The Washington Examiner is a right wing conservative site. So it’s ironic they’re the only ones — so far exposing DeVos.
In April, the department awarded Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and four states nearly $800 million in federal funding for schools affected by hurricanes and wildfires, but “almost none” of those funds have yet been requested, according to Politico.
Pretty hard rebuilding schools when there’s no electricity
The Puerto Rico Department of Education specifically received $589 million of the grant but has not used any of it
Texas has spent a small portion of its earlier $89.4 million grant
Some states far away from the disaster areas also received grant money, including
Iowa, VOTE OUT Steve King #GOPComplicit #NeverAgain
“This is how you look when you claim Cuban heritage yet don’t speak Spanish and ignore the fact that your ancestors fled the island when the dictatorship turned Cuba into a prison camp, after removing all weapons from its citizens; hence their right to self defense,” the post on King’s Facebook page reads.
ERNST: He is standing up for a lot of the countries that — where we have seen some —
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Name a few. Could you name a few?
ERNST: Yeah, you bet. Norway is one them.
ERNST: No, well, okay, how many of you think — you know, you laugh, but folks, who borders Norway?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Russia.
ERNST: Russia.
Welcome to the GOP’s and Trump’s America
Diversity is not our strength. Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban, “Mixing cultures will not lead to a higher quality of life but a lower one.”
― Steve King, Iowa #KKK #Nazis
David Duke and now Rep. Steve King have tweeted that “diversity is not our strength.”
― Eric Hananoki @ehananoki
On August 24, Apple CEO Tim Cook made a joint announcement with the governor of Iowa and the mayor of Waukee that the small town had been chosen as the site for a new $1.3 billion data center. At a time when struggling Midwestern towns and cities are trying to present themselves as emerging innovation hubs in an attempt to attract a sliver of Silicon Valley’s wealth, the photo op gave the politicians fodder for their inevitable reelection campaigns. But what made Waukee attractive to Apple?
Putting aside the huge subsidies aka tax breaks, Waukee and Iowa taxpayers are going to be paying a huge portion of the construction cost. Apple isn’t going to pay to get the electricity or water to their data center! And who’s paying for the roads?
AAPL knows the art of the deal ;)
Apple received $213 billion in tax breaks for 50 permanent jobs — that’s $4.3 million per worker — and even bigger subsidies are on offer for factories. Tesla received $1.25 billion in assistance to build its gigafactory in Nevada, and Foxconn is poised to get a $3 billion incentive for its proposed Wisconsin factory, despite a legislative analysis showing the state won’t break even for at least 25 years.
Selling the myth
Those pushing the Silicon Valley model would at least say there’s an upside to these structural changes: More people are becoming entrepreneurs and the technologies they create are inspiring greater innovation. Too bad the data shows the opposite. Not only has the number of new businesses plunged since the 1970s, but millennials are the least entrepreneurial generation so far.
When towns, small cities and struggling states give uneconomical incentives to large tech companies in the desperate hope that a data center will revive the local economy, they’re perpetuating a trend toward increasing consolidation that’s hurting workers, devastating communities and making it harder for mom-and-pop shops to survive against multinational behemoths that can use the profits from one division to allow another to operate at a loss to eliminate competition.
There’s a growing recognition among academics, politicians and regular people that the convenience offered by these large companies is not worth the many downsides that come with allowing them to have so much control over the economy.
Minimum wage
Citizens of Missouri, Kentucky and Iowa, this might be inflammatory but it’s true. This is on you or your state consistently voting for Republicans.
Take action by getting family, friends, co-workers to vote for anyone who isn’t a Republican. Someone who will do what they promised. Rolling back or not increasing the minimum wage, TrumpCare and voter suppression are proof that Republicans don’t care about you. Neither do Trump, Andrew Puzder and the rest of Trump’s Billionaire cabinet.
OR move to state with higher wages. It’s easy to say but you don’t have to be shackled in servitude to Republicans like Gov. Eric Greitens or Mitch McConnell. Make the move and invest in your future.
AND help elect a president, congress and senate who will raise the Federal Minimum Wage to a living wage.
*** Is the Wrong Choice for Labor Secretary, NYTimes
Alisyn Camerota:
“Are you comfortable, Congressman, with providing $1.6 billion of taxpayer money not from Mexico to build that wall?”
Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa)
“Absolutely yes and more. I’d throw another $5 billion on the pile and I would find a half of a billion dollars of that right out of Planned Parenthood’s budget and the rest of it can come out of food stamps and the entitlements that are coming out for people who haven’t worked in three generations.”
