Tag: Rich As Hell

The Government can’t ban BTC but they can ban Gold

FINANCIAL LITERACY

The Government can’t ban BTC but they can ban Gold

RICH AS HELL

1913
The Federal Reserve System was established by President Woodrow Wilson in 1913. The premise used by President Wilson and his financial advisors for the establishment of the Federal Reserve System was to “supplant the dictatorship of the private banking institutions” and “to stabilize the inflexibility of national bank note supplies”. The previous system of banking was “feudal” in nature, in which private bankers control communities and could issue their own bank notes. They had little regulations concerning reserve assets and loan policies. Banking was a patch-quilt of institutions scattered across the face of the nation with no central policy.

The Federal Reserve Act (1913) required 40% gold backing of Federal Reserve Notes that were issued. The main rationale behind the order was actually to remove the constraint on the Federal Reserve preventing it from increasing the money supply during the depression.

1933 Executive Order 6102

The stated reason for the order was that hard times had caused “hoarding” of gold, stalling economic growth and worsening the depression as the US was then using the gold standard for its currency.

Executive Order 6102 is an executive order signed on April 5, 1933, by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt “forbidding the hoarding of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates within the continental United States.” The executive order was made under the authority of the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917 as amended by the Emergency Banking Act in March 1933.

The regulations prescribed in the executive order were modified by Executive Order 6111 on April 20, 1933, both of which were ultimately revoked and superseded by Executive Orders 6260 and 6261 on August 28 and 29, 1933, respectively.

On April 6, 1933, The New York Times wrote, under the headline Hoarding of Gold, “The Executive Order issued by the President yesterday amplifies and particularizes his earlier warnings against hoarding. On March 6, taking advantage of a wartime statute that had not been repealed, he issued Presidential Proclamation 2039 that forbade the hoarding ‘of gold or silver coin or bullion or currency’, under penalty of $10,000 fine or ten years’ imprisonment or both.The main rationale behind the order was actually to remove the constraint on the Federal Reserve preventing it from increasing the money supply during the depression.

Frank Baum wrote The Wizard of Oz​
THE WIZARD OF OZ IS THE STORY / ALLEGORY TOLD ABOUT MONEY
Henry Ford said, “It is well enough that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system,  for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a Boston Brahmin  knew his grandfather Warren Delano was in the China opium drug smuggling business FDR – GREW UP HEARING STORIES ABOUT THE  OPIUM SMUGGLING DRUG DEALING FAMILY BUSINESS !
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fortune was inherited from his maternal grandfather, drug hustling pirate, Warren Delano.
The first Warren, had begun his career at sea at nineteen, ferrying cargoes of corn and salt, bathwood and potatoes to New Orleans and Liverpool and the Canary Islands.
Warren Delano II was born in 1809
Captain Warren Delano, was engaged in the opium trade, and his son Frederic A. Delano, was born in Hong Kong.
An uncle of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Delano was an original member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in 1914, and was later named by his nephew as Governor of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. Delano’s wife’s sister married Ed Burling, who founded the Washington law firm of Covington & Burling, whose partners later included Dean Acheson and Donald Hiss, brother of Alger.
Covington, a Maryland congressman, had been appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Washington, D.C., by Woodrow Wilson as a reward for voting for the passage of the Federal Reserve Act. In 1918, Wilson appointed Covington as United States Railroad Commissioner

President Bush’s Grandfather Prescott Bush
Prescott Bush (who helped IBM and the Nazi trains run on time and hide money in Switzerland only stopped when the US government seized assets of Bush-connected companies in late 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act.

Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917, which restricted trade with countries hostile to the United States.

 

The Supreme Court upheld all seizures as constitutional, with Justices James Clark McReynolds, Willis Van Devanter, George Sutherland, and Pierce Butler dissenting. The four justices were labelled the “Four Horsemen” by the compliant press, as their conservative views were in opposition to Roosevelt’s New Deal supported by the press.

