umbertino

by: Teresa Albano February 8 2016 CHICAGO -- College campuses across the state are erupting with protests as Illinois enters its eighth month without a budget. Chicago State University, a predominantly African American university on the city's South Side, declared a financial emergency Feb. 4 that threatens the survival of the school, which was founded in 1867. CSU students, faculty, staff and the community have rallied around to save the 149-year-old institution with actions that included the Jan. 28 dramatic shutdown of one of the city's busiest expressways, the Dan Ryan. Students, alumni and faculty at Eastern Illinois University in Charleston, almost 200 miles south of here, rallied Feb. 5 after hearing some 200 university employees would be laid off. These actions came after hundreds at the city's Northeastern Illinois University rallied with the Rev. Jesse Jackson on Jan. 25. The state's 57 public schools have been without state funding since July 1. Lawmakers passed a bill last week restoring $397 million for the state's Monetary Award Program (MAP), which provides grant money to 130,000 low-income students, and $324 million for community colleges, but Gov. Bruce Rauner has threatened to veto the bill. Colleges and universities have been forced to dip into their reserves to cover MAP grants and keep students in school. CSU is the first university to completely exhaust its reserves. Other universities, like Governors State and NEIU, are cautioning that they may be able to finish the spring semester but after that the future is murkier. The state budget crisis has dire consequences for higher education. The Higher Learning Commission, the agency that accredits universities and colleges, sent a letter to Gov. Rauner Feb. 4, state Senate and House leaders and General Assembly members warning them that higher education institutions could lose their accreditation if they need to "suspend operations" because of lack of state funding. Once an institution loses HLC authorization, students there are no longer eligible to receive federal financial aid. "The lack of state funding is putting Illinois colleges and universities at serious risk and jeopardizing the future of students," states the letter signed by Barbara Gellman-Danley, Ph.D., the president of the HLC. Students worry whether they will be able to finish the semester, let alone sign up for fall classes. Faculty and staff, whose jobs and livelihood are on the line, are on edge as the stakes in the budget crisis become higher. "If Northeastern were to close, I would be devastated," Heather Miller, a junior in psychology with a minor in sociology, said in an interview. Like many other Northeastern students, Miller is the first in her family to go to college and hopes to become a licensed counselor and work with teenagers who have experienced trauma. She currently works at TJ Maxx and dreams, like most of her peers, of applying her education to improve people's lives. "If Northeastern, or any of these other state schools were to close, it would not just affect my professors, classmates, or myself negatively, but it would affect this state and country very negatively and send the message that education is not something worthwhile, practical, or important." State Senate Leader John Cullerton, a Democrat, announced the Democratic-led General Assembly would not send the MAP funding bill to Rauner until Feb. 16, giving him time to rethink his veto threat. That also gives time for residents of Illinois to contact the governor and demand that he sign the stop-gap measure. Additional pressure on Rauner and Democratic lawmakers, most notably House Speaker Mike Madigan, to come to a just budget resolution may come when President Barack Obama addresses the state General Assembly Feb. 10 in Springfield. Until then, students continue to protest. Photo: Students join the Rev Jesse Jackson at Northeastern Illinois University Jan 25 pledging to register to vote and demand a state budget that funds education. | Teresa Albano/PW http://www.peoplesworld.org/illinois-campuses-erupt-in-protests-over-budget-crisis/

Instant ***** Part Of The Dance

From "Matching Mole" 1972

Halleluhwah

One More Night

From "4 Way Street" 1971

Translation A week a day or just an hour sometimes is worth a lifetime time flies by and steals what you got I don't know how to talk about Love But I know that whenever you hold my hands tight I'd want Time to just freeze around us I'd wish that never never never nobody in the world ever could steal you, take you away just like this train is doing now and I know that never never never never any woman ever with just one look will be able to give me so much Sensations crowding my mind sweet sensations made of promises, kisses made of sounds in just one moment.. knowing you loving you and already knowing that that you got to go away that you got to go away, so far away I'd wish that never never never nobody in the world ever could steal you, take you away just like this train is doing now and I know that never never never never any woman ever with just one look will be able to give me so much no woman ever no woman ever none ever Sensations sensations that not even Time that not even Time will ever take away from me.

