School Kids Exposed Personal Issues for Bullies by School Workshop Lawsuit Pending

West Allegheny Middle School Parents Pursuing Possible Lawsuit Over Anti-Bullying Program

pittsburgh.cbslocal.com

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — According to parents, legal action is in the works after a controversial anti-bullying program at West Allegheny Middle School.

At a special parent meeting Tuesday night, parents and taxpayers told KDKA’s Kym Gable that they’ve retained the services of a Pittsburgh attorney to pursue a possible class action lawsuit, claiming administrators infringed on students’ rights.

KDKA tried to gain access to the meeting, but was told it was a private, closed-door session with no media allowed.

During an exercise at the Jan. 15 workshop, students were asked questions amongst their peers and then “grouped” based on their answers.

There were more than two dozen questions. The statements included:

“Please move to the middle of the circle if:”

You have been impacted by drugs or alcoholYou have been called fat or made fun ofYou or someone close to you identifies as gay, lesbian, or transgenderedYou have been impacted by mental challenges or learning disabilitiesYou or your family has ever worried about not having enough moneyYou or someone close to you has been imprisonedYou have been raised by a single parent

The district says students were told they did not have to share if they did not feel comfortable, but parents say they wish they would have seen the questions prior to the workshop.

“There is now so much damage done to these children and there is no way to go back and make this better for them,” said Diane Kolesar.

Pam Brosovic added, “I asked them [administrators] to do the same thing they asked the kids to do: Stand in a circle, put a mask on and step in the circle and say all your problems.”

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Brosovic believes the exercise “gave the bullies ammunition.”

No one from the school district administration would comment on camera.

The designated spokesperson after the meeting was school board president Debbie Mirich, who read a written statement.

“We do stand behind the intentions of our workshop and we look forward (to) continuing our work with parents to address this very serious issue of bullying and the unintentional acts that continue to marginalize different groups of students.”

Mirich acknowledged that the school board did not have any direct involvement in facilitating the workshop.

Parent Marie-Noelle Briggs said, “I would never expect a middle school to ask kids if their parents have been in school, if they’re [the] same sex, if they’re having financial issues. How is that going to affect them?”

COMMENTS

Berserk Clinton Bigwigs Launch Nixonian Attack Against Surging Sanders

observer.com

Democratic presidential candidate U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks during the the Iowa Brown and Black Forum sponsored by FUSION and broadcasted from Drake University on January 11 in Des Moines. (Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

In an astonishing political development, as a CNN/WMUR poll shows Bernie Sanders defeating Hillary Clinton by an astounding 27 points in the New Hampshire primary and an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll finds him defeating Donald Trump in the general election by a whopping 15 points, a long list of prominent Clinton supporters has launched an all-out negative attack against Mr. Sanders reminiscent of the red-baiting attacks Richard Nixon once deployed against liberals.

First, a caution to readers: these polls show definite trends that should bring joy to the hearts of Sanders supporters and dread to the hearts of Team Clinton, but trends in campaigns and results in polls will shift many times in a presidential election.

Second, an observation on the meaning of the Sanders surge: these and other polls demonstrate what I have long argued is the great truth that will be revealed in the 2016 election. There is a progressive populist majority in America that exists beneath the tectonic plates of American politics that Mr. Sanders to his advantage is galvanizing in his campaign and Ms. Clinton to her disadvantage has been resisting in hers.

Third, a word of advice to Team Clinton: calm down and back off the panicked attacks against Mr. Sanders that are highlighted in a New York Times story in which one Democratic Senator who supports Ms. Clinton, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, reached a new low by suggesting that Republicans will run an ad against Mr. Sanders alongside the hammer and sickle which, in other words, would paint him as a communist.

Team Clinton needs to get a grip on their panicked attacks against Mr. Sanders.

Fourth, a key fact: the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll really did find Mr. Sanders defeating Mr. Trump by 15 points, confirming an earlier Quinnipiac poll showing him defeating Mr. Trump by 13 points, with other polling by NBC/Wall Street Journal showing the Vermont senator defeating the Republican frontrunner by similar margins in general election match-up in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Fifth, perhaps the most fascinating impact of the huge Sanders surge is that the mainstream media, which for most of the campaign has instituted a de facto news blackout against Mr. Sanders, is now painting him as David who may slay the Goliath of the Clinton machine and giving him a megaphone to promote his progressive populist message.

Remember that song “What a difference a day makes”?

Sixth, Ms. Clinton is now making the huge mistake of attacking Mr. Sanders from the right with Republican-style attacks against him as being a tax and spend liberal for advocating issues that many or most Democratic voters support such as single payer health care. This is what Ms. Clinton did in the last Democratic debate.

