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President Obama’s Education Secretary Arne Duncan joined Michigan’s Republican Governor Rick Snyder on Monday to promote the attack on teachers and public education being carried out under the guise of school “reform.”

In appearances at public schools in Detroit and nearby Ypsilanti, Duncan praised Snyder—a former venture capitalist and multi-millionaire technology executive—for his innovative thinking and commitment “to invest not in the status quo but in the vision of reform.”

Rick Snyder and Arne Duncan

The decision of the White House to send Duncan on a photo-op tour with Snyder was aimed at demonstrating bipartisan unity when it comes to dismantling public education and funneling public assets to private corporations.

Israel’s bombing of Damascus International Airport Thursday night and Syrian army targets across Damascus yesterday morning are unprovoked and illegal acts of war, abetted by Washington and its European allies as part of their escalating campaign against Syria.

Russian media reported that 300 Syrian soldiers had been killed and hundreds more wounded in Sunday’s attacks alone.

Israeli forces effectively acted as air support for US-backed Islamist opposition militias around Damascus. The opposition Damascus Military Council issued a statement shortly after the bombings Sunday calling on its fighters to put aside their differences and mount focused attacks on Syrian troops.

The attacks come amid a debate in Washington over how the Obama administration should escalate its war in Syria, given the failure of its proxy forces to topple the Syrian regime. The New York Times on Sunday described this as “the most urgent foreign policy issue of [Obama’s] second term.”

The campaign to put D’Artagnan Collier on the Detroit mayoral ballot continued this weekend as campaigners in various locations in the city, including Eastern Market and downtown, collected more than the goal of 1,000 signatures. This is twice the required 500 signatures to be placed on the ballot.

Collier and the campaign teams stressed that Detroit was a model for attacks on the working class across the country and internationally. The appointment of Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr to run the city is part of moves by the ruling class to impose the dictates of the banks and giant corporations, resorting to increasingly antidemocratic methods.

Workers in Detroit and the surrounding areas expressed alarm at the takeover of the city. Many who lived outside the city noted that the same measures could be taken elsewhere.

US stock markets surged Friday to new record highs as Wall Street traders seized on a tepid jobs report to engage in a fresh orgy of speculation.

The official line promoted by the Obama administration is that the United States is in the midst of an accelerating economic recovery. For the corporate and financial elite that runs America, and the section of the upper-middle class that hangs on its coattails, a soaring stock market is indeed what defines economic health. For the vast majority of the population, however, life five years after the Wall Street crash of 2008 is dominated by the daily struggle to make ends meet.

Official statistics—of poverty, unemployment, indebtedness, declining wages—give a glimpse of this social reality, which the mass media does its best to obscure.

One sobering statistic that emerged on Thursday points to the social reality that underlies the euphoria on Wall Street. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the past decade has seen a sharp increase in the US suicide rate.