Category Archives: DOJ, DC and inside the Beltway

White Privilege, What you Need to Know

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Look at the sponsors of this organization. What is White Privilege? There is a community agreement. Training is available from their institute. Need more? Here is a manifesto on White Privilege.

There is more you need to know.

Students Out of Control as St. Paul Schools Spend Millions on ‘White Privilege’ Training

“Students are out of control because there are no real consequences for their actions.”

EAG News reports that in 2010, the St. Paul, Minnesota school district contracted with the Pacific Educational Group, a San Francisco-based organization that tries to help public schools deal with achievement and disciplinary issues involving black students.

But PEG claims that the American education system is built around “white privilege” and that black students will only achieve if school curricula are customized to meet their cultural specifications. PEG also rejects the concept of using suspensions or expulsions to discipline black students.

Since 2010, St. Paul schools spent about $1.9 million on PEG consultations services, in addition to “matched amounts” of another more than $1 million on PEG, without explaining what that term means.

Not long after PEG started working with St. Paul school officials, crucial policy changes were made:

Special needs students with behavioral issues were mainstreamed into regular classrooms, a position openly advocated by PEG.

Student suspensions were replaced by “time outs,” and school officials starting forgiving or ignoring violence and other unacceptable behavior.

The result, EAG notes, “has been general chaos throughout the district, with far too many students out of control because they know there are no real consequences for their actions.”

A local publication called CityPages recently told the story, for example, of Becky McQueen, an educator at St. Paul’s Harding High School:

Last spring, when she stepped into a fight between two basketball players, one grabbed her shoulder and head, throwing her aside. The kid was only sent home for a couple of days.

In March, when a student barged into her class, McQueen happened to be standing in the doorway and got crushed into a shelf. The following week, two boys came storming in, hit a girl in the head, then skipped back out. One of them had already been written up more than 30 times.

Yet another student who repeatedly drops into her class has hit kids and cursed at an aide, once telling McQueen he would “fry” her ass. She tried to make a joke of it — ‘Ooh, I could use a little weight loss.’ Her students interjected: ‘No, that means he’s gonna kill you.’”

McQueen now has her students use a secret knock on the classroom door, so she will know who to allow in. She told CityPages:

There are those that believe that by suspending kids we are building a pipeline to prison. I think that by not, we are. I think we’re telling these kids you don’t have to be on time for anything, we’re just going to talk to you. You can assault somebody and we’re gonna let you come back here.
CityPages reported on similar horror stories from many other district schools:

At John A. Johnson Elementary on the East Side, several teachers, who asked to remain anonymous, describe anything but a learning environment. Students run up and down the hallways, slamming lockers and tearing posters off the walls. They hit and swear at each other, upend garbage cans under teachers’ noses.

Nine teachers at Ramsey Middle School have quit since the beginning of this school year. Some left for other districts. Others couldn’t withstand the escalating anarchy.

In mid-April, staff at Battle Creek Elementary penned a letter to their principal over “concerns about building wide safety, both physical and emotional, as well as the deteriorating learning environment.”

A week later, the principal announced that he would be transferred next year.

One despondent teacher told CityPages,

We have students who will spend an hour in the hallway just running and hiding from people, like it’s a game for them. A lot of them know no one is going to stop them, so they just continue.

Families are now trying to escape the district schools:

Over the past four years, as PEG has cast its influence in St. Paul, the number of students living in the district but attending non-district schools, has increased from about 9,000 to 12,000, according to Joe Nathan, executive director of the Minneapolis-based Center for School Change.

Two-thirds of those students come from low income families, or families of color, so it’s not just a typical case of “white flight,” Nathan said.

Nathan told the Star Tribune that

a significant number of families are saying their children do not feel safe in the schools. They don’t feel safe even going to the bathroom.

As one recently published story on better-ed.org put it, “Given the recent (and probably ongoing) turmoil in St. Paul Public Schools, it’s time to ask questions about Pacific Educational Group.”