Seventh, what appears to be a scorched earth attack by Ms. Clinton and her team against Mr. Sanders for being too liberal is the worst possible move for a candidate with high negative ratings and low trust ratings who will need every Sanders voter to turn out on election day in November if she is ultimately the Democratic nominee.

The bonehead move of the year award goes to DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and whoever whispered in her ear to seek the fewest possible debates with the lowest possible audience.

Eighth, I predict any scorched earth attack by Ms. Clinton and her team against Mr. Sanders will lead to a humongous surge in small donations to the Sanders campaign. Expect news stories over the next week to document that the more Ms. Clinton attacks Mr. Sanders the more his small donor base will rally behind him, and the more her allies attack Mr. Sanders for being a socialist—or even a communist as Senator McCaskill’s innuendo implied—the more the large and growing small donor movement behind Mr. Sanders will expand and donate even more money to his campaign.

Ninth, Team Clinton appears to be going berserk in their panicked attacks against Mr. Sanders. They need to calm down and get a grip. Ms. Clinton has offered long and detailed proposals that are generally progressive and highly worthy. They do not go as far as the Sanders proposals, but they move in the same direction, and she would be well-advised to stop attacking Mr. Sanders and start vigorously advocating her own proposals.

Tenth, the bonehead move of the year award goes to Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and whoever in the Clinton campaign whispered in her ear to seek the fewest possible debates with the lowest possible audience.

This ill-fated plan to rig the nominating process violates everything Democrats stand for and has now backfired against Ms. Clinton. Who ever heard of a political party that wants the smallest audience to hear its message, or a national political committee such as the DNC showing such extreme bias for any candidate as it did for Ms. Clinton and against Mr. Sanders on the debate issue?

Eleventh, Mr. Trump can continue to boast of his poll ratings, but it is media malpractice for any journalist to not directly challenge him about why Mr. Sanders is kicking is butt in general election match-ups in a number of recent polls, and why Ms. Clinton has begun to kick his butt as well in those polls, though (and this is important) by a smaller margin than Mr. Sanders.

Ladies and gentlemen, we now have a real campaign where the voice of the people will now be heard. Let the real debate begin and let the voters decide.

The progressive populist message is now front and center on the great stage of national politics, and this is good news for Democrats and great news for America.

SEE ALSO: Hillary’s EmailGate Goes Nuclear

Disclosure: Donald Trump is the father-in-law of Jared Kushner, the publisher of Observer Media.

COMMENTS

China’s Market Chaos: Obama Should Lift Page from Trump to Avert Crisis

Charles Krupa/AP Photo

by PETER MORICI20 Jan 201637

China’s economic chaos is fomenting fear across global stock markets, and President Obama would do well to start listening to Donald Trump about the menace posed by Beijing’s economic strategies.

For two decades we have heard about the coming Asian Century and how China’s hyper growth and socialist market economy provide developing countries with a better alternative to western-style capitalism.

In reality, China’s strategies are remarkably patterned after the “Japanese miracle” of the 1970s and 1980s. An undervalued currency—calculating what a yuan actually buys in China it should be trading at about 3.53 per dollar, not the current rate of about 6.49—makes its products artificially inexpensive at Wal-Mart and many western products prohibitively expensive in China.

Additionally, developing economy status in the WTO permits China to maintain much higher tariffs than western nations, and its banks have provided endless credit to state-owned enterprises even as profitability dwindles into losses.

To satisfy a resulting ravenous appetite for energy and materials, commodity rich nations like Saudi Arabia, Chile and Australia invested heavily in more oil wells, bigger mines and refining facilities.

Its export juggernaut imposed trade deficits on the U.S. and many European economies, and slowed their growth and jobs creation.

During the Bush/Obama presidencies, the U.S. economy has averaged only 1.8 percent annual growth. That’s about half the pace achieved during the Reagan-Clinton years and goes a long way towards explaining falling family incomes.

Prior to the 2008 financial crisis, consumers in the United States and Europe borrowed heavily against homes and through their governments to maintain living standards. Meanwhile, China manufactured its own real estate frenzy by forcing farmers into new cities with inadequate employment opportunities and few real economic imperatives but to boost construction activity and juice GDP statistics.

When the bubbles burst, the Europeans and Americans reformed their banks, whereas Beijing encouraged even more lending for everything from factories to luxury flats. And it encouraged ordinary Chinese to pour savings and borrow from banks to purchase stocks and drive equity prices to unrealistic levels.

