VOICE OF DETROIT: The city's independent newspaper, unbossed and unbought

Gen. David Patraeus, formerly head of international forces fighting Iraq,, now head of Afghanistan forces, greets President Obama in Iraq

Why the combat might not really be over

By Robert Dreyfuss

Let’s get the good news out of the way first. In President Obama’s Iraq speech last week, he said that the U.S. combat role in Iraq has ended and that Iraqis have “responsibility for the security of their own country.” He said that “all US troops will leave by the end of next year.” And he promised, once again, that U.S. troops will begin to leave Afghanistan too, next July.

That’s about it. Now the bad news.

Most distressingly, Obama treated the war in Iraq as if it were a minor, tactical disagreement, rather than a fundamental, black-and-white difference between two irreconcilable views. “I am mindful that the Iraq war has been a contentious issue at home,” he said. “It is time to turn the page.” To underline the point, he mentioned that he’d telephoned former President George W. Bush before delivering the speech, though he mercifully spared us details of that conversation. Needless to say, the unprovoked invasion of Iraq by the United States in 2003 was a clear-cut, criminal war of aggression, making it far more than a merely “contentious” issue. 

Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died for no good reason, and many thousands more are likely to perish as Iraq’s bitterly divided body politic settles its differences with guns and bombs over the next five or 10 years. Millions of Iraqi children have been traumatized beyond repair. By going into Iraq, the United States alienated its friends, weakened its alliances, emboldened its adversaries, blackened its reputation, squandered a trillion dollars, suffered tens of thousands of dead and wounded, utterly failed to spread democracy and freedom in the region, vastly strengthened Iran’s strategic position in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf, and devastated a nation by shattering its economy, its state institutions and its very social fabric in a manner that will take at least two generations to repair. 

None of this seems to have occurred to President Obama, who wants to turn the bloody page. Continue reading →

Charter schools CEO Doug Ross, Skillman CEO Carol Goss, DPS EFM Robert Bobb

Helen Moore letter to gubernatorial candidate Virg Bernero protesting Dems’ blocking of 14th District resolution at convention

Aug. 29, 2010

Dear Mr. Bernero:

I am the convention delegate who was persistent at the microphone during the Democratic Convention.  From what I have been told, you are a very caring man.  I am writing to you to request a meeting concerning the disrespect and the lack of integrity on the part of Mr. Mike Brewer.  For months Mr. Brewer has been attempting to block the resolution submitted by the Fourteenth District pertaining to the firing of the Emergency Manager of the Detroit Public Schools, Mr. Robert Bobb. We learned that the resolution that was submitted on time by Carol Conway to Mr. Brewer had mysteriously disappeared.  No one could find it.  After questioning Mr. Brewer, he said he never got it. Carol Conway said he did.  We are asking for an investigation of this matter and we need your help if we are to move forward together to keep our Detroit voters working for the Democratic ticket.  We need to meet as soon as possible.  Please let us know when.

 In order to stop the deficit from increasing; the firing of entire unions; outsourcing; hiring of his friends; closing of schools; no bid contracts to companies headquartered outside of Michigan and even as far away as Europe; taking over academics and the entire school system resulting in a lawsuit filed by the Detroit Board of Education to gain back the control of academics, we decided to present a resolution pertaining to these issues to the Democratic Party with true facts to counteract the wrong information disseminated by the news media which was actively promoting Mr. Bobb.  The resolution  was presented in April to the Fourteenth District and the delegates voted unanimously in favor of presenting it to the State Central Committee. 

Helen Moore, delegate

 DPS debt, apartheid funding, charter schools destroy district, not part of debate 

DPS teacher Kimberly Porter wears Black to mourn loss of public education for children, during Dec. contract meeting

 By Diane Bukowski

DETROIT – A “devil’s triangle” destroying DPS is being largely ignored in discussions about the district’s governance and solutions to its problems. 

 “When the new elected board takes office, it will have a huge concrete block around its neck,” said attorney George Washington, who represented the Detroit Board of Education in its recent successful battle against a mayoral takeover of DPS. “The two state takeovers have been the greatest financial boondoggle ever seen.” 

 Washington referred to the fact that over 90 percent of state per-pupil aid for students in Detroit, nearly a half-billion dollars, will be reserved for bank debt in 2011 alone, according to Detroit Public Schools (DPS) documents. (See VOD article “Bank of NY Mellon controls DPS.)  

 A second side of the triangle is state per-pupil funding for Detroit, $7660 in 2010. It runs about three-fifths of that accorded to students in suburbs like Bloomfield ($12,443) and Birmingham ($12,336). This recalls the notorious Three-Fifths compromise enshrined in the U.S. Constitution in 1787, which considered a kidnapped African three-fifths of a person. 

 If the state aid factor were equalized even by one-half the difference between funding for those two wealthy districts and Detroit, it would put another $205.5 million into DPS coffers. 

 Charter schools are the third side of the “devil’s triangle.” 

 “In the 2002-2003 school year, DPS’s pre-kindergarten through 12th grade student population was 164,500, but estimates for Detroit’s public school enrollment this year stand as low as 84,000 students,” Julianne Hing writes in the March 2010 edition of Colour Lines. “Experts project that in five years’ time, the number of students in Detroit Public Schools will be 56,000 students. 

