I Have Written Time and Again

a college degree is a piss-poor substitute for a union card. The vast majority of jobs don't require a degree but either some vocational training or prior experience in the field. Most jobs are low-paid, "entry-level" occupations.

The value of a college degree has always been overhyped, but things are beginning to change, and not for the better. The multinationals know this, and that's why there is such a push to deskill teaching, up the ante of "requirements" for students beginning in preschool so as to keep them away from higher education.

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Why in the Hell Should "Left" Bloggers

even be surprised over Obama's "betrayal" of liberal ideals? This guy never was a liberal or "progressive" in the first place. The proof was all there. There were articles out there by those who examined his background, there were people like Paul Street who warned everybody who bothered to listen Obama's real ties were basically to the same interests who catapulted GWB. Reagan, and all of the rest to ruin the country. The one thing notable about Obama is his actions are by and large proof the Democratic Party has been hijacked by the neoliberals.

Now we don't even have a "left" or even a liberal wing in American politics, or at least regard the two major parties. Now we have a fruitcake far right and a "moderate" right.

The bloggers made the big mistake of believing everything the media was selling on Obama without having to do the gruntwork of independent research. They so wanted to believe this guy was for real. I think their "outrage" over Obama is more a reflection on their character than his.

This Comment Following a Piece

about the recent suicide of a Los Angeles teacher really says it all about teaching and education, but don't expect the "reformers" to read it:

I recently retired after more than 3 decades as a public school teacher. I can tell you that teaching today is extremely stressful. Teachers have become the national scapegoat for anything with which Americans are disappointed. Other professionals are allowed to do their jobs as they have been trained, but teachers are instead micro-managed by politicians, school boards, the media, and parents. People with no expertise in education feel entitled to judge, bully, and disrespect them. Parents complain to teachers' superiors if their children have homework, yet expect teachers to magically produce high student achievement. Growing numbers of students come to school unprepared to learn, expecting you to provide them with school supplies, and daring you to teach them. Even more frustrating is seeing serious students' learning disrupted by those who don't care to be there.

Decades of this intense pressure can be especially oppressive to teachers, because it is more than a job for them. America's teachers can't clock in and out of the job, like many other employees, even during the summer. It's like being clergy; you are always "on." No matter what you do, you must constantly be aware of the community's expectations, perpetual oversight, and judgment. Teachers are often the victims of gossip, some of which has the potential to ruin their lives and careers. Politicians and the media constantly depict America's teachers as inept and uncaring, neither of which is true. Parents call their homes after hours, or corner them at the store, wanting information, help, advice, etc. Teachers appreciate the interest, but need to be allowed some time off- duty. Many teachers have experienced vandalism to their homes and vehicles, harassing phone calls, threats, and retaliation against family members. Many will be physically attacked at some point in their careers.

There is no escape from the role. Socially, it can be isolating because many people don't see you as an ordinary person; they see you only as "the teacher." Weekends, evenings, vacations, summers, etc. are spent on paper work, curriculum development, teaching summer school, continued schooling (required, at your expense), additional jobs (so you can pay the bills). Teaching becomes your life in a way that defines every aspect of it. During my career, I earned 4 college degrees, including two Masters degrees. I coached multiple sports and worked additional part-time jobs. At the end of my career, it was still necessary to work 2 additional part-time jobs, so I could pay off my loans.

Personally, I loved teaching and found it very rewarding. I earned several state and national teaching awards and successfully mentored many students and athletes. Fortunately, the district that employed me used an accurate and relevant teacher evaluation model and did not release that information to the public. Even with my high evaluation history, it would have increased the inescapable stress that permeates the teaching experience. When I retired, I was given a great send-off by my supervisors and colleagues, as well as my students. I appreciated it very much and knew that I would miss teaching, but I knew that the stress of being a teacher had finally worn me down too far to keep performing at my best.

The point of my post is not to express bitterness toward the profession, but to help non-teachers understand its inherent stresses. Most importantly, I hope it helps some people understand how a teacher could become so overwhelmed that suicide could occur.

link

The "Media Coverage" of Obama's Education Policies and Education "Reform"

is not strange at all; they are keys to the propaganda designed to undermine people's faith in their public institutions. It's the same shit as the GOP has done for decades; the only difference is "Democrats" are now complicit in the destruction of American democracy and its underpinnings.

Strauss:

On one episode, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg used the occasion to announce to the world that he was donating $100 million to the ailing Newark, N.J., public school system for Obama-style business-driven reforms.

The money comes with strings, the most important that he, a man with no background in education reform, gets to decide what schools are working, according to this story in New Jersey's Star-Ledger.

Billionaires picking out school districts they want to help: What a great way to fund public education.

It's called a hostile takeover. These assholes want to control public schools, thinking this is yet another cash cow to steal from the taxpayers.

Ed Schultz is Correct to Bash Christie,

but he needs to get a clue that Christie would not be trashing teachers, unions, and public education if it weren't for the fact Obama is egging this shit on:

News, Etc.

Good riddance to bad rubbish, and take your boss with you--please.
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Stick a fork in Meg Whitman--she's done.

I May Sit Out 2012

unless somebody runs against this president in the primaries who is actually a Democrat.  I am SO sick and tired of the public school trashing by an alleged Democrat who hasn't a clue about public education but is simply repeating talking points promoted by the likes of Bill Gates and "Democrats" for Education Reform.

Note the comment at the beginning of the link.  Instead of feeling shame over their likely driving a beloved teacher to suicide, the L.A. Times encourages parents to find out what an individual teacher's ratings are by doing a database search.  

Only an idiot without any experience teaching children would call for a longer school day or year.  Kids are wiped out by 2:30 or 3:00 in the afternoon.  This talk is nothing but blather by a business community who believes schools should operate like businesses and believes teachers don't do anything without any idea of how exhausting and labor intensive teaching really is.   

Obituaries

Actor Tony Curtis, 85, has died at his Henderson, Nevada, home. The cause of death was cardiac arrest


He appeared in many movies over the decades, with his being most popular in the 1950s. He was also part of a supercouple when he was married to the late Janet Leigh until they divorced. They had two children including actress Jamie Lee Curtis. He had five other children.

Some of Curtis' best-known films include Some Like It Hot and The Defiant Ones.

He was even "nominated" for a Golden Turkey Award as the worst actor of all time by the Medved brothers in their book The Golden Turkey Awards, but Curtis lost out to Richard Burton.

Here is a quote from the obituary:

After his star faded in the late 1960s, Curtis shifted to lesser roles. With jobs harder to find, he fell into drug and alcohol addiction.

"From 22 to about 37, I was lucky," Curtis told Interview magazine in the 1980s, "but by the middle '60s, I wasn't getting the kind of parts I wanted, and it kind of soured me. ... But I had to go through the drug inundation before I was able to come to grips with it and realize that it had nothing to do with me, that people weren't picking on me."

