Society's ChildS


Books

Just say no to idiocy: Common Core opt-out movement is growing

common core
Nationwide opposition to Common Core is on the rise, and more and more students and parents are choosing to opt-out on their own. According to a story by U.S. News & World Report over half a million school-aged children opted out of Common Core standardized testing last year. In New York around a fifth of students simply didn't take the tests.

In November 2013, Federal Education Secretary Arne Duncan attributed opposition to Common Core to "white suburban moms" who discovered that "all of a sudden, their child isn't as brilliant as they thought they were and their school isn't quite as good as they thought."

Like so many federal bureaucrats, Duncan was dead wrong, as USA News reports the opt-out movement reflects widespread distaste crossing demographic lines:

Comment: See also:


Handcuffs

Home of the caged: Lawsuit exposes the horrors of the American injustice system

prison state
© thefreethoughtproject
A Texas jail has been caging people who are too poor to afford bail, according to a new lawsuit.

Harris County Jail - the largest in Texas and the third largest in the US - is accused of keeping most of its incarcerated population locked up for misdemeanors because they can't afford bail or trial.

Now, Harris County, Sheriff Ron Hickman, and five bail-hearing magistrates are being sued by the human rights group Equal Justice Under Law for discriminating against poor prisoners.

From the Houston Press:
In Harris County, 77 percent of the jail population are people who have yet to be convicted of crimes, who are in jail because they cannot afford to get out. A recent study by Gerald Wheeler, retired director of Harris County Pretrial Services and a doctoral researcher, found that 81 percent of people charged with misdemeanors will spend time in jail, and of those, a quarter of them can't afford bail costing $500 or less. Only 7 percent were released on a personal bond.

Heart - Black

School cop pepper-sprays and brutalizes teen boy

Officer Bill Kraus
© city pagesOfficer Bill Kraus in action.
After pepper-spraying a teen in the face, a school resource officer was caught on video violently slamming him into a concrete staircase before brutally assaulting him. Although the teen was not attempting to fight back, the officer kneed him in the back before viciously wrenching the boy's arms in a blatant example of excessive force.

During the last class period on Wednesday, an 18-year-old Central High School student named Nelson Moroukian recorded a cell phone video of a school cop brutalizing a former student during an arrest. According to the video, Officer Bill Kraus held the teen against a wall while the former student pleaded for help.

"You want more?" Kraus antagonized as the teen remained against the wall clutching his own face.

Bell

The financial burden of higher-education: Homelessness on college campuses

homelessness
© Lauren Walker / Truthout
When the College Cost Reduction and Access Act took effect in 2009, neither lawmakers nor school administrators had any idea how many college students would check the box on the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) - the document that determines eligibility for Pell grants, subsidized loans and work-study awards that help students pay for college or vocational training - to indicate that they were homeless.

At last tabulation, the number was 58,000, a small percentage of the 20.2 million students presently enrolled in both undergraduate and graduate study. Nonetheless, school counselors and advocates believe the number is starkly inaccurate and represents a mere fraction of university students who actually lack a permanent home.

Comment: The true cost of 'higher education' in the land of the free! Is a college degree worth the time and money?
Crushing college debt: The unforgiven generation

The report, coordinated by Junior Achievement USA and PwC US and prepared by New York-based research firm YPulse, found several key trends among recent graduates (aged 18-29), including:
  • For 60 percent of Millennials, financial aid is a deciding factor in their school choice. Among those not attending their first choice school this year, 62 percent said it was because they couldn't afford it.
  • College tuition and loans top the list of money matters that are worrying Millennials ages 18-29, with one in five (21 percent) claiming it as their family's main financial problem.
  • One-third of those students with loans are shelling out over $300 per month and five percent are actually paying more than $1000 per month.
  • Nearly one-in-four Millennials (24 percent) believe their student loan debt will ultimately be forgiven.
Though told by society that the key to a bright and prosperous future is largely dependent on getting a degree, the new generation is becoming increasingly skeptical of that claim.



Eye 2

Father facing jail time for forcing 14-year-old daughter to marry the rapist who impregnated her

Keith Strawn and Aaron Seaton
© Screenshot/Fox13Keith Strawn and Aaron Seaton
An Idaho father will face jail time for forcing his young daughter to marry the man who raped her, Fox31 reports.

Keith Strawn will spend 120 days in jail for taking his 14-year-old daughter out of state to marry the 24-year-old man who had raped and impregnated her.

"While you spend those 120 day in jail, perhaps you will think about the 120 days your daughter was in a vile farce of a marriage to a rapist," Judge Greg Moeller told Strawn at his Tuesday hearing. Strawn was convicted of one felony count of causing injury to a child.

Aaron Seaton has been convicted and is serving a 15-year sentence in connection to the rape, which impregnated the teen. She had a miscarriage, Fox13 reports. Court records obtained by the station show Strawn "harbored and protected" the man by letting him live with the girl.

Eye 1

Total control: DARPA and mainstream media collude to push micro-chipping of children

microchip
It's hard to imagine the mainstream media stooping to an even lower low than where they're at right now, but rest assured, if you start to become comfortable with them they'll push that line even farther.

This time, NBC is pushing that Orwellian envelope to an extreme level as it advocates for human microchipping of children "sooner rather than later".