Sounds like it’s too late for that.

What is Missing from the TPP? Reward Offered

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If The TPP is Such a Great Idea, Why Keep it a Secret?

The Obama Administration has been pressuring members of Congress to pass the bill that will give President Obama the “fast track”  authority to negotiate the Trans-Pacific Partnership(TPP) agreement without any debate in Congress.  Fast track authority would not allow for any amendments and the bill would remain secret until just before it is voted on.

“President Obama is currently pressing members of Congress to pass Fast-Track authority for a trade and investment agreement called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). If Fast Track passes, it means that Congress must approve or deny the TPP with minimal debate and no amendments. Astonishingly, our lawmakers have not seen the agreement they are being asked to expedite.” Nation of Change

This trade agreement, like previous international trade agreements, like NAFTA, is not a partisan issue.  On just about every other piece of legislation that the Obama Administration has introduced to Congress, the Republican majority has stood fast against it.  However, in this instance, Congress appears to be strangely united in its efforts to pass a secret bill that they have not even been allowed to read.  More important details here.

WikiLeaks issues call for $100,000 bounty on monster trade treaty

Today WikiLeaks has launched a campaign to crowd-source a $100,000 reward for America’s Most Wanted Secret: the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP). One chapter is found here.

Over the last two years WikiLeaks has published three chapters of this super-secret global deal, despite unprecedented efforts by negotiating governments to keep it under wraps. US Senator Elizabeth Warren has said

“[They] can’t make this deal public because if the American people saw what was in it, they would be opposed to it.”

The remaining 26 chapters of the deal are closely held by negotiators and the big corporations that have been given privilleged access. Today, WikiLeaks is taking steps to bring about the public’s rightful access to the missing chapters of this monster trade pact.

The TPP is the largest agreement of its kind in history: a multi-trillion dollar international treaty being negotiated in secret by the US, Japan, Mexico, Canada, Australia and 7 other countries. The treaty aims to create a new international legal regime that will allow transnational corporations to bypass domestic courts, evade environmental protections, police the internet on behalf of the content industry, limit the availability of affordable generic medicines, and drastically curtail each country’s legislative sovereignty.

The TPP bounty also heralds the launch of WikiLeaks new competition system, which allows the public to pledge prizes towards each of the world’s most wanted leaks. For example, members of the public can now pledge on the missing chapters of the TPP.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said,

“The transparency clock has run out on the TPP. No more secrecy. No more excuses. Let’s open the TPP once and for all.”

Note: The TPP is also noteworthy as the icebreaker agreement for the giant proposed ’T-treaty triad’ of TPP-TISA-TTIP which extends TPP style rules to 53 nations, 1.6 billion people and 2/3rds of the global economy.

See https://wikileaks.org/pledge/

Launch a Moratorium on Refugees NOW

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There are 2 key words that make it very easy with approval for foreign nationals to enter the United States, ‘refugees and asylees’, both are very threatening conditions to our national security.

Reuters / Moayad Zaghmout

Is anyone taking notice? The call to action here is to demand your district representative in Congress to launch an immediate moratorium now. Here is your proof and platform…if it happens there, it is happening here and that too has been proven.

The United Nations is the master of the refugee and asylum program for the United States. This has been previously explained here.

Enemies of the West such as al Qaeda, al Nusra and ISIS has a brilliant plan and it is working.

UN-cleared refugees to Norway revealed as ISIS militants – report

Norwegian authorities have revealed that several Middle East refugees set to be granted asylum in Norway under a UN program have links to the Islamic State and Nusra Front extremist groups, media reported on Monday.

 

“Unfortunately, there are people who try to exploit and abuse the refugee system. We have uncovered some quota refugees with links to the Nusra Front and the ISIL,” police superintendent Svein Erik Molstad said, as quoted by the Dagbladetnewspaper.

