Monday, April 02, 2018

Applause, applause and more applause. I love it when professionals caring for children stand up for their quality of work life.

April 2, 2018

"I'm 54 years old and my paycheck is $1,980 [a month]. (click here) I can't afford f****** health insurance."

That's one of the first things Larry Cagle says on the phone. He is spitting nails. The Tulsa English teacher is one of the leaders of a grassroots organizing group, Oklahoma Teachers United, that they say represents thousands of public school teachers around the state. His group, and both of Oklahoma's teachers unions, support the walkout and rally happening across the state Monday in support of higher wages and more state revenue.

Teachers are striking even though state legislators passed a pay raise of about $6,000 last week. That vote followed earlier walkouts. The bill, if signed, would bring Oklahoma's teacher salaries from among the lowest in the nation, to the middle of the pack....

This is about quality education in the USA. 

Oklahoma had a state GDP of $139.3 billion.

The problem as I see it, is about protecting teachers from exploitation. Teachers are suppose to be the best paid public employees in the country. Why? Because they ensure a quality work force and a brain trust unmatched by another other. We already know Europe does a far better job of educating their children with college admission that costs nothing. Everyone student is on a level playing field and that is the way it should be. The potential of a child should be accommodated without question.


July 2017

School Funding 101 (click here)

First, it’s important to understand that Oklahoma schools are supported through a combination of state, local and federal funds. Tulsa Public Schools, for example, receives 37 percent of its budget from the State of Oklahoma, 27 percent from local revenue like property taxes, 20 percent from the building and bond fund, 13 percent from the federal government, and 3 percent from private grants. Some funding sources place restrictions on how money gets used, while other funds are unrestricted and leave spending to the discretion of the district.
The funds that are appropriated by the State Legislature to support education are referred to as state aid. The amount of state aid a district qualifies for is based primarily on student headcount and attendance, with a few other factors weighed into the calculation, such as the number of special education students, bilingual students, gifted students, and economically disadvantaged students in the district. For many districts, state aid represents a big portion of the overall budget, but according to the Oklahoma Policy Institute, Oklahoma’s state aid spending per pupil has fallen by a staggering 26.9 percent since 2008....

The defunding of the public schools is all part of that the movement to promote Charter Schools starting somewhere around 2002 with the implementation of the 2001 law, "No Child Left Behind." (click here) At no point in time did anyone tell teachers they needed to purchase the very pencils their students would be using in their classrooms.

Teacher accountability became a gigantic issue. Teachers not only had to supply the needs of their students, they had to pass all kinds of new scrutiny to carry a out their profession.

Now, I defy anyone to tell me there aren't under achieving students in a school by pure reason they come from a household with problems. Teachers were made to believe they had to reach all students and create a learning environment where children achieved regardless of their environment outside the classroom. It was an unrealistic goal and everyone knows it. A teacher has to create the classroom environment to learn and teach to grade appropriate standards, but, cannot be held responsible for every child's behavior. That is not within their purview, nor should it be.

There is another aspect to this idea of student performance measured by teacher performance; the USA had a many more poverty level households. Poverty effects a child's learning. Yet, teachers are held responsible for their performance when society and government aren’t held responsible for theirs. As a society we are responsible for a quality education for every child, but, that begins with a good income to every family AND at home time that a forty hour per week jobs provides.

We have seen Wall Street soar in value then at the same time the value of a quality family life has been lost. There is a lot wrong with the dynamics teachers face AND are being held responsible for, including teaching on a personal classroom budget. That doesn’t even make sense when one says it, “A personal classroom budget.” Only in America.

China's tariffs are competing with a first world country, when it is not.

...The major factor behind Shuanghui’s acquisition (click here) of Smithfield was to secure a supply of pork to feed rising demand in China (a country that is now the world’s biggest pork market), not to export pork products from China to the U.S.:...

This is just one example, but, there are others such as baby formula that causes me to wonder what China is thinking.

I think if they want to instill tariffs, it probably is a good idea, but, I think in some instances it might backfire.

April 2, 2018
By Joe McDonald

Beijing — China raised import duties on a $3 billion (click here) list of U.S. pork, apples and other products Monday in an escalating dispute with Washington over trade and industrial policy.

The government of President Xi Jinping said it was responding to a U.S. tariff hike on steel and aluminum. But that is just one facet of sprawling tensions with Washington, Europe and Japan over a state-led economic model they complain hampers market access, protects Chinese companies and subsidizes exports in violation of Beijing’s free-trade commitments.