George Bush and Captain Prescott The Opium Smugglers
“This is an impressive crowd—the haves and the have-mores.  Some people call you the elites; I call you my base.” — George W. Bush, campaign speech, October 2000

The Logan Act is about Conducting Foreign Relations Without Authority THE LOGAN ACT AS A CONSTITUTIONALLY ENFORCEABLE TOOL IN FOREIGN POLICY

1974
The limitation on gold ownership in the United States was repealed after President Gerald Ford signed a bill legalizing private ownership of gold coins, bars, and certificates by an Act of Congress, codified in Pub.L. 93–373, which went into effect December 31, 1974.

2021

The price of gold from the Treasury for international transactions was then raised by the Gold Reserve Act to $35 an ounce (equivalent to $733 in 2021). The resulting profit that the government realized funded the Exchange Stabilization Fund, established by the 1934 Gold Reserve Act.

 

 

The Gold Reserve Act of 1934 made gold clauses unenforceable and authorized the President to establish the gold value of the dollar by proclamation. Immediately following its passage, Roosevelt changed the statutory price of gold from $20.67 to $35 per ounce, thereby devaluing the US dollar, which was based on gold. That price remained in effect until August 15, 1971, when President Richard Nixon announced that the US would no longer convert dollars to gold at a fixed value, thus abandoning the gold standard for foreign exchange (see Nixon Shock).

Fiat money (from Latin: fiat, “let it be done”) is a type of currency that is not backed by any commodity such as gold or silver. It is typically declared by a decree from the government to be legal tender. Throughout history, fiat money was sometimes issued by local banks and other institutions. In modern times, fiat money is generally established by government regulation.

Fiat money is an alternative to commodity money, which is a currency that has intrinsic value because it contains, for example, a precious metal such as gold or silver which is embedded in the coin. Fiat also differs from representative money, which is money that has intrinsic value because it is backed by and can be converted into a precious metal or another commodity. Fiat money can look similar to representative money (such as paper bills), but the former has no backing, while the latter represents a claim on a commodity (which can be redeemed to a greater or lesser extent).

WHAT IS THE VALUE OF BITCOIN?

THE HARDEST ASSET ON EARTH

21 MILLION

BITCOIN IS DECENTRALIZED UNCONFISCATABLE UNCENSORABLE PROPERTY

“The antidote to censorship and extreme censorship has always
been art and extreme art. Bitcoin is the most extreme art
possible, immune to any censorship.” — Max Keiser

Anybody can create a new bitcoin address (a bitcoin counterpart of a bank account) without needing any approval, or a third party involved.

Anybody can send a transaction to the network without needing any approval; the network merely confirms that the transaction is legitimate.

Bitcoin (abbreviation: BTC; sign: ₿) is a decentralized digital currency that can be transferred on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network. Bitcoin transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded in a public distributed ledger called a blockchain.

The cryptocurrency was invented in 2008 by an unknown person or group of people using the name Satoshi Nakamoto. The currency began use in 2009, when its implementation was released as open-source software.

 

One bitcoin is divisible to eight decimal places. Units for smaller amounts of bitcoin are the millibitcoin (mBTC), equal to 1⁄1000 bitcoin, and the satoshi (sat), which is the smallest possible division, and named in homage to bitcoin’s creator, representing 1⁄100000000 (one hundred millionth) bitcoin. 100,000 satoshis are one mBTC.

Blockchain

The bitcoin blockchain is a public ledger that records bitcoin transactions. It is implemented as a chain of blocks, each block containing a cryptographic hash of the previous block up to the genesis block[c] in the chain. A network of communicating nodes running bitcoin software maintains the blockchain.[26]: 215–219  Transactions of the form payer X sends Y bitcoins to payee Z are broadcast to this network using readily available software applications.