During two trips to the Middle East, Norway’s PST police intelligence unit discovered up to 10 Norway-bound refugees were members of the militant groups. The findings were discovered during background checks conducted by the agency.

The migrants are part of the so-called “quota refugees” cleared by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for resettlement in Norway.

The issue is particularly relevant at the moment, as the Norwegian Parliament is discussing how many more refugees Norway will accept from Syria. A majority are calling for 10,000 to be let into the country, although local governments say they cannot accommodate such a large number. Negotiations are underway, with a final decision expected later this month.

Around 5,000 refugees already in Norway are in asylum centers, awaiting housing.

Both the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) and Nusra Front are engaged in fighting against forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad. IS now controls large swathes of Iraq and Syria, and has ambitions to form a ‘caliphate’ in the Middle East.

This is not the first time that concern has been raised regarding militants disguised as refugees. A Libyan government adviser said in May that Islamic State is smuggling “prize operatives” into Europe.

In April, IS supporters posted photographs allegedly taken in Italian cities, accompanied with messages such as: “We are in your streets.”

Skies are Filled with FBI Aircraft

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After a little more digging on this story, the tail numbers for the aircraft and additional details are found here.

More surveillance operations in those clouds above and they belong to the FBI even though there are alias names in front companies managing those aircrafts.

The FBI has under the ‘critical incident response group’ a fleet of aircraft. An inspector general has performed an audit of the division complete with redactions. Considering legitimacy of the program, then why the redactions and the fake companies and forged signatures?

FBI Runs Secret Air Force Posing As Fake Companies To Spy On U.S. Cities

WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI is operating a small air force with scores of low-flying planes across the country carrying video and, at times, cellphone surveillance technology — all hidden behind fictitious companies that are fronts for the government, The Associated Press has learned.

The planes’ surveillance equipment is generally used without a judge’s approval, and the FBI said the flights are used for specific, ongoing investigations. In a recent 30-day period, the agency flew above more than 30 cities in 11 states across the country, an AP review found.

Aerial surveillance represents a changing frontier for law enforcement, providing what the government maintains is an important tool in criminal, terrorism or intelligence probes. But the program raises questions about whether there should be updated policies protecting civil liberties as new technologies pose intrusive opportunities for government spying.

U.S. law enforcement officials confirmed for the first time the wide-scale use of the aircraft, which the AP traced to at least 13 fake companies, such as FVX Research, KQM Aviation, NBR Aviation and PXW Services. Even basic aspects of the program are withheld from the public in censored versions of official reports from the Justice Department’s inspector general.

“The FBI’s aviation program is not secret,” spokesman Christopher Allen said in a statement. “Specific aircraft and their capabilities are protected for operational security purposes.” Allen added that the FBI’s planes “are not equipped, designed or used for bulk collection activities or mass surveillance.”

But the planes can capture video of unrelated criminal activity on the ground that could be handed over for prosecutions.

Some of the aircraft can also be equipped with technology that can identify thousands of people below through the cellphones they carry, even if they’re not making a call or in public. Officials said that practice, which mimics cell towers and gets phones to reveal basic subscriber information, is rare.

Details confirmed by the FBI track closely with published reports since at least 2003 that a government surveillance program might be behind suspicious-looking planes slowly circling neighborhoods. The AP traced at least 50 aircraft back to the FBI, and identified more than 100 flights since late April orbiting both major cities and rural areas.

One of the planes, photographed in flight last week by the AP in northern Virginia, bristled with unusual antennas under its fuselage and a camera on its left side. A federal budget document from 2010 mentioned at least 115 planes, including 90 Cessna aircraft, in the FBI’s surveillance fleet.

The FBI also occasionally helps local police with aerial support, such as during the recent disturbance in Baltimore that followed the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray, who sustained grievous injuries while in police custody. Those types of requests are reviewed by senior FBI officials.

The surveillance flights comply with agency rules, an FBI spokesman said. Those rules, which are heavily redacted in publicly available documents, limit the types of equipment the agency can use, as well as the justifications and duration of the surveillance.