The Minute Bill Gates Gives Away His Vast Fortune

is the day I will take seriously his suggestion retired teachers should have their pensions cut.

This guy really is completely out of his depth in an area not in his area of knowledge (technology).

More Bullshit from the United States Senate

as Republicans "blocked" an attempt to help the 99ers on extended unemployment benefits.

Nothing will ever be done because this is the way these fuckers in Congress want it.

Imagine If You Will

a barely literate Ivy League school graduate having an "institute" named for him. Imagine this institute trying to improve the "quality" of public school principals, most of whom are unqualified to run hot dog stands, let alone schools. Imagine the results of such "training." Instead of having incompetent, vindictive, or clueless principals, they will be even worse.

Arne Suffers a Defeat, at Least for Now

as a panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has determined interns are not considered "highly qualified," as defined by No Child Left Behind.

I suppose the feds will appeal this.

Why I Am I Not Surprised

the "Democrats" failed to pass legislation that would put a brake on outsourcing of jobs by forcing companies to pay penalties? It's because they are as bought and paid for by the same corporate interests as the Republicans.

Our "elected" officials in Washington really are the enemies of the American people. Because of idiotic ideology, they have gotten us into this mess, and they refuse to see the error of their disastrous ways.

There is going to be hell to pay down the road, I'm afraid.

News, Etc.

A day after a workout at Saratoga, Rachel Alexandra's handlers decided that since she wasn't up to her 2009 form, she would be retired from racing.
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I am surprised 26 people have won the Oregon "Win for Life" lottery. A Medford couple became the first in the area to win the top prize.

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As we know, the U.S. income gap is the widest it has been in history--and as a matter of policy. The WSWS takes a look at the grim statistics.
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Underreported rather than "censored" describes this list. There are few surprises.

And which story made the top of the list? You guess it: Our Congress is bought and paid for by Wall Street. The most disturbing is the fact Democrats decided to ditch its old constituencies in order to get bribery money from Wall Street and big business:

Author Matt Taibbi writes that some of the most egregious selling of the US government to Wall Street happened in the late nineties, when “Democrats, tired of getting slaughtered in the fundraising arena by Republicans, decided to throw off their old reliance on unions and interest groups and become more ‘business-friendly.’ Wall Street responded by flooding Washington with money, buying allies in both parties.” In the ten-year period beginning in 1998, financial companies spent $1.7 billion on federal campaign contributions and another $3.4 billion on lobbyists. Wise political investments enabled the nation’s top bankers to effectively scrap any meaningful oversight of the financial industry.

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I can't believe the principal wasn't fired for this. What in the hell was he thinking?

Instead, this idiot got promoted to superintendent. It figures.

When the Big Problem in Public Schools is With Principals,

it's no surprise that a key solution to the problem is for teachers--not parents, and certainly NOT cronies in the front office--to pick the principal.  I believe Norway does this as well.

Having teachers pick the principals at each school, with the ability to vote to renew their appointment from year to year, and taking union contracts and administrative law seriously, are the keys to education reform.

The privatizers don't know or care because the continued existence of public education is not on their agenda.

Obituaries--Real Quiet

1998 Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner Real Quiet, 15, died September 27 following a particularly horrible paddock accident:

“He broke five cervical vertebrae from C-5 through C-9, which is basically from his withers to his head,” said Jester, who served as stallion manager.

"I asked our stallion manager Chuck (King) what happened when he took Real Quiet to the paddock, and he said the horse walked toward his water, stood out in the middle of the paddock, and looked across the field to some mares on the hill like he always does. He wasn’t out there five minutes when it happened. He had to have reared up, slid, and fell on his left shoulder, and his left shoulder blade drove into his cervical spine area and fractured the vertebrae, which is how New Bolton described it.

“We walked around in the paddock after it happened, and there’s not a skid mark or anything like that. He wasn’t close to the fence. He was right in the middle. He was a smart horse, in great shape, and never did anything stupid.

“Either on the racetrack or as a stallion, Real Quiet always performed at the highest level. He will be greatly missed."

The 1998 Belmont Stakes, where he lost by a bob of the head to winner Victory Gallop, was one of the great heartbreakers in racing history:

 

Detroit Teachers Heard from Diane Ravitch,

who has been increasingly critical of school "reform" proposals which in the end seek to destroy public education and thus a critical underpinning of democracy, but the WSWS doesn't feel she goes far  enough in her criticism.

Following Ravitch’s lecture a number of teachers came up to express their agreement with the remarks of the WSWS supporters. One Detroit teacher told the WSWS, “Thank you; you called out Robert Bobb. They’re attacking public education. It’s the business model. It’s dollars and cents. We are not dollars and cents. The business model didn’t even work for business. Look at businesses now.”

A retired Detroit teacher added, “They manipulate us like numbers. It is Obama doing it. Bush would have had a much rougher road. He is killing us.”

Greg, a teacher at Cody High School in Detroit said, “Something like four new teachers out of college have been hired in the whole state of Michigan, and you had all these teachers retire. Everyone thought it was so good we elected the first black president. I don’t think we even have a union anymore.”

A So-Called "Democratic" President

despises public schools, although it was very obvious when he first ran for the job he vilified public schools and teachers despite some flowery rhetoric noted here.  That was one of the major reasons I was opposed to his running for president in the first place; he was a closet Republican, a ringer, and I had to muster all the strength I had to bother to vote for him.  I almost didn't vote for anybody that year.

Obama will NOT get my vote at all in 2012.  He would have to completely reverse course, but he is not going to do this, especially when it comes to education.

Obama CANNOT be our nominee in 2012.  He is a freaking disaster.

The Christian Science Monitor article quoted by the above-linked blogger is here.  Why would a president go out of his way to alienate a traditional Democratic constituency? 

We Know "Merit Pay" in Public Schools

is a big farce, if for no other reason that education isn't a business, and teachers must work in collaboration with each other in order to achieve similar goals.  As a teacher, you work with colleagues at the same grade level or subject area to make sure the state and district standards are adhered to; you don't do whatever the hell you want as a teacher.  You also work with professional and classified support staff in order for your students to reach their potential.  And given the highly political atmosphere in public schools, and the fact principals are in this day and age largely unqualified to run a hot dog stand, let alone a school, principals cannot be trusted to behave fairly towards teachers and pay them accordingly.

It's really a no-brainer, but try and tell know-nothing neoliberals like Obama that.

News, Etc.

At least one public school system has the sense to reject charters.
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Because of Lamebrained "Anti-Government" Ideology,

we have structural unemployment, and because of this idiotic ideology, nobody wants to do anything about it.

The entire reason we are in this mess is because of this ideology. It needs to be thrown into the trash bin of history.