Network nodes can validate transactions, add them to their copy of the ledger, and then broadcast these ledger additions to other nodes. To achieve independent verification of the chain of ownership, each network node stores its own copy of the blockchain. At varying intervals of time averaging to every 10 minutes, a new group of accepted transactions, called a block, is created, added to the blockchain, and quickly published to all nodes, without requiring central oversight. This allows bitcoin software to determine when a particular bitcoin was spent, which is needed to prevent double-spending. A conventional ledger records the transfers of actual bills or promissory notes that exist apart from it, but the blockchain is the only place where bitcoins can be said to exist in the form of unspent outputs of transactions.

OWNERSHIP

In the blockchain, bitcoins are registered to bitcoin addresses. Creating a bitcoin address requires nothing more than picking a random valid private key and computing the corresponding bitcoin address. This computation can be done in a split second. But the reverse, computing the private key of a given bitcoin address, is practically unfeasible.

Users can tell others or make public a bitcoin address without compromising its corresponding private key. Moreover, the number of valid private keys is so vast that it is extremely unlikely someone will compute a key pair that is already in use and has funds. The vast number of valid private keys makes it unfeasible that brute force could be used to compromise a private key. To be able to spend their bitcoins, the owner must know the corresponding private key and digitally sign the transaction. The network verifies the signature using the public key; the private key is never revealed.

If the private key is lost, the bitcoin network will not recognize any other evidence of ownership the coins are then unusable, and effectively lost. For example, in 2013 one user claimed to have lost ₿ 7,500, worth $7.5 million at the time, when he accidentally discarded a hard drive containing his private key. About 20% of all bitcoins are believed to be lost—they would have had a market value of about $20 billion at July 2018 prices.

On 3 January 2009, the bitcoin network was created when Nakamoto mined the starting block of the chain, known as the genesis block. Embedded in the coin base of this block was the text “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks”. This note references a headline published by The Times and has been interpreted as both a timestamp and a comment on the instability caused by fractional-reserve banking.

The receiver of the first bitcoin transaction was Hal Finney, who had created the first reusable proof-of-work system (RPoW) in 2004. Finney downloaded the bitcoin software on its release date, and on 12 January 2009 received ten bitcoins from Nakamoto. Other early cypherpunk supporters were creators of bitcoin predecessors: Wei Dai, creator of b-money, and Nick Szabo, creator of bit gold. In 2010, the first known commercial transaction using bitcoin occurred when programmer Laszlo Hanyecz bought two Papa John’s pizzas for ₿10,000 from Jeremy Sturdivant.

Bryce Weiner
#1) I actually knew Hal.
#2) I’ve created a genesis block.
Nobody can stop me from making cryptocurrencies.
Not the state of California, or the SEC, or Congress, or the Office of Comptroller of Currency, or the World Bank.
Bryce “Cryptocurrencyologist” Weiner
Public key encryption where your private key is a unique octonion Lie algebra. Public key encryption where your private key is a unique octonion Lie algebra.

Are your favorite degens […] doing HFT trading with money borrowed on LIBOR rates?
No.
But someone is. A lot of someones are.
Who does that?
How much Bitcoin does that take?
How much cash?
As long as Bitcoin correlates to the Dow Jones it is not competitive to legacy finance.
Fight me.
It basically nerfs the entire industry since everything else correlates against Bitcoin.
Just so you know, when the Dow Jones goes down people who borrow millions of dollars have interest rates that start to cost more because the dollar is worth less in inflationary periods.
Markets dump as borrowers exit before margin calls or loss of profits.
Think about why Bitcoin tracks the Dow Jones.

Ace – How Long Has This Been Going On (1974)

————–END————-

The most successful con in American history laid bare

The most successful con in American history laid bare

When you compare Trump’s cons with the $50 trillion that the GOP has conned out of the American working class and given to the top 1 percent since 1980, Trump looks like a piker.