Like Japan at the dawn of its lost decade in 1990, Chinese businesses cannot grow their exports or domestic sales enough—and ordinary folks can’t find good enough paying jobs—to support all the debt and many would be bankrupt if domiciled in the West.

The Chinese collapse is driving down global oil and resource prices, sending commodity-based economies into recession and pummeling the U.S. mining and petroleum sectors.

Chinese private investors are heading for the doors—panic selling stocks and converting their yuan into dollars as fast as they can find ways around Beijing’s restrictions on investing outside the Middle Kingdom.

Fear of a permanent collapse in global commodity markets is inspiring private investors elsewhere to also seek safe haven in the dollar by buying real assets, such as New York condominiums, and Treasury securities.

All of this is driving the dollar up against the yuan and other currencies and killing the demand for U.S.-produced goods and services.

U.S. businesses are increasingly reluctant to invest in factories and equipment, and the durable goods industries—the backbone of U.S. exports—has shed 35 thousand jobs since last summer.

Now, disappointing holiday season sales indicate pessimism is spreading to consumers, and the economy could easily slip into recession this winter.

If Obama does not want his presidency punctuated by another economic crisis, he must finally do something radical about the overvalued dollar—especially against the yuan.

Donald Trump’s proposed 45 percent tariff on Chinese imports  is remarkably similar to a tax suggested by Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman and a logical step to stop Beijing from shifting its unemployment and financial woes onto the backs of hardworking Americans.

Peter Morici is an economist and business professor at the University of Maryland, and a national columnist. He tweets @pmorici1.

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Brzezinski Mocks DNC for Manipulating Debate Process for Hillary as Bernie Surges: ‘You Screwed Yourself’

by JEFF POOR20 Jan 201663

On Wednesday’s “Morning Joe” on MSNBC, co-host Mika Brzezinski mocked the Democratic National Committee led by chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) for how the organization has handled the debate process.

Some have suggested the debates have been scheduled to favor former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s campaign. However, her opponent Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has been on the rise in recent weeks, both nationally and in the early primary states.

Partial transcript as follows:

SCARBOROUGH: Bernie needs to drop out too.

BRZEZINSKI: Yeah, you know what? It’s good that everybody ignored him so much and thought that he was just this crazy socialist that would go away. You know, it was really smart of the Clinton campaign, actually, and –

SCARBOROUGH: All right. With less than two weeks remaining before –

BRZEZINSKI: — the DNC trying to control the election by making less debates? Good on you. You screwed yourself.

SCARBOROUGH: A new Monmouth University nationwide shows Bernie Sanders now trailing Hillary Clinton by 15 points. She led by 33 points a month ago. But that comes as a new WMUR/CNN poll out of New Hampshire shows Bernie Sanders opening up a shocking, commanding 27-point lead over Clinton. He led by 10 points in this poll back in December. Clinton led by eight points just in June.

BRZEZINSKI: Thank God you controlled that debate thing because that really helped out.

SCARBOROUGH: The Vermont senators viewed favorably by 91 percent of New Hampshire Democrat polled, while Clinton is viewed favorably by 65 percent. Let’s look at some more trends — since last year Senator Sanders net favorable rating in New Hampshire has steadily improved while Secretary Clinton’s has eroded over the same period of time.

BRZEZINSKI: It all comes as Senator Sanders continues to criticize Clinton’s record out on the trail.

Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor

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New York Times: Clinton Women Scandals ‘Threaten’ Hillary Campaign

Darren McCollester/Getty Images

by PATRICK HOWLEY20 Jan 201624

The New York Times admits that Bill Clinton’s sex scandals now “threaten” his wife Hillary Clinton’s Democratic campaign for the White House.

Times correspondent Amy Chozick, who covers Clinton, reports that entertainer and Clinton supporter Lena Dunham, who campaigns for Clinton, is privately “disturbed” by the scandals, and particularly by Clinton’s targeting of Bill’s female accusers:

But at an Upper East Side dinner party a few months back, Ms. Dunham expressed more conflicted feelings. She told the guests, at the Park Avenue apartment of Richard Plepler, the chief executive of HBO, that she was disturbed by how, in the 1990s, the Clintons and their allies discredited women who said they had had sexual encounters with or been sexually assaulted by former President Bill Clinton.

The conversation, relayed by several people with knowledge of the discussion who would speak about it only anonymously, captures the deeper debate unfolding among liberal-leaning women about how to reconcile Mrs. Clinton’s leadership on women’s issues with her past involvement in her husband’s efforts to fend off accusations of sexual misconduct.

Breitbart News has extensively reported on the Clintons’ problems with numerous women, including Bill Clinton rape accuser Juanita Broaddrick.