Already, companies are looking ahead to a bigger fight over U.S. President Donald Trump’s approval of higher duties on up to $50 billion of Chinese goods in response to complaints that Beijing steals or pressures foreign companies to hand over technology.

Forecasters say the impact of Monday’s move should be limited, but investors worry the global recovery might be set back if other governments respond by raising import barriers.

On Monday, the main stock market indexes in Tokyo and Shanghai ended the day down.

The tariffs “signal a most unwelcome development, which is that countries are becoming protectionist,” said economist Taimur Baig of DBS Group. But in commercial terms, they are “not very substantial” compared with China’s $150 billion in annual imports of U.S. goods, he said....

China has a problem. It has more than a billion people to feed on any given day. Some of its food sources soured over the past decade and pork is one of them.  A chinese oligarch bought out Smithfield Foods for the purpose of sending the pork back to China. The pig farms owned by Shuanghul here in the USA are not for the American market, so if China imposes tariffs against pork, it is penalizing it's own businesses and consumers.

It could be a deterrent for Chinese businesspersons moving to the USA as Shuanghul did in this case. In the case of baby food, China has begun it's own version of the US FDA and producers of these important products are now under regulation to provide the Chinese parents peace of mind in feeding their infants.

I disagree the tariffs will hurt the American farmer because they don't ship to China directly, that is all handled by wholesalers and exporters. The cost to the export market will be according to market value. Pork is a commodity. So, the idea the American farmer will be hurt by such tariffs is not the case exactly.

When American pork reaches Chinese shores, the cost will go up because of the tariffs, but, it will be the Chinese people that will either pay a higher price for pork or make other choices. The Chinese people are caught between a rock and a hard place in regard to this product. They may pay the higher price due to the tariffs just because it is a better and edible product.

President Xi Jinping needs to look into all the dynamics of the products he is placing a tariff on. He is correct to answer the Trump tariffs with Chinese tariffs, but, his choices should be reviewed under a finer microscope before imposing them.

It is just the way it is. China hasn't yet developed a full compliment of marketable items that are made in China. The products produced in China may not be the quality of the imports either. This is not an easy time for President Xi Jinping. He wants to answer the US tariffs to place perspective in the hands of American consumers to decide against the tarrifs and perhaps change an election, however, it is not as easy for China to pivot to such strategies because it is still a developing economy.

Perhaps, China needs to invest in domestic products most widely used and currently imported. When the USA decides it needs an expansion in a domestically produced product, it provides grants and low cost loans to entrepreneurs with specifications as to the product to be developed or moved into domestic production. China can do the same thing. It has schools to educate it's children with good success. There is no reason to believe China is trapped in only importing it's economy. The contrary is true; with the correct incentives and government involvement China could develop a domestic market that pleases it's people in the same way exports currently do now.
Putin should bring a few honored guests for the Trump-Putin State Dinner; Andrey Lugovoy and Dmitry Kovtun.

Trump should be sure to have his beverages tested before drinking.

April 2, 2018
By Jeremy Diamond

Washington - President Donald Trump (click here) and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the possibility of meeting at the White House during a phone call last month, the White House confirmed on Monday.

"As the President himself confirmed on March 20, hours after his last call with President Putin, the two had discussed a bilateral meeting in the 'not-too-distant future' at a number of potential venues, including the White House," White
House deputy press secretary Raj Shah said in a statement.

Shah's comment came after Yuri Ushakov, an aide to Putin, said Trump "offered to hold the first meeting in Washington, in the White House."...

This is ridiculous. Trump looks more and more ridiculous everyday. The USA has sanctions against Russia, its president is not welcome here unless it is to surrender for breaking the treaty that sent Russia to the Ukraine border to kill innocent people.

January 26, 2018

It’s been a busy month for the Russia (click here) and Ukraine-focused think tank analysts in Washington. This Monday is sanctions upgrade day.


Russia experts have been providing new names for U.S. Treasury to sanction, with most of them simply going after anyone and their relatives close to Vladimir Putin. It’s been the talk of the town in some circles in both Washington and Moscow since November.


Meanwhile, the market is betting Treasury won’t sanction Russian securities. Stocks are up over 12% so far this month and beating the rest of the emerging markets.


“Sanctioning Russian bonds hurts American investors more than the Russians,” says Gorky Urquieta a fund manager at Neuberger Berman in Atlanta. That would be especially true if bond sanctions were retroactive....


