Whoa: Scott Walker suggests that the next President (i.e., him) might have to take "aggressive actions, including military action" on his first day in office -- in the context of dealing with Iran, of course. Not enough, anymore, to merely oppose the deal; not enough, even, to say you'll "tear it up on your first day in office" as Mr. Walker has already said -- now you have to be ready to bomb Iran on Inauguration Day without consulting with Congress first as the Constitution mandates. All this right-wing swordfighting will get us all killed one day, and Jeb Bush is mistaken to think rage-filled primary voters will prefer a more "mature" way of killing the Iran deal.
Mr. Walker has also made the news by fielding a provocative question from a 13-year-old daughter of an apparently undocumented immigrant: "why are you trying to break my family apart?" But despite that easy, unflappable tone that lulls many a "liberal" media pundit to happy dreams, Mr. Walker talked like a politician-not-a-person, arguing without persuading and sniping at the press when they pressed him the way they're supposed to. Most telling: when her younger brother asks whether Gov. Walker really wanted the boy to come home and see his dad deported, he responds, "that's not what I'm talking about." The correct answer is "no, I would not want that," regardless of whether or not you feel you have to do that, and Scott Walker would know that, if he had a soul.
From the "Jesus Mary and Joseph This Crap Again?" file: just as he's announcing that Waller County (TX) will treat Sandra Bland's "mysterious" death in custody "like a murder investigation," Waller County's D.A. hastens to add that Ms. Bland "was not a model person." The next time I hear such speculations about the character of a white person who gets killed by police will be the first. More to the point, you shouldn't have to be a "model person" in order to avoid getting killed by police -- they're not rights, after all, if you have to be a "model person" to enjoy them.
Martin Levine at Nonprofit Quarterly tells us what we should learn from the closing of Alameda County (CA)'s FAME charter school. When these schools can get their charter from an entity other than the local school board, it turns out, oversight becomes a lot more difficult. Still, for someone who seems comfortable with charter schools' continued existence, Mr. Levine documents a lot of incompetence and greed at the FAME school.
Finally, because we need some good news, a New York state government panel recommends that New York City pay a minimum wage of $15/hour to its fast-food workers by the end of 2018 -- a recommendation the state's acting labor commissioner will enforce, unless a right-wing parasite takes over his mind and body very shortly. It ain't all huzzahs, unfortunately: the owner of Tropical Smoothies (three cafés on Long Island) says she sees the wage hike forcing her to "cut() labor, hir(e) less people, hav(e) less people per shift." But is that how a real entrepreneur thinks? Or does a real entrepreneur think of all that extra money in working families' pockets and thus all those extra mango magic smoothies she could sell?
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