He played his role in that GOP con, of course, setting up the very richest Americans to get more billions of dollars a year in tax breaks for the foreseeable future, but he’s a Johnny-come-lately to the GOP game.

They’ve been running a money-and-power scam on white voters since Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” of the 1960s, a long con that went hypersonic with the election of Ronald Reagan.

This scam has two parts and one giant mechanism to make it possible.

Those two parts are money and political power, and the mechanism is a nationwide conservative media infrastructure for which there is no match on the Democratic or progressive side.

 

That alternate reality would eventually include a Republican Party that no longer believes in American democracy, and actively works to promote the interests of billionaire oligarchs and foreign dictators over those of America.

<//>

RICH AS HELL

https://richashell.com

A confidential memo written to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce by Attorney Lewis Powell, Jr. (born in Virginia in 1907). The memo described how business could defend and further capitalism against—wait for it— socialist, communist, and fascist cultural trends. Among these cultural trends were the usual suspects, minorities and women. Nixon later nominated Powell to the Supreme Court

The Powell Memo: A Call-to-Arms for Corporations

September 14, 2012

LEWIS POWELL

By 1971, future Supreme Court justice Lewis Powell felt compelled to assert, in a memo that was to help galvanize business circles, that the “American economic system is under broad attack.” This attack, Powell maintained, required mobilization for political combat: “Business must learn the lesson . . . that political power is necessary; that such power must be assiduously cultivated; and that when necessary, it must be used aggressively and with determination—without embarrassment and without the reluctance which has been so characteristic of American business.” Moreover, Powell stressed, the critical ingredient for success would be organization: “Strength lies in organization, in careful long-range planning and implementation, in consistency of action over an indefinite period of years, in the scale of financing available only through joint effort, and in the political power available only through united action and national organizations.”

It started back in 1971 when tobacco lawyer Lewis Powell wrote a memo to his friend and neighbor Eugene Syndor, the head of the US Chamber of Commerce, warning that the end of capitalism was on the horizon because of Ralph Nader’s consumer movement and Rachel Carson’s environmental movement.

RICH AS HELL

Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell is no genius he just took a page out of Senator Aldrich’s old school playbook on how to rig the rules of the game.

Winthrop W. Aldrich was the uncle of Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller. Member of the Council on Foreign Relations since the late 1920s.
The major stockholder in Equitable Trust Company (merged with Chase National Bank in 1930). President of Chase National Bank 1930-1934 and chairman from 1934 to 1953 (Chase National Bank eventually became Chase Manhattan and J.P. Morgan Chase; John J. McCloy took over as chair of Chase in 1953). 1959, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr., ‘Man of the W

Historic Paper: Purpose of the Senate
The Treason of the Senate: Aldrich, The Head of It All by David Graham Phillips – Cosmopolitan – March 1906

Winthrop W. Aldrich was the uncle of Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller. Member of the Council on Foreign Relations since the late 1920s.
The major stockholder in Equitable Trust Company (merged with Chase National Bank in 1930). President of Chase National Bank 1930-1934 and chairman from 1934 to 1953 (Chase National Bank eventually became Chase Manhattan and J.P. Morgan Chase; John J. McCloy took over as chair of Chase in 1953). 1959, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr., ‘Man of the W

The House Financial Services Committee is Corrupt.

Financial Literacy is a load of crap since it won’t protect you from corruption.

The American and British religion, is greed, Christianity’s got nothing to do with it.
We know politicians are duplicitous.

The public be damned!” ~ William H. Vanderbilt, railroad magnate, 1882

Learn How Lobbyists Buy Politicians

… Diagrams of influence FYI: Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell is no genius he just took a page out of Senator … the prescription written by insider Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell. The Powell Memo: A Call-to-Arms for …

K Street Lobbys Write the Law

… you know. THUGGEE SECRET SOCIETY  LEWIS POWELL IS the ASSHOLE RESPONSIBLE FOR LEGITIMIZING CORPORATE GREED Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell is no genius he just took a page out of …

The Shattered American Dream

George Carlin:
They DON’T want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that, that doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests.