Clinton is also dealing with revelations about to be made in the new documentary “Weiner,” about the Anthony Weiner sexting scandal, which is opening Sunday at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah. As The Times reported:

“Weiner” has become a source of heightened anxiety for Ms. Abedin and the Clinton campaign. She and her husband have pleaded with filmmakers to see the movie but have not been allowed to do so, according to people with direct knowledge of the conversations who could discuss the subject only without attribution, as the project has been kept under tight control. A spokesman for the filmmakers denied this and said they would have shown the couple the film had they asked.

…

Mrs. Clinton is referred to in overt and subtle ways throughout “Weiner.” One sequence focuses on a claim in New York magazine that Ms. Abedin was being pressured to choose between remaining a Clinton insider and supporting her husband.

Ms. Abedin turns to Mrs. Clinton’s longtime spokesman, Philippe I. Reines, for guidance, preferring his counsel to Mr. Weiner’s terse advice toward the end of his campaign that she “act like a normal campaign candidate’s wife” and say, “I think Anthony is doing an amazing job.” Ms. Abedin is also shown heeding the suggestion of Mr. Reines to not appear in public with Mr. Weiner as he casts his ballot. Mr. Weiner finished with less than 5 percent of the vote.

CNN, which in 2013 abandoned a disputed documentary project about Mrs. Clinton’s career, placed an unsuccessful bid on the film.”

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Cruz and Beck Join Forces at Waterloo to Campaign

Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images

by BREITBART NEWS19 Jan 20164456

Glenn Beck lit into former Alaska governor Sarah Palin after her endorsement today of GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump. The radio host then announced that he would be joining Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)this weekend for a campaign rally in Waterloo, Iowa.

Beck, who had a falling out with Palin a number of years ago that only became public last fall when he referred to her as a “clown” on his radio show, posted the following to his Facebook page today:

Sarah Palin.

Small Government, lower taxes, fewer regulations and the constitution?

Not any more.

Big government, bailouts, executive orders, not just abortion but partial birth abortion, nationalizing of banks, stimulus, pathway to citizenship.

All of these views were held by Donald Trump during this administration. Pathway to citizenship in 2013. Some as recently as last year.

What was the massive pivot point to make him change so fundamentally?

When Sarah and the tea party won a hard fought election and were under attack in 2010, DJT was giving money to Pelosi, Reid and Rahm.

I couldn’t disagree with her more but she has played the game now for years. Perhaps she knows more than those of us still on the outside.

Maybe the press was right about her but for all of the wrong reasons.

Shortly after posting this, Beck announcedon Facebook that he and his wife Tania would be joining Ted Cruz for a rally in Waterloo, Iowa, this weekend.

“Hope to see you there as I lend my support to help defend the constitution, a small government crusader and an authentic conservative Christian candidate,” Beck wrote in reference to Cruz.

Beck and Cruz had previously worked together for a border relief effort in 2014 to bring soccer balls, teddy bears, and other humanitarian aid to illegal immigrant children.

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Bernie Sanders Leads Hillary by 27 Points in New Hampshire

The Associated Press

by PATRICK HOWLEY19 Jan 2016148

Insurgent Democratic candidateSen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has opened up a 27-point lead over Hillary Clinton in the state of New Hampshire, which will hold the nation’s first primary contest on February 9.

Sanders has a 60 percent to 33 percent lead over Clinton in the Granite State, according to a CNN/WMUR poll released late in the day Tuesday.

Only 13 percent of likely Democratic voters in the poll said that foreign policy and national security were atop their priorities, in terms of issues in the race.

The poll was conducted between January 13 and January 18 and has a margin of error of 4.8 percent, a much smaller margin than Sanders’ lead. Both Sanders and Donald Trump have shown a considerable advantage over Clinton when it comes to white voters, blue-collar and college-educated alike.

Sanders scored big in Sunday night’s Democratic debate against Clinton, mostly with his jabs at her Wall Street ties.

“I have doubts when people receive huge amounts of money from Wall Street,” Sanders said in the debate.

“The leader of Goldman Sachs is a billionaire,” who advocates that Congress cuts Social Security, Sanders said, adding, “Secretary Clinton…you’ve received over $600,000 in speaking fees from Goldman Sachs in one year,” even though the firm paid fines for illegal behavior.

“Not one of their executives is prosecuted, while kids who smoke marijuana get a jail sentence,” he said.

As Breitbart News has reported, Clinton’s son-in-law helped his buddy at Goldman Sachs get a favor-request sent to Clinton at the State Department on behalf of a Goldman client.

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