...“This division in Luhansk and Donetsk is artificial,” says Andreas Umland, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Euro-Atlantic Cooperation in Kiev. Donetsk and Luhansk are two of the most important areas within Donbass, the industrial heartland of Ukraine. “This is an area controlled by Moscow. It is a pseudo government. This whole narrative of a Russian Spring and popular uprising is nonsense.  Of course they have tapped into local grievances. About a third of the population of those two oblasts are all for Russia and annexation. But it is only a third. In Crimea, it was half.  This is basically a proxy war between Russia and Ukraine,” Umland says....

This friendship between Putin and Trump is used in Russia for political purposes. Trump helped get Putin elected. All this nonsense between Putin and Trump is propaganda. I would think Trump would swallow his pride at least once to denounce Russia as an enemy of democracy, the west and the USA. 

The result of the Trump - Putin friendship was this:

...“There is a 100% probability of this war ending if there was a change of leadership in Russia,” says Pavel Kanygin, a Novaya Gazeta reporter who covered the fighting for two years when it erupted in 2014....

Trump is Putin's puppet. 

Ukraine is at war for one purpose, to continue to hack away at its economy that is getting stronger, but, still forces Ukraine to look to the IMF for relief from its debt and spending under Yanukovych. 

RUSSIA IS AN ENEMY OF THE USA. There are sanctions and a unrelenting human rights abuse by Russia of Ukraine. Putin structurally walked away from Minsk II. There is no reason to believe he ever intends to stop the border war with Ukraine.

February 15, 2017
By Peter Poifer

As the two-year anniversary of the Minsk II agreement passes, (click here) the simmering Ukraine-Russia conflict in the Donbas region continues, simmering sometimes at a higher temperature, sometimes at a lower temperature. But the fighting has not definitively stopped. Unfortunately, there is little evidence to suggest improved future prospects for Minsk II’s implementation, primarily because the Kremlin does not seem to want peace....

Trump is a coward and/or grateful for the election of 2016.

This is outrageous!!!!!!!!!

Putin is poison himself to the world.

Stone is the first member of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine to be killed on duty. He was killed near the village of Pryshyb, 800 kilometers southeast of Kyiv, in the Russian-controlled part of Luhansk Oblast....

...He was born in Milwaukee in March 1981, and but had lived in Arizona since an early age, CNN said. He went to Prima Community College in Tucson, where he was eventually certified as emergency medical technician (EMT)....


April 25, 2017

Joseph Stone, 36, (click here) is the American medic killed when his vehicle struck a land mine in the Russia-controlled part of Luhansk Oblast on April 23. He was a contract worker for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's Special Monitoring Mission.

The American paramedic killed during a monitoring mission in Ukraine has been identified.


He is Joseph Stone, 36, according to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's Special Monitoring Mission.


It is the first time a member of an SMM patrol has been killed while on duty.


"I was absolutely shocked. I always knew it was a possibility," Matthew Stone told CNN, reacting to his brother's death. "He always knew something like this could happen."...

Israel and Saudi Arabia have many common interests and a meeting with a new leader is understandable.

March 18, 2018


Saudi Arabia (click here) officially announced Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s first meetings with Jewish religious leaders. On Wednesday, Prince Mohammed, often referred to as MBS, met with Rabbi Richard Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, Rabbi Steven Wernick, head of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism and Allen Fagin, executive vice president of the Orthodox Union, the Saudi embassy said according to Bloomberg.

“The meeting emphasized the common bond among all people, particularly people of faith, which stresses the importance of tolerance, coexistence, and working together for a better future for all of humanity,” the embassy said....

There are also some topics MBS needs to discuss with Israel to end the violence between Israel and Palestine.

April 1, 2018
By Gideon Levy

The shooting on the Gaza border (click here) shows once again that the killing of Palestinians is accepted in Israel more lightly than the killing of mosquitoes....

I already know the monies spent on a PR campaign needs to go toward the hospitals HVAC system.

"Medstar Washington" Hospital Center (click here) needs INFRASTRUCTURE investment.

If there is sewage odor in the building, no matter who owns it, needs to install a new HVAC system with high rates of 'air exchange.'

The higher pressure in the building will help to force the fouled air back where it belongs. Most of these buildings are older that have this problem and there many in the USA that do not have modernized air quality systems.

Now, if there is actually leaks of sewage into the building that is a good reason to shut down at least part of the building until structural changes can be instituted. Direct contact with sewage returns e. coli (click here) as an infective bacteria into the hospital's nosocomial concerns. The first question with e. coli is; how many illnesses, infected wounds and how many deaths occurred because of contact with actual sewage into the building.

