Is Betsy DeVos Winning Her War Against Public Schools?
Reprinted with permission from AlterNet.
If Betsy DeVos enjoys the occasional quaff of champagne on her private jet, the recent news that the Supreme Court is poised to deliver a knock-out blow to public sector unions presented a reason to celebrate. The announcement was made just hours before DeVos alit at Harvard last week, where she was the star attraction at a school choice conference. At Harvard’s Kennedy School, DeVos was met by one of the largest protests she has encountered to date: an all-ages demonstration vs just about everything Trump’s Secretary of Education has said and done during the past seven months. Inside, the event was tense, even hostile—another rocky outing in a tenure replete with them. Or at least that is the conventional wisdom.
Turning red
The latest Supreme Court case to take aim at unions, Janus vs AFSCME Council 31, got its start two years ago with a suit filed by yet another right-wing billionaire: Illinois’ Bruce Rauner. While it is framed by conservatives as a case about individual rights and freedom, the aptly named “Janus” is about politics and power. Public sector unions, among the only unions left at this point, provide the bank and the foot soldiers that get Democrats elected, and at their best they’ve spearheaded progressive causes that go far beyond the interests of their members. In Massachusetts, the teachers unions have been the driving force behind successful campaigns for a minimum wage hike, paid sick time for all workers, and are now pushing a tax on millionaires. The unions are also virtually the last organized defense of what’s left of our safety net—Social Security and Medicare; the right wants those next.
Just days before DeVos appeared at Harvard, she was back in Michigan, taking what was essentially a victory lap. She exhorted the crowd at a conservative gathering on Mackinac Island to pat themselves on the back for the Mitten State’s having gone Republican in the 2016 Presidential election—the first time since 1988. “We in Michigan have a lot to be proud of, but nothing more than that,” DeVos said. The story of just how the DeVoses pulled off the feat of turning Michigan red is long and ugly, involving mountains of cash, the steady erosion of representative democracy, and a decades-long effort to dismember the state’s once powerful teachers union: the Michigan Education Association.
http://www.nationalmemo.com/betsy-devos-winning-war-public-schools/
And just think in wisCONsin, if you stand up and protest, after the third time you get thrown out of the UW degree program you enrolled, gotta pay off the debt, and really see the effects of the "Animal Farm and 1984 " in real time, with a dose of the Dutch Reform Movement of a Ayn Rand coming to a college near you, attacking the very framework of what Thomas Jefferson wanted the country to have "PUBLIC EDUCATION
I hate republicans and religious fanatics
= new reply since forum marked as read
unions is the worst thing that can happen in the fight for people's rights. Look at what has happened in WisCONsin and Michigan.
MICHIGAN, for Gawd's sake - home of the United Auto Workers - now just a faint shadow hiding in a corner.
We Dems must stand our ground, organize, fight, and GET OUT THE VOTE for 2018 before even more is lost. 
Think Your Job Is Safe From The Robot Invasion?
Reprinted with permission from Creators.
Industrial automatons have been on the march for years, devouring the middle-class job opportunities of factory workers. But this time is different.
If you think your family’s future is safe because you don’t rely on factory work, think again. Rapid advances in AI have already turned yesterday’s science fiction into today’s brave new “creative destruction” — the constant churn of economic and cultural innovations that destroy existing ways of doing things. A network of inventors and investors, hundreds of university engineering and math departments, thousands of government-funded research projects, countless freelance innovators and the entire corporate establishment are “re-inventing” practically every workplace by displacing humans with “more efficient” AI robots.
http://www.nationalmemo.com/think-job-safe-robot-invasion/
And when I read this article I thought of Robert Mercer and his hedge fund, he has made a lot of money in AI and he is attacking unions and democracy