It's an excuse to do nothing, and it is completely unacceptable.

More About the Ruelas Suicide

 Now either Ruelas was a damned good teacher and administration knew that,  or else he was a damned good teacher and administration wanted to give him the boot.  It's one or the other, for he wouldn't have been saddled with the tough students in the first place.


Talk about a lameassed excuse from the Los Angeles Times.

News, Etc.

Unemployment could be as high as 10.1 percent next year, not that our elected officials care.
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One for the Darwin Awards, and certainly ironical.
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Why is this even debatable?  If you have ever been a prostitute or anything remotely like it, you are unfit to work as a teacher.  Period.  End of argument.  Teachers like yours truly have been fired over what amounts to nothing, while many teachers have had their licenses revoked for far less than this person.

Prostitution is a crime almost everywhere in the United States.  I can't believe this blogger thinks this is somehow equivalent to being gay.  It isn't.  Prostitution is a crime, just as drug abuse is a criminal act.  Teachers who are or have engaged in these acts are not "fit for duty."  This teacher's license should be revoked.
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Crazier Than a Shithouse Rat

Of course I am referring to Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle, who apparently isn't happy she is five points behind incumbent senator Harry Reid; she now wants to lose in a landslide after she has insulted families with autistic children.

No, autism is not a hoax.  Angle supposedly worked in schools and should know better, but that would be giving her way too much credit.

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was in  Reno taking issue with Angle's idiotic remarks.

There's more.

Angle's priceless idiocy was captured on YouTube, posted by the Nevada Democratic Party:

Obituaries

Hollywood golden age actress Gloria Stuart, 100, has died.  She retired from acting in the late 1930s, only to find  a career resurgence when she appeared in the 1987 film Titanic and became the oldest actress ever nominated for an Academy Award.  Stuart was diagnosed with lung cancer five years ago, when she was only 95.

She was also one of the founders of the Screen Actors Guild
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Professional football player George Blanda, 83, following a brief illness.

By the Way, the LAUSD "Union"

has demanded the Los Angeles Times take down its teacher "ranking" list, which is meaningless as it is libelous.

A "Democratic" Administration

is the biggest enemy of public education; Republicans would NEVER get away with what Obama and Duncan are pulling.

Of course Obama and his administration are taking their cue from the Billionaire Boys and "Democrats" for Education Reform.  None of these have any  clue what the REAL problems are in public education.

What about bad principals, Mister President?  What about them?  Right now it is virtually impossible to fire them unless they are caught committing criminal acts.  Administrative law is a joke in public schools; school district administrators get away with murder.

By the way, here is the Politico link with Obama's ignorant remarks.   What else do you expect from somebody who has never had any experience with public education in his life, let alone know anything about how it operates to help those at the top of the chain at the expense of those at the bottom.

This blogger doesn't mince words about Obama's not mincing words, either. 

An Autopsy Will Be Performed

on the Los Angeles teacher who apparently committed suicide last week and was found yesterday by search and rescue.

The teacher, Rigoberto Ruelas, 39,  had worked for the district for 14 years and was highly regarded by those who knew him, but the teacher-hating Los Angeles Times thought he was a shitty teacher based on standardized test scores, scores which mean absolutely nothing and don't measure anything.

Here is his score "proving" he was such a shitty teacher.  Those close to him believe this public shaming helped lead him to kill himself.

As I wrote yesterday, there needs to be a major libel suit filed against the paper. 

A Teacher Publicly Trashed by the Los Angeles Times

has committed suicide.

 Family members told a TV station that he scored low on a teacher rating report recently published by the Los Angeles Times, and that may have caused Ruelas to go missing.

The newspaper's database lists Ruelas as being "less effective than average overall," "Less effective than average in math," and "average in English."

I hope there are lawsuits galore against the paper over this libelous garbage.

Mid-Term Musings

A bad penny always returns, even if the GOP is already bad to the core.
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I don't think voters care one iota whether or not Obama has "empathy"; it is the fact he is doing little or nothing about jobs and the economy that is the problem.

Voters will be dumb enough to put the GOP in the congressional majority, thus guaranteeing nothing gets done, or things are even worse.
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Diane Ravitch

doesn't think much of the L.A. Times shit of "value-added" teacher "evaluations," which ignore the obvious power imbalance between teachers and principals:

Since Charter Schools and Other "Reforms"

peddled by the media and the so-called "Billionaires Club" are a bunch of crap, I plan to miss that hyped "documentary."

Besides, there is plenty of evidence these reforms aren't what they pretend to be.

News, Etc.

It looks like the filthy rich are spared from paying their fair share in taxes for the moment.
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The Right is Always Offensive,

regardless of whether it is on the defense or the offense, but in case why is a movement which belongs on the very fringes of humanity--or on another planet--seemingly getting a foothold though most voters seem more sympathetic with traditional liberal or "left" issues?

The answer is obvious:  It is because the Democratic Party in particular is too much concerned about making nice with an opposition which has no intention of making nice and is also too concerned about currying favor with the financial elite.  There is this gaping hole called the economy and unemployment, and the Democrats don't appear to want to do one damned thing about it, including and especially Obama.

Hence the far right, especially those backed by the likes of the Koch brothers, is exploiting the outrage over the economy.

News, Etc.

John Boehner aspires to be the next Newt Gingrich, but it is possible he is emulating the former House speaker in other ways.
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The Reid/Angle race shouldn't even be close, but Nevadans have voted stupid politicians in before.
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Blame Congress and Both Political Parties,

as they are bought and paid for by the financial elites, for the decline and fall of the middle class.  And they have absolutely no intention of reversing course.

Our country is just about gone because of the corruption of both political parties by the same elites.

Anything from the University of Chicago,

whether it is politicians, economists, or textbook authors, should be automatically suspect.  Textbook authors from defunct programs, as the University of Chicago ditched its education program almost a decade ago, should be most suspect of all.

But no.  The most notable atrocity stemming from the defunct education department, Everyday Math, is still used in school districts all over the United States, including my old district.  Instead of teachers swearing by the program, they swear at it, cursing the idiotic "spiral" technique also employed by Saxon Math and baffled by the bizarre algorithms used in this program.  Case in point is the ancient and archaic "lattice method" for teaching multiplication.  There is a reason why this algorithm was dumped in favor of the more familiar method of cross-multiplying and adding up the columns, and that has to do with sheer confusion of the method.  The "partial products" method is almost as bad as the lattice method.

No wonder so many students ended up in special ed because of a "math disability."

I totally despised these algorithms, and I refused to teach them to kids.

Obituaries--Eddie Fisher

Singer Eddie Fisher, best remembered as being a close friend of Elizabeth Taylor following the death of her husband, Mike Todd, and got so close to her both were burned in one of the most notorious scandals of the 1950s, died on September 22 following complications from hip surgery.