RIP Massimo Riva ( vocalist) Translation. Ok yeah....Allright Tonight I'm staying with you Ok Yeah... You'll see Tonight You'll die! Take all you want Tonight we won't ever leave each other It's your lips making me cry by now Sometimes when you kiss me I believe I'd die If you weren't around I could not live My life is only yours and you know this Ok Yeah Take whatever you want Tonight we won't ever leave each other Ok Yeah Just do whatever you want to me But remember that you'll cry afterwards Ok Yeah......Allright Original Italian Lyrics Ok sì... va beh! Questa notte sto con te. Ok sì... vedrai... Questa notte morirai! Ok Ok Ok sì... Ok sì! Prendi tutto quel che vuoi! Questa notte non ci lasceremo mai! Sono le labbra tue che mi fan piangere oramai. Quando mi baci a volte credo che io morirei. Se non ci fossi tu io non potrei vivere. La mia vita è solo tua e tu lo sai. Ok sì... va beh! Ok... sì... va beh! ...va beh! ... va beh! Ok sì!! Prendi tutto ciò che vuoi! Questa notte non ci lasceremo mai!! Ok sì! Fammi tutto quel che vuoi! Ma ricordati che dopo piangerai!! Ok sì!! Ok sì!!

My Angel In The Way New Mama (composed by Neil Young)

From "Stills" 1975

Composed by Joni Mitchell RIP Paul Motian ( drums) & Charlie Haden ( bass)

by: C.J. Atkins February 5 2016 Billionaires for Bernie? Well, if you believe what the Wall Street wonks over at Third Way are saying about Sanders' plan to expand Social Security, you might think that the billionaire class should get their checkbooks ready and start writing out donation checks to his campaign. If what they are claiming is true, then contrary to everything you might have heard about him, Bernie the socialist is really just a stalking horse for the super-rich. In a report just released, the finance-sector-funded right-wing Democratic think-tank declared that Sanders' Social Security Expansion Act (S. 731), despite the supposedly progressive credentials of its sponsor, is actually just a program for redistributing more wealth to those who already have a lot of it. Really? So this whole "political revolution" thing is all a fraud? What about the much-vaunted "democratic socialism" and the $27 average campaign contributions? Just covers for the same old bought-and-paid-for establishment politics? That is the story that Third Way is trying to peddle, but you don't have to look very deep into their claims to find out there's really not much there. What Sanders has actually proposed is nothing less than a massive expansion of Social Security benefits for all, backed by a tax plan that asks the wealthiest to finally pay their fair share of Social Security taxes - the same taxes that working class Americans have been paying for decades. So how does Third Way manage to twist a progressive proposal like this into a trickle-up scheme for the wealthy? Third Way's claims and Sanders' true aims Utilizing a whole set of slick graphics and a list of major citations, authors Jim Kessler and David Brown authoritatively make the claim that the new benefits Sanders proposes for America's seniors "are substantially tilted toward the wealthy, spending five times more on the wealthy than on the poor." Going even further, they accuse Sanders of selling out the young in order to boost payouts to the richest senior citizens. According to them, Sanders denies "progressive priorities for children and younger generations." Presenting a stark choice, they say that if the country goes along with Sanders' Social Security expansion, then there will be no money left for pre-K programs, community college, child care, and the rest. Putting forward such talking points now, it is clear that Third Way is out to shape the political narrative as the early primary states head to the polls and the Sanders campaign appears to be hitting its stride. Their audience is not the voting public, however. They are not trying to sway activists and campaign volunteers. This is not a grassroots or movement-oriented organization. Rather, Third Way's product is targeted toward policy elites and the talking-head media crowd. If they can successfully influence what is said on the television news programs and on the newspaper editorial pages, then they think they can shape public opinion from the top and undermine Sanders' credibility. Contrary to Third Way's claims, the Sanders plan for Social Security is actually built around an across-the-board benefit increase for every recipient. As a percentage of earnings, those at the lowest end of the spectrum would get the biggest boost to their payout. The minimum benefit would also be raised, guaranteeing