CHARLOTTESVILLE

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(Mensaje se repite en Español) In trying some way to positively address the latest act of senseless racist violence now in Charlottesville, Virginia, people of good will all across the country came together on Sunday, August 13th in different venues to show solidarity, while trying to posit positive actions they could work on to stop these senseless acts in the future. In Los Angeles, one such event was at the Holman Methodist Church on West Adams where Christians, Jews, Muslims, and other believers and non-believers had an "interfaith prayer vigil." This ad hoc interfaith and interracial congregation had "come to celebrate...what America is really about," which all those religious leaders present of different faith traditions expressed in one way or another as the "transcendent nature of active love" in combating mindless violence.
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14

08 2017


by Leonard Isenberg
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CAL STATE'S ANSWER TO SEGREGATED AND INFERIOR K-12 EDUCATION- IGNORE IT

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The Cal State system's recent decision to get rid of the requirement that as many as 25,000 incoming freshman take non-credited remedial courses in Entry Level Math (ELM) and English Placement Test (EPT) before taking college level coursework requiring this prior Math and English mastery is literally irrational. What has become the not so common sense logic that should have rationally informed anyone that if students had not mastered prerequisite prior grade-level standards in Math and English, they are logically not able to understand college level coursework that relies on such prior basic foundational knowledge to understand the college level course they are now allowed to take.
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6

08 2017


by Leonard Isenberg
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I'D REALLY LOVE TO BE AGAINST AFFIRMATIVE ACTION- JUST TELL ME HOW

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Since the founding of this country there has been what we might accurately call an affirmative action program that has favored and given exclusive advantages to Whites, while at the same time denying them to minorities. Be it initially de jure or now only de facto, what still remains well ensconced in this country is our yet segregated political, economic, and social system that as of this writing still functions as a White affirmative action and entitlement program. But when it comes to finally redressing this age-old discriminatory system by using a different albeit more limited form of affirmative action program to finally give past discriminated against minorities at least a future possibility of a level playing field for the first time, some Whites balk at finally having to pay their fair share of the deferred costs of racism with an affirmative action program that will finally cost them.
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2

08 2017


by Leonard Isenberg
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AT LAUSD THERE IS LITERALLY NO BELIEF THAT THE MINORITY STUDENTS CAN LEARN

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(Mensaje se repite en Español) While it remains politically correct to say Black and Latino students can learn, there's a little problem. Those running this still untouched de facto segregated public education system for their own short-term personal interest and financial profit really don't share this belief. Oh, they'll continue to mouth all the politically correct feel good platitudes about all students being "life long learners" with "100% graduation rates" and "everybody going to college" even though the easily verifiable reality is not only drastically different, but rather diametrically opposed to any realistic possibility of achieving these positive and clearly disingenuous education goals for the overwhelming majority of Black and Latino students.
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24

07 2017


by Leonard Isenberg
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CAN THE ONE L.A. ORGANIZATION "MAKE DEMOCRACY WORK"?

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(Mensaje se repite en Español) Can the One L.A. Organization "make democracy work" again in Los Angeles? Not without addressing a still segregated and purposefully dumbed down LAUSD that is exclusively run for the benefit of its entrenched bureaucracy and the obscene profits of their corporate vendors' interests that keep them in power. There is not one issue of social disruption that One L.A. is trying to address that wouldn't be put to bed by the kind of vibrant public education that used exist as the most effective means of societal integration in the 1950s and 1960s by giving folks the education and well-compensated work they are entitled to.
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16

07 2017


by Leonard Isenberg
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3 Comments

TEACHER TENURE BILL ONLY ABOUT MONEY, NOT COMPETENCY

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San Diego Assemblywoman Shirley Weber's proposed bill to extend the present two year time necessary for attaining tenured job security actually has nothing to do with teacher competency, but rather has everything to do with the prospective bankruptcy of California school district's like LAUSD- due to their endemic corruption. The real truth is that they are on the verge of bankruptcy and seek to save an estimated $60,000 a year for every teacher they can deny tenure to- or force out- or to every already tenured teacher they can get rid of by bringing clearly fabricated charges of incompetency against to force them out of their teaching positions in favor of a fresh-out-of-college 20-something working for $35,000 a year on an emergency credential..
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12

07 2017


by Leonard Isenberg
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4 Comments

SEPARATE AND UNEQUAL PUBLIC EDUCATION

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(Mensaje se repite en Español) In spending the Memorial Day weekend with an old teacher friend who lives and works in an upscale bedroom community out on Long Island, New York, I was unexpectedly enlightened by yet another lesson as to how the purposefully failed predominantly poor minority filled innercity public education systems in this country bear no resemblance to the still excellent public education that remains the rule in the suburbs, where the affluent middle class live and can still exert their substantial financial influence.
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30

05 2017


by Leonard Isenberg
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COORDINATED ACTION WOULD SPEAK LOUDER THAN MERE WORDS

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Why do a broad range of factions- that we commonly label as liberal- continue ad nauseum to content themselves with only reporting the latest irrational, depressing, and demoralizing behavior of our exclusively profit-driven corporate controlled American government? At the same time these liberals content themselves with merely preaching a clearly more rational alternative view of what could be possible to people who already agree with them. They seem to purposefully avoid like the plague any ACTION designed to make their own progressive ideas the basis for more rational alternative actions by government.
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7

05 2017


by Leonard Isenberg
1 Comment

NO "FULL DISCLOSURE" IN KPPC LAUSD PENSION REPORTING

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(Mensaje se repite en Español) One of the most disturbing and regrettable trends in today's news reporting is the systematic and often premeditated failure to even mention often highly relevant facts that if merely addressed would most assuredly cause the reader to come up with a completely different interpretation or conclusion after reading the article. One recent case in point can be found in a KPCC 89.3 FM reporter Kyle Stokes' article: What should LAUSD do about its ballooning benefits costs? While Stokes approaches this issue through the respective positions of incumbent LAUSD Board Member Steve Zimmer and his challenger and charter schools backed opponent Nick Melvoin, in how they each would deal prospectively with what now amounts to a looming $13.6 billion unfunded health and other benefits package, nowhere in the article is the easily verifiable fact mentioned that for the last 8 years LAUSD has already been "dealing" with this problem by systematically and illegally targeting and removing with clearly fabricated charges, teachers at the top of the salary scale and/or others about to vest in expensive lifetime health or other retirement benefits.
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29

04 2017


by Leonard Isenberg
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TRUMP AS OPPORTUNISTIC INFECTION OF THE BODY POLITIC

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Comparable rules apply In dealing with the human body or the body politic. When the threat of sickness and dysfunction is present in either of these systems, look out. Whether it is the normal T-cell immune response to the the invasion of the human body by foreign entities, which can cause disease and death- if left unchecked- or the checks and balances immune response built into our constitution as a limit on power by our Founders to protect the body politic from that which, if left unchecked would destroy our democracy. Both involve the dismantling of normally functioning immune system responses.
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27

04 2017


by Leonard Isenberg
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