Fisher, 82, had been married to popular entertainer Debbie Reynolds, but he had ditched her for Taylor.  There was much public outcry over this, as Fisher and Reynolds were seen as what would be later called a "supercouple."  Reynolds received much sympathy as being the "wronged" wife, while Fisher and Taylor, who later married, were vilified.

But, as that awful cliche goes, what goes around comes around.  Taylor later ditched Fisher when she embarked on a torrid affair with her Cleopatra co-star Richard Burton.  After the divorce from Taylor, Fisher went on to marry singer/actress Connie Fisher, divorced her, married two more times, and was widowed from his last wife in 2001, according to IMDB.  Fisher also battled drug addiction.

Meanwhile, Reynolds and Taylor buried the hatchet and are now on good terms with each other.

This May Be a Cartoon,

but the message sure as hell isn't funny:

News, Etc.

Aren't you happy the Forbes 400 got richer so you can have even less?

And people like the Kochs aren't even happy with a mere $21.5 billion apiece; they want to buy political opinion so they will have even more.
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Thanks to the USSC, a West Virginia woman will receive the death penalty while the men who actually did the killings merely get life sentences.
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The UN had a "poverty summit," but the real poverty is the poverty of ideas of what to do about it. The United States, for example, wants to continue the same failed neoliberal garbage which does nothing to help people.

Naturally Anything Glorifying Privatizers

hellbent on destroying public institutions and ignoring those who actually know what they are talking about isn't worth watching. Of course, I am referring to the "documentary" Waiting for Superman, which is nothing more than privatization propaganda.

All of the usual suspects are involved, including the Business Roundtable. Remember, these "reformers" are not in it for the kids or to create an informed citizenry; they see public education as a bottomless slush fund for themselves (like current school administrators) while promoting their goal in denying higher education to the vast majority of students.

The Whole Point of Teaching Inappropriate Math Concepts

to younger and younger children is to weed these kids out as early as possible, and to track them out of higher education, including and even high school.

Kids who can't master abstract concepts would be labeled "special ed" and warehoused through the system until they are pushed out or drop out of school.

Remember, the neoliberal "reformers" aren't interested in creating an educated citizenry or providing a means for upward mobility; instead, our kids must compete with the Chinese.

Case in point of inappropriate curriculum: Geometry is being shoved down the throats of kindergartners.

Obituaries

Well-known feminist and writer Jill Johnston, 81, has died.  The cause of death was a stroke.

Her best known work was Lesbian Nation.

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Screenwriter Irving Ravetch, 89.

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Celebrity journalist James Bacon, only 96.

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Pro football player Kenny McKinley, a suicide.  He played for the Denver Broncos,  a team that has suffered from a number of tragic deaths in recent years.

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With More and More People Falling Through the Cracks

and ending up jobless with absolutely no income, a few of them are trying to organize and make their views known to the morons in Washington.

There is supposed to be a major rally on October 2, but of course the vast majority of us don't live within 12 hours of D.C., so we are shit out of luck if we have no way of getting there.

Mathewson is part of a growing army of so-called 99ers, the estimated 3.5 million unemployed workers who will have fallen off the jobless benefit rolls by the end of the year. Their prospects for finding new work are dim. The U.S. economy continues to shed jobs and the national unemployment rate is 9.6%; the August jobless rate in California was 12.4%.

Actually, there are a lot  more than 3.3 million unemployed who have exhausted all benefits right now.  But since both political parties are bought off by the financial elite, don't expect any help to ever happen.

I exhausted all unemployment benefits in July.  I don't have any illusions I will ever see a dime more.

What these activists have to realize is this jobless crisis is deliberate because the neoliberals in both political parties want it this way.   They want to reduce wages to Chinese levels, and one way to do this is to create a demand for the few jobs out there.  Never mind these morons don't understand there are far more of us than there are of them, and social unrest is inevitable.

It's bound to get worse if the GOP controls one or both houses of Congress after November.

News, Etc.

Nevada's governor Gibbons landed himself in a hospital after a horse decided to land him.

The accident happened at Pyramid Lake.

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For-profit elementary and secondary schools are just as big a scams as those for-profit "colleges" and "universities."  I guess the only reason anybody should even care about them is the fact they exist at all.  As one commenter notes private schools wouldn't exist if we had a real democracy in this country, but of course people who promote them and trash public education don't believe in it.

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Any Educator Will Tell You

"merit pay" is a bunch of shit, especially considering how absolutely toxic the public school workplace can be. When teachers' livelihoods depend on one individual--a principal--who typically doesn't know his or her ass from a hole in the ground, how in the world could a "merit pay" system possibly be fair?

More evidence running schools on business models is a recipe for disaster.

D.C.'s Superwoman of the Public Schools

crashed and burned along with the mayor there. It appears voters had enough of the shit that went on.

Naturally the media blamed those nasty "unions," but it appears many voters were upset with mayoral control of the schools instead of having the traditional school boards.

Who in the hell came up with mayoral control anyway? Diane Ravitch nails what the problem is in this "reform":

Mayoral control of schools short-circuits democratic processes by concentrating all decision-making in the hands of one elected official, who need not consult with anyone else. If D.C. had had an independent school board, Rhee would have had to explain her ideas, defend them, and practice the democratic arts of persuasion, conciliation, and consensus-building. We now have an "education reform" movement which believes that democracy is too slow and too often wrong, and their reforms are so important, so self-evident that they cannot be delayed by discussion and debate. So self-assured are the so-called reformers that they can't be bothered to review the research and evidence on merit pay or evaluating teachers by test scores or the effects of high-stakes testing. If they can find one study or even a report by a friendly think tank, that's evidence enough for them. Mayoral control gives them the mechanism they need to push ahead, without regard to other views or collateral damage.

It makes school districts even more political than they already are.

Obama Knows Which Side His Bread is Buttered On

when he tries to bend over backwards for Wall Street while this country continues to suffer from high unemployment.

It doesn't help that during his town-hall event yesterday he had people who were higher income ask questions rather than those who are most severely affected by the downturn.

News, Etc.

Read between the lines of this article, and it sounds like bad news for Harry & David, especially when most of the execs don't even live in the Rogue Valley.

Employees sing a different tune than the absentee execs who probably can't find Medford, Oregon, on a map.

What a pair of winners:

The new CEO, Steve Heyer, lost his most recent high-profile job as chief executive at Starwood Hotels after facing allegations that he had sent inappropriate sexual e-mails to underlings.

Ross Klein, whom Heyer brought in to run Harry & David's new branding effort, left a job at Hilton Hotels in 2008 after he was accused of corporate espionage, an allegation that is a subject of a federal criminal investigation. Klein is working out of an office near his home in Beverly Hills.