OBEDIENT WORKERS. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passably accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime, and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And now they’re comin’ for your SOCIAL SECURITY MONEY. They want your fuckin’ retirement money. They want it BACK. So they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it ALL from you sooner or later — ‘cuz they OWN this fuckin’ place.

It’s a big CLUB. And YOU AIN’T IN IT. You and I are NOT IN the big club.

By the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long, beating you over the in their media telling you what to believe — what to think — and what to buy. The table is tilted, folks. The game is rigged. And nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. Good honest hard-workin people — white collar, blue collar — doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on.
Good honest hard-workin people these are people of modest means — continue to elect these RICH COCKSUCKERS who don’t GIVE a fuck about them. They don’t give a fuck about you, they don’t GIVE A FUCK ABOUT YOU. THEY DON’T CARE ABOUT YOU — AT ALL. AT ALL. AT ALL.

You know? And nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care … that’s what the owners count on, the fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick that’s being jammed up their assholes every day. Because the owners of this country know the truth — it’s called the American Dream … ‘cuz you have to be asleep to believe it.”

George Carlin’s Final Words To The World...
George Carlin on “The American Dream”.

The Truth About Reading

————- // —————-

Bitcoin and Crypto CEOs Testify before Congress Boomers

Crypto CEOs testify before lawmakers on digital assets

So, you can see and hear for yourself what the Boomers know.
They never built a computer, never learned to code, never learned HTML or any other language, never got off AOL (1990), no idea how to implement security or prevent a virus and don’t give a damn, never listened to  Hackers and Security Experts Warn Senate Panel October 7, 1997, never built a website, never understood the hubs and spokes of how the internet works, don’t comprehend Web 1, 2, or 3, never studied a god damn thing about any of this in their entire lives !!! but these total fuckers are in charge of regulating electronic energy using digital finance technologies and their markets using 200 year old tools . Yeah that’s right! It’s a total nightmare!

OLD UNSKILLED INCOMPETENT BOOMERS do not understand that “money” is information and that a cell phone ( even if you are poor you can get a phone service for fee) can call someone – go to the internet – click to order whatever, which means you are currently sending and getting information for free electronically.

MONEY IS INFORMATION
It’s NOT like you ignorant fools weren’t told about this in the 60’s.

1967 Buckminster Fuller predicted Bitcoin and new wealth.
“I’ll talk about something that would be one of the realizations by 2018 a realistic—scientific accounting system—of what is wealth. Wealth isn’t the gold of pirates—wealth is energy” 1967.

 

Bitcoin is electronic information built on internet rails sent for free to anyone, anywhere in the world.

Hey Congress how are you going to regulate that without pushing the smartest people in the U.S. out of the country where they can live without your ignorant bullshit destroying them.

2008 Satoshi White Paper
I bet they still haven’t read this either.

2009 Satoshi’s exit is the greatest exit of a creator in the modern history !!!

Oh Yes Congress 2000 – 2019

Protect Americans much?

The Rug Pulls from underneath the American tax payer has been endless all the way back to the beginning and all the way up until now. There is nothing to regulate the Federal Reserve. The American public has no understanding about who they are.

Ignorant Boomers are going to ruin America’s last chance to give the next generations the opportunity to generate life changing wealth all to make sure that they can protect the last century lying scum Bank Cartels! and the richest .01% that own 99% of the world’s wealth.

Quietly, the Fed Releases the Names of Banks that Got Billions in Emergency Repo Loans in 2019
Congress isn’t talking about how the bankers are able to defraud the tax payer and continue to allow it and nobody ever goes to jail – ever. . . .

PUT THEM IN JAIL

WE NEED THE YOUNG BLOODS FOR ENERGY, STRENGTH, IDEAS, AND ENTHUSIASM.