that those who spent a lifetime in low-wage jobs will not be forced to live in poverty when they are older. And finally, it would adopt a cost-of-living-adjustment (COLA) schedule that is tied to inflation. This would ensure that seniors' benefits don't lose value over time as prices rise. To cover these program expansions and keep Social Security solvent in the long-term, Sanders' proposes new taxes - but only on those whose incomes are over $250,000. He would lift the cap on the Social Security payroll tax. Right now, all workers earning under $250,000 pay more taxes as a proportion of their income than do those earning above it. The cap is inherently regressive. The Sanders plan would remove it, meaning high-earners would finally have to pay the same tax as everyone else. This is the centerpiece of Sanders' funding plan, yet Third Way only barely mentions it. They stuff it into the appendix at the end of the report! If this was a serious analysis and critique of the Sanders' plan, the Social Security tax cap would be featured center stage. The fact that it is not exposes the Third Way report and all of its claims as nothing more than a political hit piece - not the objective analysis it purports to be. Not quite a lie, but definitely not the truth In order to make its claims, Third Way resorts to some pretty disingenuous interpretations and gets a little loose with facts. They truthfully assert, for instance, that under the Sanders plan, "the top income quintile of seniors receives nearly as much in new Social Security benefits as the bottom two quintiles combined." What they don't make clear is that the top quintile starts at $63,000 per year. That means that the bottom 80% of Social Security recipients have incomes below that amount. By just referring to "quintiles" without clearly defining what income brackets they include, the report leads readers to believe that Sanders is delivering big money to the top 20%. It is true that those earning over $63,000 will see larger absolute dollar increases than those in the lower 40%. But by the same token, as a percentage of their income, those in the lower income brackets will actually see the biggest increases. Third Way's report would have you believe the exact opposite. Lest you start to think of them as a crusader for the poor, Third Way's goal when it comes to Social Security is not to look out for our lowest-income seniors and disabled. Don't forget, this is the same group that led the fight for a chained CPI (Consumer Price Index) for calculating benefit rates rather than inflation-adjusted COLA's, effectively amounting to annual cuts. They are the ones who were pushing for a "Grand Bargain" with Republicans during the "Fiscal Cliff" negotiations that would have seen permanent cutbacks to Social Security. The same outfit whose president, Jon Cowan, has been trying since as far back as 1995 to divide seniors and young workers so that Wall Street can move up the middle and privatize Social Security. Sinking to the level of claiming that Bernie Sanders, of all people, is a tool of the rich signals that some in the camp of the Wall Street Dems are running scared. Just this week, Lloyd Blankfein said the Sanders candidacy represented a "dangerous moment." He's the CEO of Goldman Sachs, which gave Third Way $850,000 over the period 2010-11, at the height of the fight for tougher banking regulations. At the core of Third Way's political practice has always been the idea that the rich already pay too much in taxes, so we've got to stop asking them to pony up more cash. Our political system, they say, just "does not have the appetite to pass this enormous tax increase and come up with another tax increase to pay for domestic priorities." So the nation has to choose. We can't have it all - Social Security, Medicare, good jobs, and education. It's the same austerity message they've been peddling for years. But with the popularity of Sanders' campaign and its anti-Wall Street message, they can no longer just rely on their well-worn tropes of fiscal irresponsibility or denouncing the left as radical and unrealistic. A lot of folks just don't buy it anymore. Considering that Third Way has long been on record as favoring cuts to Social Security benefits, it's more than just a little absurd that they would now be presenting themselves as the defenders of the program against a Bernie Sanders supposedly out to rob from the poor and give to the rich. It just isn't believable. And that's because it just isn't true. http://www.peoplesworld.org/billionaires-for-bernie-third-way-would-have-you-think-so/