Heyer and Klein have denied any wrongdoing.

Jones of Wasserstein praised both men.

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Doug and Cindy Hampton may lose their home, but I seriously doubt they will be homeless.
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Good riddance to this piece of rubbish.
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Speaking of rubbish, I am glad I didn't bother to look at Oprah Winfrey's trashing of public school teachers. As the writer of the linked post notes, Oprah is hardly in the position to cast stones at American public schools.

As Long as Robert Rubin and His Ilk Call the Shots,

nothing is going to come from Congress or the White House to help fix this economy, no matter how many economists warn Obama about the dangers of doing nothing or doing the right thing.

The problem is bribery of our elected officials in both political parties.

Secretariat Movie

I know as well as anybody the new film about Big Red, despite Penny Chenery's involvement, isn't going to stick to the facts in order to entertain its audience. It has nothing to do with it being from Disney; any other filmmaker would have juiced up the film with foul language, bedroom scenes, or whatever they think would sell tickets.

Secretariat's life story is mostly unfilmable outside of a documentary format because his feats on the track, especially his Triple Crown feats, were so extraordinary. I would have preferred real Secretariat racing footage from CBS interwoven into the film.

I will still see it, despite its taking liberties with the facts.

Steve Haskin writes about the real Secretariat here and here.

News, Etc.

West Virginia's unemployment situation is just one example of what a mess our economy is in this country. This state's unemployment fund is just about broke.
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This is one itty-bitty victory for victims of the sleazy Righthaven outfit.

I can't imagine the law firm's nuisance suits to hold up in court.

Since Congress is So Totally Bought Off

by the elite financial interests who want to destroy this country and third worldize it, they are completely oblivious to the fact their policies have created more job loss and immediate and massive poverty.  Congress has no intention of doing one thing about it.

From the article:

Today's poverty is the accumulated toll of two forces that have advanced in tandem for decades: The corporate fleecing of family wealth and the bipartisan destruction of a refuge to which those shorn families can turn. We fought a long, hard war on poverty to avoid landing in precisely this place. But the Reagan revolution ushered in a long hard war on government to undue that progress. Bill Clinton's protestations notwithstanding, so-called moderate Democrats long ago conceded defeat in Reagan's war. And as a consequence, government is crippled at a time when we need it most. The simple fact remains that unless someone in Washington is willing and able to gather the strength to rebuild government and ensure there's a floor through which we will not let people fall, America will continue its downward spiral.

Democrats Promise to Eff It Up Again

thanks to some "concern" by some "Democrats" fearful of alienating these cretins in the Republican Party, who should be tarred and feathered over what they are doing to the country.  The Tea Party bunch like Angle and O'Donnell deserve every bit of ridicule and more.

But no, we have people advising the president the Democrats shouldn't hurt Republicans' feelings.

And guess what?  These jerks are going to get back in there and the situation will be worse.

For the Rest of Us Peons,

those of us who are over 50 risk complete destitution if we become unemployed, for now we are considered by more and more employers as "unemployable."

Discrimination and increased health care premiums have a lot to do with it.

At least Ms. Reid has a house and a spouse.  A LOT of us out here have neither, and we are too young to collect Social Security.

After all, the Catfood Commission wants to raise the retirement age in order to kill us off.

There is a Saying Somebody Had as a Signature Line

on a discussion board and it went something like this:

Republicans whine and Republicans bitch
Our rich are too poor, and our poor are too rich

This explains the attitude of the rich since the election of Barack Obama, despite the fact Obama has bent over backwards catering to this leech class at the expense of everybody else.

They think they are better than we are, and to assure they are better as they know they are vastly outnumbered by the rest of us, they have bribed politicians in both political parties, not knowing or caring that too much concentration of wealth in the hands of a few creates social unrest.

FDR knew this, but these morons haven't figured it out.

News, Etc.

One of the stories of the week concerned an outraged parent who confronted his child's bullies on a school bus and found himself in legal hot water.

Not that one can blame him much, but this is definitely a problem parents and schools need to deal with.

I do have to say, however, the expert is correct that kids who are bullied, assuming they don't have serious intellectual or physical disabilities, really need to learn how to handle this on their own. Parents and school officials aren't going to be around forever jumping in and helping their kids out.

Not to mention bullying happens in the workplace--especially schools.

Another report:

Obituaries--End of an Era

The final scene of the final broadcast of As the World Turns,  54 years old:



Don Hastings ("Bob Hughes") holds the record as the longest continuous actor in the history of soap operas.  He began his role in 1960 and never took a break from the series.  Eileen Fulton ("Lisa") had started earlier, but she left the show on three different occasions.

Helen Wagner ("Nancy Hughes"), who was there at the beginning clear back in 1956,  almost made it to the end of the series.  She died on May 1, age 91.  

I watched the soap off and on for 35 years.  The best thing about it was the number of actors who had stayed on the show for decades, even if they were not on contract.

Interesting to note that with the death of Helen Wagner, Kathryn Hays ("Kim Hughes," appearing with Hastings in the above clip) was the oldest cast member.  The four most senior cast members in age, Hays, Hastings, Fulton, and Elizabeth Hubbard ("Lucinda Walsh"), were born in 1933-34 over a period of less than nine months.  Hastings is the youngest of the four. 

It's been mentioned elsewhere the very first words spoken on the serial were "Good morning," by Helen Wagner.  It is appropriate the very last word spoken would be "goodnight."

Some scenes that didn't make the final broadcast are here.

Here is an episode from 50 years ago (there are many, many clips and old shows up on YouTube).  I'll just post the first part, which features original cast member Don McLaughlin (Chris Hughes):

D.C. Voters Sent a Message

earlier this week by ousting Mayor Fenty, and it is to be hoped D.C. schools tyrant Michelle Rhee follows him out the door.

But if Rhee leaves, will any successor be worse?  If it is a Broadie, you can bet your ass the person will be worse.

With regard to Rhee, Sacramento's loss is D.C.'s gain.

It's Time to Tell It Like It Is

and show the GOP senators for what they are,  and that they do the dirty work for the megarich"

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

If these "Tea Party" whackjobs like McDonnell, Paul, and Angle get in there, people will really be screwed.

Unfortunately, many of the public still believes in the propaganda pushed by the GOP, when this party is out to steal what little they have left.

However,  I don't have much hope in Obama; he's more in bed with the other side than he is with traditional Democrats.

Meanwhile, unemployment insurance has kept 3.3 million people out of poverty last year, yours truly included.  Of course now I have plunged into wholesale poverty; missing interviews hasn't helped matters.

I stay close to "home," and nobody calls; when I am not around, I get calls, and these calls are the type that if I am not there to answer it right away, it's over.

News, Etc.

The Clark County School District is about to pick another "winner" to replace retiring superintendent Walt Rulffes.