  • WE NEED TO ABOLISH THE SENATE.
    READ THE TREASON OF THE SENATE

The Treason of the Senate was a series of articles in Cosmopolitan magazine by David Graham Phillips, published in 1906.

The Aldrich machine controls the legislature, the election boards, the courts — the entire machinery of the “republican form of government.”

Nelson Aldrich tried to get rid of it to pass an anti-poll tax bill in 1891. 

In the United States, and indeed in France, political power was guaranteed by financial incentives and the appointment of suitable candidates, in other words through bribery and corruption. Senator Nelson Aldrich of Rhode Island was chosen by the secret elite to be the voice of “sound economics” in the Senate. A wealthy businessman and father-in-law of J.D. Rockefeller Jr., Aldrich was known as “Morgan’s floor broker in the Senate.” Shameless in his excesses, he used public office to feather his own very large nest.

The Meeting at Jekyll Island November 20, 1910–November 30, 1910
A secret gathering at a secluded island off the coast of Georgia in 1910 laid the foundations for the Federal Reserve System. From the outset they insisted on secrecy, operated in secret and ensured that their influence was airbrushed from history. They believed that white men of Anglo-Saxon descent rightly sat at the top of the racial hierarchy. Ruskin advocated that control of the state should be placed in the hands of a small ruling class. Social order was to be built upon the authority of superiors, imposing upon their inferiors an absolute, unquestioning obedience. He was repelled by the notion of leveling between the classes and by the disintegration of the “rightful” authority of the ruling class.
In November 1910, five bankers representing Morgan, Rockefeller and Kuhn Loeb interests, met in total secrecy with Senator Aldrich and the Assistant Secretary to the U.S. Treasury on Jekyll Island, an exclusive playground of the mega-rich off the coast of Georgia. Of the seven conspirators, five, Senator Aldrich, Henry Davison, Benjamin Strong, Frank Vanderlip and Paul Warburg, were members of The Pilgrims. The proposed “Federal Reserve System” was to be owned entirely by private banks, though its name implied that it was a government institution. Individuals from the American banking dynasties, including Morgan, Warburg, Schiff and Rockefeller, would hold the shares. Political control moved hand in glove with the Money-Power. MORE

The Federal Reserve System constructed on Jekyll Island had powers that King Midas could never have contemplated.
The objective was to establish a franchise to create money out of nothing for the purpose of lending, get the taxpayer to pick up any losses, and convince Congress that the aim was to protect the public.

Capitalism does not require democracy. Or even benefit from it. Capitalism as a system may well work best in the absence of democracy.

RICH AS HELL – the financial curriculum you wished you had been given

FIND OUT WHY WE ARE IN THE DARK ABOUT MONEY

How the 1% of great American and European fortunes were actually built on the ugly immoral “China” (opium) drug and slave trades, not by the “industrious, moral” behavior propagated by myth makers.

There is no evidence that a K12 financial literacy education leads to household well-being or improved behavior from citizens, government or banks.

This curriculum expands your experience of financial literacy by providing exclusive information and links to first historic person resources, videos, pictures, and original research. We have created content with 6 archetypes of learners in mind: K12 elementary, teens, parents, teachers, academics, and “conspiracy theory” enthusiasts, journalists, and government.

BIPARTISAN INFRASTRUCTURE BILL, K12 COVID, The Big Read

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► ► RICH AS HELL™

BIPARTISAN INFRASTRUCTURE BILL

On November 5, Congress passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, a once-in-a-generation investment in the nation’s physical infrastructure and competitiveness.  This bipartisan legislation will rebuild roads, bridges, ports, and rail; expand access to clean drinking water; help ensure every American has access to high-speed internet; address the climate crisis and advance environmental justice; and support communities that too often have been left behind.  Combined with President Biden’s Build Back Better framework, it will also add, on average, 1.5 million jobs per year for the next 10 years (fact sheets 1 and 2).