April 2, 2018
By Jayne O'Donnell

"A black, grainy foul-smelling substance" coated the floor (click here) of an operating room at the MedStar Washington Hospital Center, which also suffered from at least one "active leak" of sewage, according to a review by the District of Columbia health department last August.

That health department report was cited in a lawsuit filed against the hospital by the husband of a woman who died from a post-operative infection after surgery at the hospital, where the operating rooms had suffered from leaks of bacteria-filled sewage for months....

Enough. This should not be an issue at all. Congress is at fault here. There isn't enough monies in the VA system to address infrastructure problems.

Ken Starr is incorrect about Special Prosecutor Mueller.

March 30, 2018
By Matt Naham

Kenneth “Ken” Starr, (click here) who all alive at the time will recall was the independent counsel during the Whitewater investigation and looked into a certain Bill ClintonMonica Lewinsky scandal, said in an appearance on the Yahoo News podcast “Skullduggery” on Friday that the alleged Stormy Daniels $130,000 payment in exchange for silence about a sexual relationship with President Donald Trump raises “serious” issues...


President (click here) Viktor F. Yanukovych of Ukraine, center, with Vladimir V. Putin, right, then Russia’s prime minister, and Dmitri A. Medvedev, left, then Russia’s president, in 2011.

The collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia is already evident. Paul Manafort was a campaign chairman and has a strong relationship with Russia. He was a poor choice from the beginning. Then to have Russia send hacked information from the DNC closes the loop. I think Russia was managing the campaign, especially with Mr. Manafort as chairperson. He was a very odd choice given his well known reputation with Yanukovych.

Putin would campaign in Ukraine. Ukraine was a political icon for President Vladimir Putin. His presence in Ukraine, primarily Crimea, was a dog whistle to the electorate in Russia. The invasion of Russia into Ukraine when the Euromaidan in Keiv violence broke out was based strongly in Putin politics. He promised Crimea would remain Russia for all the "Russian people" living there. Everyone else outside of Russia knows Crimea was a strategic and had nothing to do with the people. Crimea is within the Black Sea. Putin wasn't going to give Crimea to anyone for strategic reasons.


There is no great leap of faith to realize the relationship of Manafort and Russia. Paul Manafort was not a well known election chairperson in the USA before Trump. But, the degree Paul Manafort had links to Russia is well known. Then put the 13 Russians (click here) and the use of social media by Russia into the picture and it all comes alive.

I think the Mueller investigation would have made that connection regardless of it's start date. What is startling is the degree Russia had influence in the 2016 elections. The Mueller investigation is necessary and to his benefit President Trump ordered it.

As far as the wrongdoing by the Trump Campaign and Ms. Clifford, it is another obvious violation. The Attorney General is more interested in chasing pot heads rather than protecting the sovereign USA. So, the idea he has time for
Ms. Clifford's story and its implications OF A POLITICAL CAMPAIGN AG Sessions worked for is next to none. I am confident AG Sessions measures his own involvement with all these issues. There is a strong conflict of interest with the campaign and AG Sessions.

As far as Mexico? I think President Trump is correct, the USA should be working with Mexico to end the cartels and return sovereign authority of the Mexican government, but, it has little to do with a wall of bricks; so much a wall of the USA national guard on the USA side of the border and the US military on Mexican side of the border. But, the USA has to go further than the border. A sovereign authority needs to return to Mexico all the way to it's southern border. It may be necessary to push into Central America if the veracity of the cartels proves to be a problem. The issues with the cartels is extensive and needs its own strategy. The USA needs to establish a strategy with Mexico and begin talks with leaders of Central America. I doubt the USA will be turned away from any of the countries adversely effected by the cartels.

"Good Night, Moon"

The waning gibbous 

16.4 day old moon

97 percent lit

April 1, 2018
By Andrew Fazekas

As the seasons shift (click here) here on Earth, the celestial realm will deliver a planet bonanza, a wandering moon, and an early morning meteor shower.

So pull out your binoculars and mark your cosmic calendar.

At dawn, look for the red planet to join the ringed giant Saturn, which will be hanging halfway up the southern skies in the bright constellation Sagittarius. The star-like objects will seem to be separated by only one degree, equal to the space of two lunar disks, making the pairing an eye-catching sight. While both worlds will appear similar in brightness, look carefully and you’ll notice they are distinctly different in color. Saturn shines with a golden-yellow hue, and Mars has an orange-red coloration....