Details about the flights come as the Justice Department seeks to navigate privacy concerns arising from aerial surveillance by unmanned aircrafts, or drones. President Barack Obama has said he welcomes a debate on government surveillance, and has called for more transparency about spying in the wake of disclosures about classified programs.

“These are not your grandparents’ surveillance aircraft,” said Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union, calling the flights significant “if the federal government is maintaining a fleet of aircraft whose purpose is to circle over American cities, especially with the technology we know can be attached to those aircraft.”

During the past few weeks, the AP tracked planes from the FBI’s fleet on more than 100 flights over at least 11 states plus the District of Columbia, most with Cessna 182T Skylane aircraft. These included parts of Houston, Phoenix, Seattle, Chicago, Boston, Minneapolis and Southern California.

Evolving technology can record higher-quality video from long distances, even at night, and can capture certain identifying information from cellphones using a device known as a “cell-site simulator” — or Stingray, to use one of the product’s brand names. These can trick pinpointed cellphones into revealing identification numbers of subscribers, including those not suspected of a crime.

Officials say cellphone surveillance is rare, although the AP found in recent weeks FBI flights orbiting large, enclosed buildings for extended periods where aerial photography would be less effective than electronic signals collection. Those included above Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota.

After The Washington Post revealed flights by two planes circling over Baltimore in early May, the AP began analyzing detailed flight data and aircraft-ownership registrations that shared similar addresses and flight patterns. That review found some FBI missions circled above at least 40,000 residents during a single flight over Anaheim, California, in late May, according to Census data and records provided by the website FlightRadar24.com.

Most flight patterns occurred in counter-clockwise orbits up to several miles wide and roughly one mile above the ground at slow speeds. A 2003 newsletter from the company FLIR Systems Inc., which makes camera technology such as seen on the planes, described flying slowly in left-handed patterns.

“Aircraft surveillance has become an indispensable intelligence collection and investigative technique which serves as a force multiplier to the ground teams,” the FBI said in 2009 when it asked Congress for $5.1 million for the program.

Recently, independent journalists and websites have cited companies traced to post office boxes in Virginia, including one shared with the Justice Department. The AP analyzed similar data since early May, while also drawing upon aircraft registration documents, business records and interviews with U.S. officials to understand the scope of the operations.

The FBI asked the AP not to disclose the names of the fake companies it uncovered, saying that would saddle taxpayers with the expense of creating new cover companies to shield the government’s involvement, and could endanger the planes and integrity of the surveillance missions. The AP declined the FBI’s request because the companies’ names — as well as common addresses linked to the Justice Department — are listed on public documents and in government databases.

At least 13 front companies that AP identified being actively used by the FBI are registered to post office boxes in Bristow, Virginia, which is near a regional airport used for private and charter flights. Only one of them appears in state business records.

Included on most aircraft registrations is a mysterious name, Robert Lindley. He is listed as chief executive and has at least three distinct signatures among the companies. Two documents include a signature for Robert Taylor, which is strikingly similar to one of Lindley’s three handwriting patterns.

The FBI would not say whether Lindley is a U.S. government employee. The AP unsuccessfully tried to reach Lindley at phone numbers registered to people of the same name in the Washington area since Monday.

Law enforcement officials said Justice Department lawyers approved the decision to create fictitious companies to protect the flights’ operational security and that the Federal Aviation Administration was aware of the practice. One of the Lindley-headed companies shares a post office box openly used by the Justice Department.

Such elusive practices have endured for decades. A 1990 report by the then-General Accounting Office noted that, in July 1988, the FBI had moved its “headquarters-operated” aircraft into a company that wasn’t publicly linked to the bureau.

The FBI does not generally obtain warrants to record video from its planes of people moving outside in the open, but it also said that under a new policy it has recently begun obtaining court orders to use cell-site simulators. The Obama administration had until recently been directing local authorities through secret agreements not to reveal their own use of the devices, even encouraging prosecutors to drop cases rather than disclose the technology’s use in open court.