New Hampshire’s Democratic and Republican frontrunners draw boisterous crowds days before primary, while Clinton makes her case in Flint, Michigan Dan Roberts in Portsmouth and Ben Jacobs in Plymouth, New Hampshire Sunday 7 February 2016 21.38 GMT The anti-establishment wave dominating the 2016 US election surged forward in New Hampshire on Sunday as the two clear frontrunners in the state for the Democratic and Republican nominations spoke at packed rallies within an hour of each other. On the coast, senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont roused an audience of 1,220 at a community college in Portsmouth with his call for a “political revolution” to overcome the corporate campaign donations he claims are corrupting Washington. A few miles inland, billionaire businessman Donald Trump, who is largely funding his own campaign without the help of Super Pacs, spoke to a similarly enthusiastic crowd about what it would take to “make America great again”. It is perhaps the only point of policy on which these two diametrically opposed candidates agree, but their challenge to the political orthodoxy has kept both firmly at the top of opinion polling with less than two days before the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday. Hillar-y Clinton, who lags Sanders in New Hampshire by an average of 13 percentage points in recent polls, left the state entirely on Sunday after a Saturday night event in the same converted gymnasium where Sanders rallied a larger and more boisterous crowd. She campaigned instead in Flint, Michigan, where she has seized on the city’s water crisis to try to demonstrate her own concern for economic inequality. “I feel blessed to be here,” Clinton said at a church there. Her husband, Bill, who had been a big feature of her campaign in Iowa, where she narrowly beat Sanders last Monday, has also recently been away campaigning in Nevada instead – the scene of their next battle in what now threatens to be a protracted campaign for the Democratic nomination. But the former president was back in New Hampshire on Sunday for a low-key talk, and was expected to appear at a series of primary-eve events alongside Clinton and their daughter Chelsea. “We started this campaign at 3% in the polls, and we were 30 to 40 points down in New Hampshire,” Sanders told the crowd in Portsmouth. “Well, a lot has changed in the last few months.” Despite refusing large contributions, Sanders raised $5m more than the former secretary state in January thanks to $20m in small donations averaging just $27, which has allowed his operation to spend more three times as much on advertising in New Hampshire, according to media tracking. Instead, the Democratic race in the state has become a game of expectation management, with Clinton supporters arguing that anything less than a double-digit win by Sanders on Tuesday will show his momentum stalling in a state that borders his home in Vermont and ought to be his strongest territory. Sanders, meanwhile, largely stuck to his now-familiar script calling for universal healthcare, free public college tuition and a doubling of the minimum wage – despite claims from Clinton and most party leaders that such ambitions are dangerously unrealistic. “Real change comes from the bottom on up,” Sanders insisted. “In order to bring about the changes that America needs, we need a political revolution.” At times, the senator also sounded increasingly indistinguishable from impersonations of him by comedian Larry David, who hosted Sanders in an appearance on Saturday Night Live this weekend that gently, but sympathetically, mocked his distinctive Brooklyn manner. “A lot of these things are really crazy, they don’t make any sense, no matter how you look at it,” Sanders said in Portsmouth while talking about healthcare reform. “What happens if you don’t fill the prescription? You get sick. It makes no sense.” In contrast, a subdued Donald Trump seemed ready to rest on his laurels – and his own comfortable polling advantage – at a rally on the campus of Plymouth State University. During an address that was meandering even by Trump’s standards, the real estate mogul criss-crossed a variety of topics: immigration, trade and making fun of Jeb Bush. The first two play well among New Hampshire voters. The latter has always appealed to Donald J Trump. The billionaire mocked Bush for bringing his mother, former first lady Barbara Bush, on the campaign earlier this week. (His brother, George W, is expected to join him in South Carolina next week.) “Mom, mommy, please come walk in the snow,” the frontrunner said in his best impression of the former Florida governor. Trump, who took the stage on Sunday to the Beatles’ Revolution with the air of a candidate trying to run out the clock, almost seemed to be trying not to make news. He once again cast doubt on Barack Obama’s loyalty to the United States. When noting that Obama refers to the Ayatollah Khamenei by his title of supreme leader, Trump raised an eyebrow: “There’s something strange going on,” Trump said. “I am not calling him the supreme leader – he’s not my supreme leader.” The night before, Trump had turned in a relatively quiet performance as the latest Republican debate left him where he had started – winning – and left Florida senator Marco Rubio flailing. “Did Marco Rubio do well?” Trump asked. “Did Ted Cruz do well?” They booed. According to Trump, the reason he himself was loudly booed several times during the debate on Saturday at St Anselm’s College was the Republican National Committee’s alleged packing of the room with donors. The RNC has insisted that only 75 of the 1,000 debate attendees were donors and that students at the school made up most of the crowd. On Sunday, Trump insisted the students had scalped their tickets and sold them to rich donors. His own crowd on Sunday afternoon added up – like the one down the road for Sanders – to more than 1,000 supporters of an insurgency. But for all the New Hampshire loyalists who have stood by Trump throughout his sustained campaign, there were many supporters showing up for the show itself. His audience was noticeably thinner by the time Trump stopped speaking, with a steady stream of attendees leaving early on Super Bowl Sunday. The Sanders faithful stayed until the bitter end. Additional reporting by Lucia Graves in Flint, Michigan, Lauren Gambino in Keene, New Hampshire, and Matt Sullivan in Portsmouth 1 2 Donald Trump gestures to the crowd as he signs autographs at a campaign event at Plymouth State University Sunday. Photograph: David Goldman/AP 2 2 Bernie Sanders, waves to the crowd during a campaign stop in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Photograph: John Minchillo/AP http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/07/bernie-sanders-donald-trump-rallies-new-hampshire

