Fritz Walter

Fritz Walter's Journal

July 23, 2015

Where's your snowball now, Sen. Inhoff?

Heat index above triple digits in much of the country including and especially your home state.

Wildfires in Alaska and Canada having a global impact
http://www.psmag.com/nature-and-technology/alaska-canada-wildfire-smoke

NASA and NOAA Find 2014 the Warmest Year Ever
https://www.nasa.gov/press/2015/january/nasa-determines-2014-warmest-year-in-modern-record

Please, Senator, tell us again how Global Climate Change is not an issue that needs our immediate attention.

July 14, 2015

The plot to marginalize Bernie Sanders

Finally! A well-researched story draws the solid line between media -- especially Faux Noos -- and traditional candidates, including Hillary Clinton, and their allies.

Salon article: The plot to marginalize Bernie Sanders: The shared agenda that links Fox News and Hillary Clinton surrogates by Sean Illig

Sub-head: "Both parties are owned by plutocrats. Sanders' challenge threatens them both, and their responses are oddly similar"

Nothing in Bernie Sanders’ platform qualifies as socialist, if that term has any relation at all to its historical meaning. Obsessing over Sanders’ socialist leanings is an exercise in distraction. The choice today, the only choice we really have, is between different species of capitalism. Republicans are absolutists; they fetishize the free market. People like Ted Cruz and Bobby Jindal want no regulation, no safety nets, and no constraints on private power. They represent the true believers, the ones who despise government and make a divinity of the market. Sanders rejects this brand of capitalist theology, but that doesn’t make him a socialist.

These emperors and empresses have no clothes.

July 6, 2015

Thank you, Senator Durbin for exposing University of Phoenix

As someone who works directly with service members, veterans and their families, I sincerely appreciate your request to the Defense Department to thoroughly investigate the practices of the University of Phoenix -- and their parent company -- to undermine the safeguards that President Obama put into place three years ago on profiteering off of veterans' and service members' utilization of Post 9/11 GI Bill scholarships.

I just finished reading the Center for Investigative Reporting's article on UOP and was appalled at what they uncovered. Appalled, but not totally surprised.

“I’ve seen too many veterans with degrees from the University of Phoenix on their wall and unemployment checks on their bed stand,” said Chris Neiweem, a former Army sergeant who served a tour in Iraq and now works in Washington for the advocacy group Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

"In June 2013, the University of Phoenix was placed on notice by its accrediting body, the Higher Learning Commission, for failing to support “student learning and effective teaching.” The commission was scheduled to revisit the issue Thursday, with an announcement expected soon. The University of Phoenix’s online program, by far its largest campus, had 24,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans enrolled last year. The graduation rate there was 7.3 percent, according to the Department of Education, and nearly 1 in 5 students default on their loans within three years of leaving school."

Full article available here.

7.3%?!?

Indeed, education is just one example of how so many for-profit corporations have expanded into ventures that had traditionally been efficiently and effectively delivered by government or non-profit entities. And failed miserably. Locally, charter schools' have been draining funds from local public school boards and delivering little or nothing in return.

This failed experiment of corporate greed siphoning tax dollars from the public sector must cease.

Thank you, sir!

Respectfully,

July 4, 2015

Haters Gotta' Hate. Traitors Gotta'... Continue Their Treason.

On this weekend, when Americans celebrate the birth of our Nation, thousands of South Carolina residents' celebrations are being interrupted with RoboCalls from a dubious group calling itself the Conservative Response Team.

They seem to take such strong issue with the proposed legislation to remove the blood-soaked rag (AKA Confederate Battle Flag) from their capitol, that they are drawing analogies to ISIS, and -- of course -- blaming President Obama. The state's general assembly begins debate on this proposal Monday, so this group is resorting to fear tactics worthy of Joseph Goebbels.

“Just like ISIS, Obama’s haters want our monuments down, graves dug up and school, roads, towns and counties renamed. They’ve even taken ‘Dukes of Hazzard’ off TV,” the recording says. “Whats’s next? This attack on our values is sick and un-American and it has to stop right here and right now in South Carolina.”

To hear the recording or get more information, visit Raw Story's website.

And "Happy Independence Day, y'all!"

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