At the school board meeting where the three finalists were announced, one parent activist got arrested for protesting the choices. Since the source is from a paper I no longer will link to, readers will just have to find the article on their own.
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I don't think I linked this article from a couple of months ago explaining in very clear English what public school "tenure" is, which is only the dubious right of "due process" for teachers and is more often than not a big, rigged affair in favor of school districts. The vast majority of "undesirable" teachers don't even go through these rigged hearings; instead, they take settlements in lieu of terminations or "dismissals" believing somehow this will help them in getting future jobs when in fact the ONLY reason districts settle is to save on legal costs and unemployment insurance. Many other targeted teachers quit or take early retirement in order to get away from an abusive situation with a principal. Principals, on the other hand, are virtually impossible to fire.

Note the statistics of a 3-to-1 or 75 percent of "decisions" favoring the school districts. Given how flagrantly school districts can fuck up administrative law with the knowledge few teachers can appeal the rigged affairs because of the extreme expense of hiring and paying for an attorney up front to appeal through the various courts of appeals, it's a wonder the stats aren't 99-1 in favor of the districts.

What is really needed is administrative law that actually sticks, with district administrators being held legally and criminally libel if they commit perjury, bribe or tamper with witnesses, etc.

It is Certainly a Crisis of the Economic Order

when so many people are now in poverty. In the United States it is now one in seven, and I am sure it is a gross understatement.

Just don't expect our politicians to do one thing about it.

Who Needs Republicans

when you have a dumbassed "Democrat" like Gerry Connolly trying to make excuses for the rich while slamming the unemployed?

We know which side this jerk's bread is buttered on. Why not admit you're on the take, Gerry?

This is a Good Overview

of what the "Tea Party" is really all about, and it's too bad the followers don't realize they are being manipulated by the cynics who want to dismantle the entire country and turn it into a third world paradise.

Any "Documentary" Which Trashes Teachers

and ignores the real problem in public education, and definitely WON'T be solved through charter schools and actually make it worse, isn't worth crossing the street to see.

If Because of the Defeat of D.C. Mayor Fenty

on Tuesday means Michelle Rhee may be shown the door, that is great news for teachers not only for the nation's capital, but for teachers all over the country, with the possible exception of the Sacramento area.

News, Etc.

Thanks to an open sunroof, the dog who survived the car rollover into Crater Lake was able to scramble up the caldera to its owners with only minor injuries.

The car was completely destroyed in the mishap.
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It figures a highly touted education "summit" wouldn't have any input or speakers who know what the hell they are talking about, i.e., teachers.
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All politicians are dirty, but some are more dirty than others.
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Pornography has evolved a long way since the days of Playboy and Penthouse, and it is not in a good way. It is so filthy, so violent, so degrading to women, more and more men are having distorted attitudes about sex and women and want to act out the violent imagery they see.

Not to mention the sheer awfulness for those people who "work" in this debasing industry. I won't go anywhere near porn sites or any of that shit.

There is no point trying to sugarcoat it and call people who criticize it "prudes." It is an absolutely disgusting enterprise, most especially for the people who try to make a living at it and for those poor women who date guys whose minds are completely warped by this garbage peddled by the porn industry.

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We Will See How Long Elizabeth Warren Lasts

She has been picked to set up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, certainly a step in the right direction. Warren knows more than just about anybody else the causes of the economic mess we are in.

She talks about her own background here, but the last sentence in the first paragraph crystallizes the warped attitude of the financial elites and the GOP:

I guess it is a fundamental belief that people are doing the best they can. It is easy when you are successful to think that you did it all by yourself and to forget that you didn’t. You got here because a lot of things broke your way. You were lucky enough to be born into a family that could afford to take care of you well. You were lucky enough to be able to have a family that could pay for you to go to school or buy your way out of scrapes. And to people who have had a lot of luck and don’t acknowledge that -- the world looks like a total meritocracy, right? I’m on top because I really won, because I am better than everyone else.

I think I grew up with a profound sense of watching people who were good people, who were smart people, who were hardworking people -- God, nobody on this Earth worked harder than my mom and dad -- and they had very little. But they made do with what they had. They had their family, they raised four kids who loved them and four kids who all had our own families that we loved. And so, I guess the only way I can say it is that the value is in knowing that the game doesn't always come out fairly. There is a lot more going on. The material success at the end of the day is only a small part of it. Truly successful lives are about family.

Is It Any Wonder

why I can't stand the United States Senate? Stabenow threw a bone for the EUI exhaustees, but of course Congress has absolutely no intention of doing one thing about it.

Hell, the IMF is worried about uprisings around the world, but Congress sure as hell isn't worried.

link

While Republicans and Neoliberal Assholes

try to con the average person into believing public employees are just a bunch of lazy shits with "generous" pensions, people should understand the real problem is workers in the private sector were robbed of their pensions when companies ditched them in favor of those cheap, worthless 401(k) programs and peddled them as "retirement" plans rather than as savings plans.

Meanwhile, the crooks who created the economic mess get away with it.

L.A. Unified Teachers Need to File a Class-Action Libel Suit

against the Los Angeles Times which, even in this report, insinuates it is those crappy unions which are in the way of "real reform," when in fact standardized tests don't measure anything at all and are easy to game.

The students don't take the tests seriously, and administrators are tempted to cheat or pressure teachers to cheat in order for the test scores to look good. It'll get worse as their jobs will depend on nice little test scores going up.

The whole idea of "reform" is to destroy public education and limit higher education to a very few. The rest will drop out and work in jobs paying Chinese or Vietnam wages. Teachers will be deskilled to the point any idiot on the street will be able to "teach" and make little more than minimum wage doing it.

Here is the link to this vile newspaper:

link

"Reform" does nothing to deal with the real problem in education, and that's with administrators.

New DP Logo

There is absolutely nothing attractive about this logo; I liked the old one of the donkey kicking up in the air. This one looks like a bullseye target, one for the GOP to blow up and use while playing darts.

This new logo was unveiled by DNC bigwig Tim Kaine, once again proving he is not a good figurehead for the Democratic Party.

link

I have to admit, however, the logo is a tiny bit apt. The real Democrats, represented in dark blue, are on the outside, just as they are on the outside in real life, while the light blue, the fake Democrats like Obama, are on the inside, just as they are on the inside of the party in real life.

News, Etc.

It's an anniversary to remember, no matter how hard one would like to forget: It is the two-year anniversary of the fall of Lehman Brothers, precipitating the current economic mess.
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Delaware Republicans seem hellbent on throwing away a Senate seat after all.

Another whackjob like Nevada's Sharron Angle is running for the Senate there.
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The IMF is "concerned" and "fearful" of social unrest because of the worldwide jobs crisis, a crisis it helped to create.
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In what is likely a first, and hopefully the last, a parked car at Crater Lake National Park plunged 1,000 feet into the caldera with the family dog inside.