Among the highlights for education:

  • Clean water.  Currently, up to 10 million households and 400,000 schools and child care centers lack safe drinking water.  The legislation invests $55 billion to expand access to clean drinking water, eliminate the nation’s lead service lines, and help clean up the toxic chemical PFAS.
  • Broadband access and affordability.  Reliable, high-speed internet is necessary for Americans to do their jobs, participate equally in school learning, and stay connected.  Yet, more than 30 million Americans live in areas where there is no broadband infrastructure that provides minimally acceptable speeds.  The legislation invests $65 billion to help ensure that every American has access to reliable, high-speed internet through an investment in broadband infrastructure deployment.  It will also help lower prices for service and help close the digital divide.
  • Clean school buses.  The legislation will deliver thousands of electric school buses, replacing the yellow school bus fleet.  Investments in zero- and low-emission public transit will drive demand for American-made batteries and vehicles, creating jobs and supporting domestic manufacturing.  It will also help the more than 25 million children and thousands of bus drivers who breathe polluted air on bus rides.  Air pollution is linked to asthma and other health issues that cause students to miss school.

PROMOTE DEMOCRACY AND PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION

Destroying Democracy Is Central to the Privatization of Public Goods

COVID

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officially recommends children ages 5- to 11-years-old be vaccinated against COVID-19 with the Pfizer-BioNtech pediatric vaccine.  This recommendation comes after months of rigorous review and the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) decision to authorize emergency use of the vaccine for children.  The COVID-19 vaccine is the best way to keep students safe and protect them against COVID-19, including the delta variant.

Starting this week, the pediatric vaccination program is fully up and running, and there are approximately 20,000 convenient locations where families can go to get their children vaccinated, with more sites coming online in the weeks ahead.  The Departments of Education and Health and Human Services are supporting schools and communities with setting up vaccine solutions that work best for families, including hosting thousands of school-located vaccine clinics; matching school districts with local pharmacy providers; and supporting collaboration between schools, families, and local pediatricians and children’s hospitals.  A joint letter from the agencies delineates three requests of school communities and shares information and resources to help fulfill them.  (Note: First Lady Dr. Jill Biden recently visited a COVID-19 vaccination clinic at Franklin Sherman Elementary School in McLean, Virginia — which was the first school to administer the polio vaccine in 1954.)

The Department of Education and CDC are also providing resources to states and schools for testing and other mitigation efforts.  A partnership among the agencies and the Rockefeller Foundation specifically aims to accelerate school-based screening testing for students and staff.  It is making staff available to state health departments to coordinate, execute, and expand school-based testing, contact tracing/case investigation, and related public health activities; holding weekly “office hours” to help schools set up and sustain testing programs; and releasing guidance for districts on using American Rescue Plan (ARP) funding to provide incentives to families to participate in testing programs.

Meanwhile, the Department, in collaboration with CDC, launched a COVID-19 data dashboard to help the public track the impact of COVID-19 on K-12 schools.  The dashboard aggregates — in one location — data on pediatric cases, youth vaccination rates, and schools operating in-person, remotely, or a hybrid of those two.  Data will be updated each week, and, where possible, the information is presented geographically, so that educators and families can understand the impact within their communities.

  1. Coronavirus and the Heart | Harvard Medical School
  2. Like Venom Coursing Through the Body: Mechanism Driving COVID-19 Mortality Identified
  3. Creating dangerous viruses in the lab is a bad way to guard against future pandemics
  4. Study of 6.2 Million Patients Reveals No Serious Health Effects Linked to mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines
  5. FDA approves pill with sensor that digitally tracks if patients have ingested their medication

Biden administration orders federal agencies to fix hundreds of cyber flaws
The federal government has been told to go on a security patching spree. Thanks to a new CISA directive out this week, agencies have six months to fix hundreds of bugs across their networks — and just two weeks to fix bugs from 2021. Each agency patches their own stuff, so some agencies may have fewer bugs to fix than others. The full catalog of vulnerabilities are here (which might also be useful for folks in the private sector).