A Justice Department memo last month also expressly barred its component law enforcement agencies from using unmanned drones “solely for the purpose of monitoring activities protected by the First Amendment” and said they are to be used only in connection with authorized investigations and activities. A department spokeswoman said the policy applied only to unmanned aircraft systems rather than piloted airplanes.

 

Bernie Sanders Popularity Spells Bigger U.S. Crisis

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Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, is an avowed Socialist. He is listed however as an Independent and caucuses with the Democrats. His voting record is here and 52% of Democrats are cool with Sanders position. Years ago, he wrote a manifesto about his illusions of gang-rape.

He wants America to be like Denmark. He refused to attend Israel’s Prime Minister’s speech before the Joint Congress. He says that Americans love socialism.

He announced his candidacy for president, he is making the rounds in stump speeches and is drawing unexpected large crowds. He is 73 years old and if he wins he would be 75 on inauguration day.

His platform includes items such as free college for everyone paid for by all stock and bond trades, higher minimum wage and higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations. He is a supporter of climate change and seeks to install carbon taxes and increase taxes on methane emissions.

So how is it that Bernie Sanders has this popularity in a democratic government?

Here is the real bad news for our country…

How Bernie Sanders’ ‘radical’ ideas entered the municipal mainstream

“He ran against everything.”

On March 4, 1981, red dawn broke over the Green Mountains.

“‘Everyone’s scared.’ Socialist elected mayor of Vermont’s largest city,” blared the UPI headline over an article that began, “Self-described socialist Bernard Sanders… has invited the city’s business and political leaders to join him in creating ‘a rebirth of the human spirit.’ ” Readers could have been forgiven for concluding that some Pol Pot in Birkenstocks had just established a beachhead in Burlington, Vermont.

When Bernie Sanders won by 10 votes in a four-way mayoral race, Ronald Reagan had just entered the White House, the Cold War was in full swing, and people were seriously freaked out. “You would’ve thought that Trotsky had come to Burlington,” said Sanders’ confidant and one-time roommate, Richard Sugarman.

But now, 34 years later, as Sanders launches a campaign for the presidency, many of the radical solutions he imposed — free arts and culture for the masses, local-first economic development, wresting money from rich nonprofits, and, most shockingly, communal land for affordable housing — have become mainstays of the American municipal governance playbook.

Such policies “would be unexceptional today,” said UCLA urban planning professor Randall Crane, noting that urban policy in general has become broader and more creative in the decades that followed, as more people returned to city neighborhoods.

Crane himself lives on property developed through a land trust in Irvine, California, and says the once-radical idea is now “just seen as a routine part of the toolkit.”

“They sound weird and socialist and stuff,” he said of today’s housing trusts, “but it’s become a non-radical way of thinking about housing affordability.”

That was a far cry from what people were saying in the early ’80s. After Sanders’ election as mayor, Burlington’s business and political establishment — in which Democrats and Republicans coexisted cozily — prepared for the worst.

Sanders had campaigned against the incumbent mayor’s plans to raise residential property taxes, and proposed raising taxes on commercial property instead. “If Sanders succeeds in putting over his tax proposals, they would shut this business community down,” an anonymous businessman told UPI. ”If I was planning a major investment in Burlington, I’d be a little cautious right now.”

“He ran against everything — against the governor, the alderman, the senators,” said Tony Pomerleau, 97, a Republican commercial real estate developer. “He ran against me, too, the guys that were making money.” In fact, Sanders’ opposition to Pomerleau’s plan to develop pricey hotels, condos and office space on the city’s dilapidated waterfront became a signature issue of his campaign.