"I love all people -- rich or poor -- but in those particular positions, I just don't want a poor person,"
"Somebody said, 'Why'd you appoint rich person to be in charge of the economy. I said, 'Because that's the kind of thinking we want.'"
"They're representing the country. They don't want the money. They're representing the country. They had to give up a lot to take these jobs. They gave up a lot,"
"Being rich doesn't mean that you have wisdom. It doesn't mean that you have compassion. It doesn't mean you understand the lives that most Americans are living,"
Wilbur Ross and the rest of the cabinet know with their actions and insider information they’re going to make tons of money on the backend. They’re guaranteed higher returns without the risk.
Trump and Trump Family Conflict of Interest ~ #EmoulentsClause
The Democratic candidate running against anti-immigrant Republican Congressman Steve King (IA) announced Saturday that she is dropping out of the race for her own safety.
Hey so
Part of Fascisms early roots was using violence to scare away potential candidates against their power.
yo also this apparently too:
Great, we are all going to die in these next few years
This is disgusting. Republikkkans must be stopped!
Is Jeff Sessions, DOJ or the FBI going to do their jobs? If not, Iowa’s Miniluv & Minipax are their Orwellian future. #Ingsoc
This is what Steve King said about Obama:
"Now I don't assert where he was born. But I will just tell you that we are all certain that he was not raised with an American experience. So these things that beat in our hearts when we hear the national anthem, and when we say the pledge of allegiance, doesn't beat the same for him."
I posted a short video earlier today featuring Jane Elliott. She’s a noted anti-racism activist famous for her blue eyes/brown eyes exercise, featured in the video above.
White people’s number one freedom in the United States of America is the freedom to be totally ignorant about those who are other than white. And our number two freedom is the freedom to deny that we’re ignorant.
In the exercise, Elliott divides the class into two groups based on their eye color: those with blue eyes and those with brown eyes. The brown eyed group is instructed to treat the blue eyed group as inferior because of their eye color – they are to be called “bluey” or “boy” or “honey” but not by their names.
At the beginning of the session (which starts at about 1:30 (but don’t skip the intro!)), Elliott calls herself “the resident bitch for the day” and does she mean it…she does not let up because, as she says in the video, society doesn’t let up on people of color either. (via @dunstan)
Here’s the video. Mandatory watching no matter what your ethnicity
After doing some research, Jane Elliott was an educational pioneer in anti-racism, She taught her first "Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes" experiment in 1968 after she found out that Martin Luther King, Jr. had been killed!
In 1985, Jane reunites with her 3rd grade students! Watch the reunion and her original experiment in A Class Divided via FRONTLINE
Lesson of a Lifetime, SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE
Her bold experiment to teach Iowa third graders about racial prejudice divided townspeople and thrust her onto the national stage. Decades later, Jane Elliott's students say the ordeal changed them for good
"They shot that King yesterday. Why'd they shoot that King?" All 28 children found their desks, and Elliott said she had something special for them to do, to begin to understand the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. the day before. "How do you think it would feel to be a Negro boy or girl?" she asked the children, who were white. "It would be hard to know, wouldn't it, unless we actually experienced discrimination ourselves. Would you like to find out?"
A chorus of "Yeahs" went up, and so began one of the most astonishing exercises ever conducted in an American classroom. Now, almost four decades later, Elliott's experiment still matters—to the grown children with whom she experimented, to the people of Riceville, population 840, who all but ran her out of town, and to thousands of people around the world who have also participated in an exercise based on the experiment. (She prefers the term "exercise.") It is sometimes cited as a landmark of social science. The textbook publisher McGraw-Hill has listed her on a timeline of key educators, along with Confucius, Plato, Aristotle, Horace Mann, Booker T. Washington, Maria Montessori and 23 others. Yet what Elliott did continues to stir controversy. One scholar asserts that it is "Orwellian" and teaches whites "self-contempt." A columnist at a Denver newspaper called it "evil."
...
Jane shielded her eyes from the morning sun. "Malinda? Malinda Whisenhunt?"
"Ms. Elliott, how are you?"
The two hugged, and Whisenhunt had tears streaming down her cheeks. Now 45, she had been in Elliott's third grade class in 1969. "Let me look at you," Elliott said. "You know, sweetheart, you haven't changed one bit. You've still got that same sweet smile. And you'll always have it."
"I've never forgotten the exercise," Whisenhunt volunteered. "It changed my life. Not a day goes by without me thinking about it, Ms. Elliott. When my grandchildren are old enough, I'd give anything if you'd try the exercise out on them. Would you? Could you?"
Tears formed in the corners of Elliott's eyes.