DPS student Kelly Lewis calls for Bobb to go on trial

“But Detroit also has a robust charter school industry with a student enrollment of 54,000 kids. That’s right, Detroit’s charter school enrollment is set to outpace its public school enrollment. That alone is so mindbending that it eclipses the fact that when the charter school population and public school population of Detroit is combined, Detroit’s pre-K through 12 student population has actually increased in recent years.” 

DPS is thus losing $414 million a year to charter schools within the city’s limits alone, when one multiplies the charter school population by DPS per-pupil state aid of $7660. 

 “Every time the state gets its hands on our school district, it ends up hundreds of millions of dollars more in debt,” said Agnes Hitchcock, steward of the grass-roots Call ‘em Out Coalition. “All the debt incurred through the state under both Kenneth Burnley and Robert Bobb should be forgiven by the state.”  Continue reading →

Slaveowner Alexander Hamilton founded Bank of New York; kidnapped Africans, banned from reading, founded U.S. public education after freedom

$523.8 million debt for 2010-11 is 90.7 percent of state per-pupil aid 

 By Diane Bukowski    

 DETROIT – Former Detroit Public Schools CEO Kenneth Burnley, Jr. and current Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb have enslaved the Detroit Public Schools to the Bank of New York Mellon by borrowing hundreds of millions of dollars. The Bank was founded by slaveowner Alexander Hamilton. 

The debt is expected to rise to $523.8 million by 2011, or 90.7 percent of state per-pupil aid for that year. This year alone, DPS debt of $438.8 million amounted to 71.2 percent of state per-pupil aid. 

 This bombshell is hidden in plain sight on the Detroit Public Schools website, under “Resources-District Data-Financial Data and Reports.” Monthly DPS reports to the Bank of New York Mellon Trust Company N.A., a Bank of New York Mellon subsidiary, are included on the site under “set-asides.”                                         

 “The Emergency Financial Manager was supposed to eliminate the $219 million DPS deficit when he came in,” said CPA Greg Frazier, formerly Deputy Auditor for the City of Detroit, who also filed and won a Freedom of Information Act request for DPS financials for 2006-07, in conjunction with community organization Call ‘em Out.

  “But since the Emergency Financial Manager has come to manage the emergency, we are drowning in more debt with a deficit now of $332 million. We are spiraling to the bottom, and he is helping us to get there real quick.”

  Frazier added, “When Bobb leaves next March, that debt will be even higher. It means a lot less funds going to resources for the children. While here, he added to the legacy debt he talks so much about. He is the proud owner of 56 percent of that debt so far. The banks have yet to share in solving any problems they have created. Even President [Barack] Obama is not holding them responsible. The debt is being paid on the backs of the citizens, while banks like Goldman Sachs have tremendously enriched themselves.” 

 The Bank of New York Mellon (BofNYM)  is the nation’s oldest bank, with $23 trillion in assets. The Bank of New York was founded in 1784 by Hamilton, and merged with the Mellon Corporation  in 2007. The Mellon family is ranked number five by wealth in America’s 60 Families. 

Bank of New York Mellon CEO Robert Kelly

B of NYM is also custodian of the government’s $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP). It was paid $20 million in fees to manage the program, and further benefited by selling $3 billion of its preferred stock to the federal government under the program, according to Bailout Sleuth. It has since repaid the $3 billion. Its CEO Robert Kelly is notorious for objecting to proposed restrictions on bonuses paid to top executives of the bailed-out banks. 

 It also has ties with Chase Bank, one of the nation’s foremost culprits in massive foreclosures. In 2006, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. announced they would swap their corporate trust unit for Bank of New York Co.’s retail and small business banking network.

TARP has doled out billions to bail-out the nation’s largest banks, which in turn have done virtually nothing to stem the nation’s Katrina of foreclosures. Foreclosures in Detroit have drastically reduced another source of school funding, property taxes, which accounted for $75.4 million of DPS cash receipts in 2009-2010.  Continue reading →

Shirley Sherrod

From Shirley Sherrod

Back in March, I delivered a speech to an NAACP Freedom Fund banquet in my home state of Georgia. I drew on my personal life story to urge poor people, white and black, to pull together and overcome racial divisions. We have to understand that our struggle is against poverty and against those who are blocking our path out of poverty.

Unless we figure this out, I warned, our communities won’t thrive and our children won’t prosper. 

As you know, a Tea Party blogger named Andrew Breitbart released an intentionally deceptive, heavily edited clip from that speech to make it look as if I was delivering exactly the opposite message. Then Fox News blasted that false message across America’s airwaves, creating a firestorm that led to my ouster as the USDA State Director here in Georgia.

 Not long ago, I sat here in my living room in Albany, Georgia for an afternoon of deep conversation with NAACP President Benjamin Jealous. As he has done in public, Ben movingly apologized for the fact that the NAACP was initially hoodwinked by Breitbart and Fox into supporting my removal. I told him what I want to tell you. 

That’s behind us, and the last thing I want to see happen is for my situation to weaken support for the NAACP. Too many people confronted by racism and poverty count on the NAACP to be there for them, especially those in rural areas who often have nowhere else to turn. 

People ask me, “Shirley, how are you getting through all of this?” I tell them that, if they knew what I have lived through, they’d understand that these current challenges aren’t about to throw me off course. 

When I was 17 years old, my father was murdered by a white man in Baker County, Georgia. There were three witnesses, but the grand jury refused to indict the person responsible. I knew I had to do something in answer to my father’s death.  Continue reading →