By DECLAN WALSH FEB. 7, 2016 CAIRO — Diplomatic meetings in Cairo and Washington this week are likely to further focus international attention on the death of an Italian graduate student whose badly beaten body was found in Cairo last week. A visit by the Egyptian foreign minister, Sameh Shoukry, to Washington and a trip to Cairo by Sarah B. Sewall, the State Department’s top official for human rights, come amid mounting pressure by Italy for Egypt to find the killers of Giulio Regeni, 28, a doctoral candidate at Cambridge University who had come to Cairo to study informal labor movements. The Italian interior minister, Angelino Alfano, citing an autopsy carried out after the body arrived in Italy on Saturday, said Mr. Regeni had suffered “inhuman, animal-like, unacceptable violence” before his death. A person close to Mr. Regeni’s family said the autopsy showed that he had died from a fracture of his cervical vertebra, most likely caused by a violent blow to the neck. The Egyptian government, apparently alarmed by the angry reaction to Mr. Regeni’s death, has allowed Italian investigators to participate in the investigation into the killing, and officials have repeatedly emphasized their intention to cooperate with Italy. Italian officials have issued demands for “the truth” about what happened to Mr. Regeni, and while they have avoided making public accusations against Egypt, some have privately blamed the Egyptian security forces for his death. The meetings between Egyptian and American officials this week are likely to include discussion of Mr. Regeni’s case, seen by some in Egypt and abroad as another alarming sign of abuse by the security forces in a country where arbitrary detention and torture have become increasingly common, according to human rights monitors. In Washington, Mr. Shoukry is scheduled to meet with Secretary of State John Kerry, the president’s national security adviser, Susan E. Rice, and various congressional leaders, the Egyptian foreign ministry said in a statement. In Cairo, Ms. Sewall, the undersecretary of state for civilian security, democracy, and human rights, was to meet with Egyptian government officials. In a statement, Ms. Sewell, who previously headed the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, said she looked forward to “learning more about the challenges facing Egypt and the progress the country has made in addressing them.” American officials have previously criticized Egypt’s human rights record under President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, most recently during a visit to Cairo by Mr. Kerry in August. Still, the Obama administration continues to give $1.3 billion in annual military aid to Egypt — a reflection, in part, of the country’s perceived strategic importance as a bulwark against Islamic State militants in the region, particularly in Libya. Italy, too, has strong ties with Egypt: Italy was the first Western country to welcome Mr. Sisi after the ouster in 2013 of the democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi; the two countries cooperate in the fight against Islamic militants; and they are coordinating over the discovery last summer of a gas field off the Egyptian coast by the Italian energy giant Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi. Even so, the stark details of Mr. Regeni’s death have plunged that relationship into crisis. On Sunday, the Italian ambassador to Egypt said that Mr. Regeni’s body had “clear, unequivocal marks of violence, beating and torture.” The ambassador, Maurizio Massari, who was the first Italian to see Mr. Regeni’s body, said in a television interview that Egyptian officials were initially of little help when Mr. Regeni went missing on Jan. 25 after leaving his apartment to see a friend in downtown Cairo. But then on Wednesday, hours after Italian officials appealed to Mr. Sisi in person and before a visit by an Italian trade delegation, Mr. Regeni’s body was discovered. “I think that Mr. Sisi’s intervention managed to move the Egyptian government machine a bit, and make the body come out,” Mr. Massari said. Mr. Regeni had already been dead for three or four days before his body was found, according to the findings of the autopsy, Italian news outlets reported on Sunday. Some observers have questioned how effective the Italian investigators will be when, to many Italians, the prime suspects in the case appear to be members of the same Egyptian security forces with whom they will be working. Mr. Massari said the extent of the Italian team’s collaboration with Egypt would become clear “in a few weeks, maximum.” Dozens of Egyptians, including Mr. Regeni’s friends and political activists, gathered outside the Italian Embassy in Cairo on Saturday to lay flowers and light candles. “The least we can do is stand here and say that we consider him to be one of us,” one friend, Sally Toma, told The Associated Press. “Unfortunately, he died the same way Egyptians die every day.” Gaia Pianigiani contributed reporting from Rome, and Merna Thomas from Cairo. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/08/world/middleeast/egypt-italy-giulio-regeni-cairo.html?_r=0

G-Spot Amsterdam Blue

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Za25EeU55Q

RIP John Bonham Communication Breakdown

FM Do It Again

Rikki Don't Lose That Number

From "We Want Miles" Fast Track

Fillmore East 1971 RIP Duane Allman & Berry Oakley Stormy Monday