The dog miraculously survived, but the car did not. Apparently the car's owners failed to use the parking brake.
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It's time to take a look at the Chinese education system. It is much different than ours, but if the neoliberals have their way, millions of students will be pushed out of education at the end of elementary or middle school.
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Obituaries

Broadcast journalist Edwin Newman, 91, no cause of death given.

Newman worked for NBC from 1952 until his retirement in 1984. Like the late James J. Kilpatrick and William Safire, he enjoyed writing about language usage, writing books about the topic.
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If Democrats Would Stand for Something

instead of mouthing neoliberal horseshit in order to keep getting those corrupt donations by corrupt corporations and the corrupt financial elite, they might have a chance in hell of retaining Congress. Given how absolutely bereft the GOP is of ideas other than continuing the class war against everybody for the benefit of the few and how much the Tea Party batshit brigade has hijacked the Republican Party, it should be a cakewalk for Democrats.

Unfortunately, it isn't. I don't even want to watch the November returns.

We are so screwed as a country.

Thanks to the Insanity

spewed by the likes of crackpot "economist" Milton Friedman and politicians of his stripe, the United States of America, including the middle class, is on its knees and headed for almost certain disaster.

It's because too few people have too much money and manufacturing, absolutely essential for a country's survival, has been "outsourced."

This is totally insane. Henry Ford knew a century ago that in order to make money in industry, workers have to make enough money to buy the products they make.

Bob Herbert:

With those coping mechanisms now exhausted, it’s painfully obvious that the economy has failed working Americans.

There was plenty of growth, but the economic benefits went overwhelmingly — and unfairly — to those already at the top. Mr. Reich cites the work of analysts who have tracked the increasing share of national income that has gone to the top 1 percent of earners since the 1970s, when their share was 8 percent to 9 percent. In the 1980s, it rose to 10 percent to 14 percent. In the late-’90s, it was 15 percent to 19 percent. In 2005, it passed 21 percent. By 2007, the last year for which complete data are available, the richest 1 percent were taking more than 23 percent of all income.

The richest one-tenth of 1 percent, representing just 13,000 households, took in more than 11 percent of total income in 2007.

Nobody in his or her right mind can justify this. The imbalance is so great, we are on the verge of bloodshed in this country.

Chicago School Nonsense

This post clearly spells out what in the hell is wrong with our economy, and that is the belief by our elected officials, including Obama, in the discredited and debunked economic insanity blathered by the likes of the despicable Milton Friedman.

A tiny snip:

But the problems in our economy right now run very, very deep. Since Reagan started our grand experiment with Chicago School doctrine, we have seen our major corporations engage in the behavior espoused so forcefully by Milton Friedman, who regarded it as an axiomatic truth that businesses that act in the public interest are stealing from their shareholders if such actions interfere with profits as expressed in quarterly reports. Expenses, including employment expenses, must be cut if the value of resulting production is reduced by less than the amount of the expenses that have been cut. Production must be moved to wherever the overall costs are cheapest. The health of the communities where those businesses had been located, or the well-being of their labor force, is not their concern. Labor is an expense, not a reason for the operation of the business. Workers are not stakeholders in the business.

This has led to a steady decline in American manufacturing capacity and in American ability to turn low-value raw material into high-value finished products, which is the only valid way that "wealth is created" (to borrow a favorite phrase of the supply siders, which they use to mean "create wealthy people," often by transforming a thousand middle class Americans into poor, unemployed ones).
...
Addressing our industrial problem is an inherently difficult and will require an arduous long term effort to correct. It will require a return to some level of protectionism and considerable direct industrial subsidies combined with heavy-handed regulation aimed at fraud prevention and workforce protection. Addressing our disparity in income and wealth is POLITICALLY difficult but is relatively simple and much quicker to correct, by strengthening the power of labor through unionization and laws that protect employee rights and by the reimposition of genuinely progressive income taxes and perhaps even new taxes on existing wealth (remember, Adam Smith -- a GOD of the right-wing -- proclaimed that the only just taxes were taxation of PROPERTY) that exempts most of the taxes on actual labor that earns weekly or bi-weekly paychecks.

Of course, things have drifted so far out of kilter now that even the most draconian (and least politically possible) steps would take many years to restore our economy to any kind of balance and sustainability, but in any case it is not such things as Medicare and Social Security that are the problem, but instead it is TOO MANY TOO-RICH PEOPLE AND NOT ENOUGH DECENT-PAYING JOBS right here in the good ol' USA.

News, Etc.

Don't expect Obama to do one thing to alienate his Wall Street backers, including doing one thing about combating poverty.
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It's about time the jobless started organizing because that is about the only way they will get heard.
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Hybrids are more common in nature than many seem to think.

Obituaries

I missed this death of three months ago: Jim Gaffney, who was one of Secretariat's exercise riders, died in June at the age of 75. Gaffney had suffered from emphysema.

Secretariat's many fans were honored when Gaffney sold much of his memorabilia on eBay. I received a couple of items, photographs, that he sold on the site, which were autographed by him.

Another article about him is here. It is written by Bill Nack, who wrote the definitive book on Secretariat back in 1975 and wrote one of the greatest feature articles of all time, which was about the death of Secretariat, "Pure Heart."
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In Case You Missed It,

and I did, Jane Meyer of The New Yorker did a typically long-winded article a couple of weeks ago profiling two of the biggest scourges on humanity, the Koch brothers.

They've been mentioned on this blog a time or two before. These "libertarians" (read fascists) are going out of their way to buy and manipulate public opinion to support their aim to convert the United States into a third world paradise.

What are they? Mayer explains, or tries to:

The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry—especially environmental regulation. These views dovetail with the brothers’ corporate interests. In a study released this spring, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute named Koch Industries one of the top ten air polluters in the United States. And Greenpeace issued a report identifying the company as a “kingpin of climate science denial.” The report showed that, from 2005 to 2008, the Kochs vastly outdid ExxonMobil in giving money to organizations fighting legislation related to climate change, underwriting a huge network of foundations, think tanks, and political front groups. Indeed, the brothers have funded opposition campaigns against so many Obama Administration policies—from health-care reform to the economic-stimulus program—that, in political circles, their ideological network is known as the Kochtopus.

Getting a Teaching Job

these days is a crapshoot, but keeping one is like playing Russian roulette.  It is a rare teacher who goes through a career without having experienced workplace harassment by principals and other administrators, and a rarer teacher who manages to survive the abuse.

Just about the only teachers who have real "careers" are those who have family members who are teachers or are administrators in the same school district.

News, Etc.

The Medford Mail Tribune has a brief piece on yesterday's opening of the pedestrian bridge over Barnett Road.

