearly half of its schools in the next two years, and increase high school class sizes to 62 by the following year, under a deficit-reduction plan filed with the state.

The plan, part of a monthly update Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb gives the Department of Education, was filed late Monday to provide insight into Bobb’s progress in his attempt to slash a $327 million deficit in the district to zero over the next several years. Under it, the district would slim down from 142 schools now to 72 during 2012-13.

Bobb has said school closures, bigger classes and other measures

A British student protest Christmas carol

We promise. This is the last Christmas carol you’ll encounter at esnl. But it’s a good ‘un, straight from the students now occupying University College London,

The ConDems of the title refers Britain’s ruling Conservative/ Liberal Democrat coalition government, which is engaged in privatizing whatever Thatcher and Major didn’t.

The “no EMA” featured in place of “five golden rings” refers to the national Education Maintenance Allowance , a need-based grant covering up to £30 a week for 16- to 19-year-old students. The program expires 1 January.

The “kettle” refers to the British police tactic of forcibly confining protesters in a tight, easily controlled area, a practice know as kettling.

The carol was recorded today.

The ConDem Christmas Carol

Lyrics

On the first day of Christmas
The Condems gave to me:
A three-fold increase in my fees.

On the second day of Christmas
The Condems gave to me:
Fewer teaching staff
and a three-fold increase in my fees.

On the third day of Christmas
The Condems gave to me:
No EMA;
Fewer teaching staff
and a three-fold increase in my fees.

On the fourth day of Christmas
The Condems gave to me:
Less humanities;
No EMA;
Fewer teaching staff
and a three-fold increase in my fees.

On the fifth day of Christmas
The Condems gave to me:
Lifelong debt;
Less humanities;
No EMA;
Fewer teaching staff
and a three-fold increase in my fees.

The rest of the lyrics after the jump.

Michelle Antoinette Obama: Let them eat arugula

It all sounds wonderful, right?

Michelle Obama, who tends an organic White House garden, is the charismatic figure who’s totemic support for legislation to introduce fresh foods in school cafeterias has been widely heralded in the press.

So when Congress passes the law, it has to be a good thing, no?

Well, just see how they’re paying for it.

From the appropriately named Robert Pear of the New York Times:

Congress gave final approval on Thursday to a child nutrition bill that expands the school lunch program and sets new standards to improve the quality of school meals, with more fruits and vegetables.

Michelle Obama lobbied for the bill as a way to combat obesity and hunger. About half of the $4.5 billion cost is financed by a cut in food stamps starting in several years.

Mrs. Obama said she was thrilled by passage of what she described as a groundbreaking piece of legislation.

By a vote of 264 to 157, the House on Thursday passed the bill, which was approved in the Senate by unanimous consent in August. It goes now to President Obama, who intends to sign it.

On the final roll call, 247 Democrats and 17 Republicans voted for the bill. Four Democrats and 153 Republicans voted no.

Some liberal House Democrats and advocates for the poor railed against the bill in September, saying it was wrong to pay for the expansion of child nutrition programs by cutting money for food stamps, now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

So how bad is it for those who’ll be losing their food stamps?

From Dustin Ensinger at Economy in Crisis:

Millions of Americans struggled to put food on the table at times last year, according to a report released last week by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The report found that 17.4 million households struggled with very low food security in at least one instance in 2009. Low food security means that those families have had difficulty feeding all family members at least one time during the year.

That accounts for roughly 14.7 percent of Americans households, up from the average of 11 percent recorded prior to the recession.

The report also found that roughly 6.8 million of those households, with as many as one million children in them, struggled so much financially they were forced to miss meals.

Despite food insecurity leveling off to around 2008 levels, it still remains at 15-year highs, according to the report.

Much of that, the report says, can be attributed to the state of the economy.

“Household food insecurity remains a serious problem across the United States,” said Agriculture Undersecretary Kevin Concannon.

“It is a considerable reflection of what is going on in the economy,” he says. “So jobs, employment, the overall economic health of the country are a major portion of it.”

So we’re going to offer tasty treats in school cafeterias at the very time we’re cutting off food to families, including those too young to school and pregnant mothers, the two groups for whom nutrition is even more important?

Gee, thanks Michelle.