COVID-19 conspiracy theories thrive on social media platforms, EXCEPT Twitter

#DELETEFACEBOOK
500 doctors demand Facebook disclose data about COVID misinformation

Facebook spent $23.4 million in 2019 on Zuckerberg’s security, private air travel Facebook released its latest regulatory filing that shows executive compensation for 2019.#DeleteFacebook

MILITARY  – NO SHOT NO PROMOTION 

WON’T ALLOW YOU TO REUP CAUSE YOU’LL BE OUT.

Navy prepares to begin discharging sailors who refuse COVID-19 vaccine

Oklahoma Guard goes rogue, rejects COVID vaccine mandate after sudden change of command

U.S. Cyber Command, the NSA sister agency that carries out offensive cyber operations, hijacked the servers of the REvil ransomware group earlier this year. But the compromise wasn’t detected until Cybercom blocked its website traffic a month ago. The operation wasn’t a hack or a takedown but crucially “deprived the criminals of the platform they used to extort their victims.” Well that’s one way to make sure they don’t get paid. One of the group’s leaders confirmed domains were “hijacked from REvil,” and that the authorities were looking for them. “Good luck everyone, I’m off,” the hacker wrote. REvil was behind the ransomware attacks on JBS, Travelex, and Kaseya. The AP has a detailed interview with deputy attorney general Lisa Monaco, who said following the U.S.-Russia tensions over cyberattacks that the U.S. has “not seen a material change in the landscape.”
https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/18/revil-ransomware-group-goes-dark-after-its-tor-sites-were-hijacked/

AMERICAN RESCUE PLAN

Last week, the Department announced approval of two more American Rescue Plan (ARP) Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) Fund state plans — California and Colorado — and distributed remaining ARP ESSER funding to those jurisdictions.  The plans detail how states are using and intend to use ARP ESSER funds to safely reopen and sustain the operations of schools and classrooms and address the essential needs of students, including by equitably expanding educational opportunities for students disproportionately impacted by the pandemic.  Earlier this year, the agency distributed two-thirds of ARP ESSER funding, or $81 billion, to all 50 states and the District of Columbia.  The remaining funding is being made available to states once plans are approved.  To date, 46 plans have been approved (see state-by-state press releases and highlights online).

THE BIG READ

The National Endowment for the Arts’ (NEA) The Big Read, established in 2016, supports Americans reading and discussing a single book in their communities.  Local governments, libraries, school districts, colleges and universities, and non-profit organizations are encouraged to apply for one of an estimated 75 grants to be awarded for programming occurring between September 2022 and June 2023.  Besides the grant, communities will receive resources, including reader’s guides, teacher’s guides, and audio guides featuring commentary from artists, educators, and public figures, and publicity materials.

For this cycle, communities will choose from 15 titles:

  • The Bear(novel) by Andrew Krivak
  • The Best We Could Do(graphic memoir) by Thi Bui
  • Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?(graphic memoir) by Roz Chast
  • Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude(poetry) by Ross Gay
  • Circe(novel) by Madeline Miller
  • The Cold Millions(novel) by Jess Walter
  • Deaf Republic(poetry) by Ilya Kaminsky
  • Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth(memoir) by Sarah Smarsh
  • Homegoing(novel) by Yaa Gyasi
  • Infinite Country(novel) by Patricia Engel
  • Interior Chinatown(novel) by Charles Yu
  • Nothing to See Here(novel) by Kevin Wilson
  • Postcolonial Love Poem(poetry) by Natalie Diaz
  • Sitting Pretty: The View from my Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body(memoir-in-essays) by Rebekah Taussig
  • There, There(novel) by Tommy Orange

The application deadline is January 26, 2022.

JOB FREE EDUCATION

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