I was right about the length. The Greenway is 42 miles roundtrip.

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One in seven Americans is now living in poverty, and it's probably an understatement, given the fact the "official" poverty line is well below what it takes to live a decent life.

Naturally our politicians have no intention of improving this dire situation. It's supposed to be this way, remember?

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Secretariat is one of my favorite topics, having written about him quite a bit over the years on this blog, so I will definitely be looking at the movie based on his and his owner Penny Chenery's life next month.

It will probably be more accurate than most since Chenery was involved in the making of the film.

Penny Chenery is now 88 years old and lives in Colorado.

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There is something wrong with someone who undergoes extreme plastic surgery. Anybody who has her self worth on the basis of having foreign objects put inside her chest needs her head examined.

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The real reason places like Vegas and Reno are dives: It appears the people there aren't getting any, or not enough.

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As Long as Democrats Act Like Democrats

and not act like warmed-over Republicans pushing neoliberal agendas, then this article is good news in the long term for Democrats.

I have always believed demographic changes would work in the Democrats' favor ultimately.  The GOP really has nothing to run on but hate and divide-and-conquer.  My concern is the growing right-wing beliefs by Barack Obama and his ilk.

Why, No Kidding!

Of course if the Republicans took over Congress deficits would be even higher and jobs would be even fewer; the key to their being elected is to play the "divide and conquer" card of  hate towards other groups.  This is classic distraction politics which conceals what these cretins are really doing to the country.

I don't need Newsweek to tell me the  obvious.

News, Etc.

I hope one of these days I will be able to go to the Reno Balloon Races.  I was going to return to Reno to finish up moving, but the thing with Tony and attending workshops has delayed my plans.

That event was one of the things I liked about Reno.  I attended it most years.

Bridge over Barnett Grand Opening

Today was the grand opening of the bridge spanning Barnett Road in Medford, Oregon, and linking the Bear Creek Greenway so that it is virtually nonstop cycling from Central Point to Ashland. The only traffic one will encounter on the bike path is at Suncrest Road in Talent, but few cars are on this road.

Mayor Gary Wheeler spoke at the amphitheater nearby the bridge site.

Medford councilman Al Densmore had a few words to say about the Greenway project.

The Greenway project was some forty years in the making.  There is still more to do.

Long Live Walter Jameson

The star of one of my all-time favorite films, Kevin McCarthy, hero of the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers, has died at the ripe old age of 96.

McCarthy was also the brother of the late columnist Mary McCarthy.

He gave many television performances, including starring in the 1969 turkey The Survivors.

McCarthy was also memorable in the classic Twilight Zone episode, "Long Live Walter Jameson":

Part One:



Part Two:



Part Three:




He died of natural causes, according to his daughter.

John Boehner

has certainly been in the news lately. First, he was mentioned in reports about his being in cahoots with lobbyists, which is no surprise as Republicans are the party blatantly on the take, and second, he says he is "open" to the president's idea of letting tax cuts expire for the filthiest rich of the population, which IS a surprise.

Obituaries

French director Claude Chabrol, 80, of undisclosed causes.

He was a pioneer of the so-called French "New Wave" school of filmmaking.
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News, Etc.

The Medford (Oregon) School District is in major legal hot water because it decided not to have the life skills high school students be in with the general student population at the new high school. The excuse the administrators are making will not wash when in fact it is federal law which states students need to be in the "least-restrictive" environment. Putting these students in the same school building with kids with behavior problems and not having any contact with the general student population is NOT complying with the law. Having the life skills class at the new school with students being able to take electives with the general school population while still having their own self-contained class IS complying with federal law.

The parents are correct in being upset with the district; a major lawsuit is appropriate.
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Next Friday an American television institution, As the World Turns, will air its final episode.

The sad news is no more episodes will be made, but the good news is thanks to YouTube and the internet, the show will live on.
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The number of homeless families has gone up, thanks to this depression.

To Try and Run Schools on Business Models

will fail because of the peculiar nature of public education and its hierarchy, to say nothing of the fact kids are not "objects" that can be manipulated to create "data" in which to evaluate teachers.

Not to mention the fact principals aren't held to any kind of accountability, much less their "superiors" in the front office. As I've said numerous times, the reason teachers are treated like garbage and are easily fired or "asked" to "resign" (forced out) is because nobody is watching their supervisors, most of whom NEED to be either closely supervised or not allowed to be supervising others in the first place.

Educator and commentator Alfie Kohn describes the sheer stupidity of the neoliberal-influenced Los Angeles Times and Newsweek for peddling anti-teacher trash which is of course laughably ignorant.

Of course this rhetoric dovetails perfectly with what our "Democratic" president wants.

Kohn:

Unfortunately, the people who know the most about the subject tend to work in the field of education, which means their protests can be dismissed. Educational theorists and researchers are just "educationists" with axes to grind, hopelessly out of touch with real classrooms. And the people who spend their days in real classrooms, teaching our children -- well, they're just afraid of being held accountable, aren't they? (Actually, proponents of corporate-style school reform find it tricky to attack teachers, per se, so they train their fire instead on the unions that represent them.) Once the people who do the educating have been excluded from a conversation about how to fix education, we end up hearing mostly from politicians, corporate executives, and journalists.

This type of reform consists of several interlocking parts, powered by a determination to "test kids until they beg for mercy," as the late Ted Sizer once put it. Test scores are accepted on faith as a proxy for quality, which means we can evaluate teachers on the basis of how much value they've added -- "value" meaning nothing more than higher scores. That, in turn, paves the way for manipulation by rewards and punishments: Dangle more money in front of the good teachers (with some kind of pay-for-performance scheme) and shame or fire the bad ones. Kids, too, can be paid for jumping through hoops. (It's not a coincidence that this incentive-driven model is favored by economists, who have a growing influence on educational matters and who still tend to accept a behaviorist paradigm that most of psychology left behind ages ago.)

The REAL Reason

neoliberals are pushing the STEM shit for education has NOTHING to do with "demand" for those few occupations and jobs requiring science, technology, engineering, and math; it has to do with the desire of the neoliberals to FORCE more students to drop out by upping the requirements for graduation from high school and limit higher education. There simply aren't enough jobs requiring "high" skills to accommodate all those with higher education.

Besides, an educated workforce is less likely to be manipulated by the powers that be.

As Ohanian notes, this shit of demonizing teachers and education has been going on since the fraudulent 1983 A Nation at Risk report.

Eli Broad

continues his filthy tentacles in the public school systems around the country.

Another WCSD employee, this one with absolutely NO education background whatsoever, is to be a "graduate" in 2010-2012.

She doesn't look old enough to even graduate from high school.

There are more of these types at the link.

Note three of these people for this year are members of the U.S. Department of Education.