In a recently televised report from NBC News, they liken having your child microchipped by the state at birth to something as societally normalized as bar codes for consumer goods.
"When barcodes first came out in the late 1960s, people were appalled. They were wary of them and did not understand the concept. Today, it is so commonplace, we don't even notice it. A microchip would work much in the same way" - NBC
This statement reveals the mentality that these types of people have, thinking of us not as human beings, but as cattle needing to be tagged by their our owners.

Be Afraid and We Will Protect You

It goes without saying that this agenda to microchip the human race has little to do with "safety" and much to do with control.

Whenever the establishment wants us to comply with something, they often give us talking points through the media that are designed to frighten us into complacency. If it's about a vaccine, you may get very sick or die if you don't go out and take their shot; when campaigning for war or surveillance you might just be shot down by a terrorist; and when voting be very, very afraid that the other candidate will win so you will be sure to cast a vote for one of the two, of which neither will ever really change anything.

Comment: From robots to artificial intelligence and software to read your mind, the Pentagon and DARPA are busy creating ways to reduce the population to little more than automatons and prisoners in a high-tech worldwide control grid.


Further reading:


Eye 1

Trump-loving anti-LGBT bigot kept teen stepsister shackled in basement dungeon for a year for wetting the bed

Esten Ciboro
© FacebookEsten Ciboro
Plenty of people have ranted against Target's transgender restroom policy on Facebook — but at least one of those social media users typed their polemic as his own 13-year-old stepsister was shackled downstairs in a basement dungeon.

Esten Ciboro and his father, Timothy Ciboro, were arrested after the girl managed to escape last week while her alleged captors went jogging, reported the Toledo Blade.

A neighbor spotted the girl, who was carrying several bags, and assumed she was a runaway, but she managed to gain her trust and discovered the girl had been chained to a support beam in her basement for more than a year as punishment for wetting the bed.

Timothy and Esten Ciboro were each charged with kidnapping and child endangerment.

After her escape and rescue, the girl told investigators she had lived with her father since her mother had left her and two siblings and ran off to Las Vegas.

Heart - Black

High school football players charged with sex assault of teammate after brutal locker room incident

John R.K. Howard
© Courtesy of Tarrant County, TexasJohn R.K. Howard, one of three white football players charged in the brutal sexual assault of a black teammate
Three white high school football players from Dietrich, Idaho have been charged in the brutal sexual assault of a black teammate, The Washington Post reports. The alleged assault took place on October 23rd last year in the men's locker room at Dietrich High School. Law enforcement officials allege that one of the football players restrained the victim while another shoved a coat hanger up his rectum and another repeatedly kicked the coat hanger.

Two of the alleged perpetrators, 18-year-old John R.K. Howard and 17-year-old Tanner Ward, are being charged as adults. An unnamed 16-year-old football player is being charged in the case as a juvenile. Howard has not yet filed a plea in the case and it isn't yet known whether Ward has filed a plea, the Post says.

The unidentified victim's family also filed a $10 million lawsuit earlier this month alleging that this vicious sexual assault was the culmination of a harassment campaign against him. The family alleges that his teammates would regularly insult him with racially charged terms and the suit alleges he was regularly called "'Kool-Aid' 'chicken eater' 'watermelon' and [the N-word]," the Post reports.

The lawsuit also alleges that the high school did nothing to stop the horrible physical and emotional abuse regularly inflicted upon the victim, who was particularly vulnerable due to "mental disorders including learning disabilities."

Dollar

US businesses to take part in Russian economic forum despite objections from Washington

Trinity Bridge
© Alexei Danichev / SputnikTrinity Bridge in St. Petersburg
Major US investors will take part in the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF 2016) this June despite US government objections, according to the Russian Embassy in Washington.

"Business will do what it sees as necessary. What is not forbidden is allowed. According to our information, the leading investors will attend the Russian forum. American companies will be among them. The policy of ignoring the forum has failed. Interested companies, in any case, will attend and no one will hinder them," said Russian Embassy spokesman Grigory Zasypkin.

It's hardly a surprise Washington ignores events in Russia, but pressuring business is inappropriate, as the United States has always separated business from politics, the spokesman said.

Vader

Judge orders bailiff to handcuff public defender in courtroom despite not breaking any law

Conrad Hafen
© Ronda Churchill/Las Vegas Review-JournalLas Vegas Justice of the Peace Conrad Hafen is shown on the bench on Tuesday, April 12, 2016.
A deputy public defender found herself in handcuffs Monday as she tried to keep a client out of jail.

Las Vegas Justice of the Peace Conrad Hafen said he wanted to teach the lawyer about courtroom etiquette. "You need to have order in a courtroom," Hafen later told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. "And there needs to be proper decorum with attorneys."

Tension seemed to escalate quickly Monday morning inside the judge's courtroom, according to court transcripts.

Zohra Bakhtary, a deputy public defender for three years, has spent at least one day a week for the past year inside Hafen's courtroom on the sixth floor of the Regional Justice Center.

Comment: The public defender should absolutely file a complaint to the state of Nevada over the behavior of the judge. The judge did not find her in contempt of court, and if he had, he would have had to follow clearly outlined procedures. None of those procedures involve handcuffing a counselor and putting her in the corner to "teach her a lesson". That is abuse of power. The judge can't just do whatever he wants if a counselor is fighting hard for her client. Either he finds her in contempt of court, or he deals with it like an adult. The fact that the judge intentionally keeps the cameras in the court turned off makes it look like he doesn't want there to be evidence of his behavior for others to judge.