Shortly after taking office, Sanders created a Mayor’s Arts Council to bring free arts and cultural events to the city, and in 1983 the city gave it municipal funding. “It was like he started a revolution,” said Bruce Seifer, Sanders’ appointee as assistant director of economic development, of the initial reaction to this use of city resources. “But business people like to go to cultural events. It helps to retain families and businesses.”

Indeed, with the rise of Richard Florida’s theories about the importance of a creative class to a city’s fortunes, municipal funding for the arts has become an increasingly popular economic development strategy for cities across the country.

Early in Sanders’ tenure, his treasurer discovered $200,000 in the city’s coffers and the mayor determined to plow it into a bold initiative. Inspired by the garden cities of England, Isreali kibbutzim and Indian communes set up by the followers of Gandhi, he proposed to buy land and hold it in a communal trust for affordable housing, while the housing itself would be owned by occupants.

An opposition group, Homeowners Against the Land Trust, or HALT, labeled it a “communist scheme.” But the plan went through. In 1984, the Burlington Community Land Trust became one of the first affordable housing trusts in the world, and the very first to receive municipal funding. Today, there are over 250 such trusts in the United States — in places like Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Boston and Chapel Hill, North Carolina — most of which receive some form of government funding.

That was also the year that Sanders delivered on a campaign promise and brought Burlington a minor league baseball team: The Vermont Reds. “That was from the Cincinnati baseball team — not because of his politics,” insisted Sugarman, though a year later Sanders traveled to Nicaragua to hang out with the Sandinistas.

When it came to economic development, the “Sanderistas” in City Hall, as his supporters were known, decided to ditch the prevailing “smokestack chasing” approach, which called for local government to entice employers to move to town and set up shop. Instead, they promoted local ownership of business and sought to minimize leakage from the local economy to amplify the multiplier effect of money spent within the economy.

“That was an early initiative for sure,” said Evelyn Blumenberg, a professor of urban studies at UCLA. “It’s become more common in cities to think about economic development from within.”

The approach also put Burlington at the forefront of a “buy local” movement that’s now very much in vogue across the country.

Later in his tenure, Sanders went after the University of Vermont and a local hospital, non-profit institutions that owned large swathes of valuable land in the city but were exempt from paying taxes and cut deals for them for them to contribute “Payments in Lieu of Taxes.”

Sanders didn’t invent PILOTs in Burlington. That other people’s republic, Cambridge, Mass, had been receiving them from Harvard since the 1920s, as had other cities since. But he did anticipate an approach that’s become increasingly popular in the Northeast in recent decades as tax-exempt hospitals and universities have swallowed up more and more land and local governments have put the screws on them to pony up more money for city services.

Sanders also carried through on that original campaign plank, scuttling Pomerleau’s plans for a ritzy waterfront development. But Pomerleau learned to work with Sanders nonetheless. So did the rest of the business community. Ben & Jerry’s grew into a household brand and Burton Snowboards moved to town without any special inducements.

Pomerlau ended up becoming one of Sanders’ closest friends. At one point, a Burlington Free Press front page pictured the two men together under the headline “the odd couple.” On Tuesday, Sanders launched his presidential bid from the public park he created on the waterfront land.

In 1988, toward the end of Sanders’ four-term tenure — long after a local Democratic leader predicted the movement that swept Sanders into office would be gone in a decade — the U.S. Conference of Mayors named Burlington the most livable city in the country with a population of under 100,000 (in a tie). Then Sanders’ director of community and economic development succeeded him in the mayor’s office and Inc. Magazine named Burlington the best city in the Northeast for a growing business.

And what about the guy who told UPI “Everyone’s scared” when the Lenin of Lake Champlain first stormed to power in 1981? That was the state’s then-Democratic Party chairman, Mark Kaplan. Today, he’s on board with a socialist in the White House.

“I actually donated to him,” said Kaplan. “I’m kind of excited about it.”

So the final questions are: If Congress has an approval rating of 12%, how come the incumbents get re-elected up to 90% of the time? What’s up with Vermont too? Where did these socialists come from, what are they being taught?