MQ-9 Reaper, armed with GBU-12 Paveway II laser guided munitions and AGM-114 Hellfire missiles
during a combat mission over southern Afghanistan.
At Common Dreams, Lauren McCauley writes—
US Military Prepares Drastic Escalation of Global Drone Program:
The U.S. Pentagon is poised to dramatically increase the deployment of surveillance drones over "global hot spots" such as Ukraine, Iraq, Syria, the South China Sea, and North Africa, as well as expand its capacity for lethal drone strikes, the Wall Street Journal revealed on Monday.
Citing exclusive interviews with senior U.S. officials, the WSJ's Gordon Lubold reports that the number of daily flights by aircraft such as MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper drones will surge an estimated 50 percent. Further, the expanded drone program will "draw on the Army, as well as Special Operations Command and government contractors," in addition to the U.S. Air Force, which currently carries out most of the operations for the Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency.
Lobuld reports: "The Pentagon envisions a combined effort that by 2019 would have the Air Force continue flying 60 drone flights a day, the Army contributing as many as 16 and the military’s Special Forces Command pitching in with as many as four. Government contractors would be hired to fly older Predator drones on as many as 10 flights a day, none of them strike missions."
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2013—Surprise! School grades favor high-income schools:
No matter how many times people who actually know stuff about education patiently explain to corporate education policy boosters that poverty is the big factor in student outcomes, they wave it off as irrelevant. Surely, they insist, if we just spend more money and time on tests and less on books and school supplies and teacher pay, if we fire more teachers and make the ones that survive spend all their time teaching to the test, educational outcomes will miraculously improve even if some kids are hungry all day and just got evicted and maybe are even homeless while others have plenty to eat and sleep in the same comfy bed every night. So let's just grade their schools and teachers like it's within a teacher's power to overcome all that inequality!
Yeah, about that. The Miami Herald has dug into the data on school grades:
• Of the 209 schools in Miami-Dade and Broward with at least 90 percent of students receiving free or reduced lunch, 78 percent received a grade of C or worse. Roughly 39 percent of these high-poverty schools received a D or F.
• Of the 43 local schools with much lower poverty rates (30 percent or fewer students receiving free or reduced lunch), 86 percent received an A, and none received a D or F.
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So teachers in low-income schools are basically punished for being teachers in low-income schools, trying to educate the kids who need help the most.
Tweet of the Day
On
today's Kagro in the Morning show: Please, do not misconstrue anything
DavidWaldman says as a invitation for you to picture Donald Trump naked.
Greg Dworkin describes his feelings about the GOP in 2016: Donald Trump, a very rich man, reminds us that Jeb! is a money puppet. Trump debuts his plan to get rid of losers. Hillary Clinton’s Wing Ding stem-winding barn-burner. The Butter Cow abides. Clinton still has inevitable problems. Donald Trump, a very busy man, is a winner that phones it in. ATT & NSA know everything that you phone in. Homeland Security is confirmed monitoring and tracking black activists. Are they the new "professional left?"
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