Obituaries

A Texas woman cited as the world's oldest person, 114-year-old Patricia Ellis, has died.

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Don't You DARE Fuck With My Pension

link

If these assholes think they are going to get away with pulling this shit of allowing states to file for bankruptcy, they had better be prepared for widespread rioting throughout the United States.

There has been a concerted effort to bash public sector employees by either highlighting the few instances where pensions actually are exorbitant or just making things up. Untruths about Goldman Sachs, General Electric or any other major company rarely appear in the media, and are usually quickly corrected when they do. However, exaggerations or outright fabrication are a standard practice for those who report on state and local budgets when it comes to public employees.

The public has been bombarded with stories of public employees retiring with six-figure pensions while still in their early 50s. There may be some instances of such inflated pensions, but that is far from the typical story. If we look to New York State, the hotbed of bloated public budgets, we find that the state's main retirement system pays an average pension of $18,300 a year. For many workers this is their whole retirement income since they were not covered by Social Security.

And for most of us it is nowhere near that much. And yes, SS knocks the benefit we paid into if we have non-SS-covered public employment.

News, Etc.

Too bad one has to go clear to NYC to find a principal who actually gives a shit about teachers and education.
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It's time to take a look at a couple of Obama's failed foreign policy attempts.
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A federal judge doesn't like Obama's health care reform law.
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We should know from his educational "reforms" billionaire celebrity Bill Gates is dumber than a box of rocks outside of his tiny area of expertise, and his attempts to buy polio's extinction fall into the same category of ignorance.

Jonas Salk or Albert Sabin he is not.
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Under "no kidding" is this article showing what few jobs were created were largely shitty jobs paying shitty wages.
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Bank Bailouts for Dummies

News, Etc.

Sarah Palin was in Reno yesterday trying to draw publicity for herself and for the Safari Club, which invited her to its convention:

During a 40-minute speech, she talked of her love for the outdoors and the “delicate balance” between hunting and fishing and the outdoors.

“... I personally understand the importance of protecting the environment,” she said.
Hunting and fishing, Palin said, are part of America’s “heritage” and the country’s “exceptionalism.”

“Don’t retreat, stand tall,” Palin told the crowd as she emphasized the importance of “responsible conservation.”

In other words, she told them what they wanted to hear.
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Hundreds of people expressed their concern over Governor Brian Sandoval's proposed budget cuts, and probably all for naught.

"Austerity" measures are far bigger than just one state.

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"Political blogs," not little sites like yours truly, will be hot on the campaign trail in 2012 to see who will rival President Obama for the Republican nomination.
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Get ready for "virtual" prep schools the goal of which is to use few or no teachers.

That is where American education is headed if it isn't stopped, and thus risk a society even more alienated and without interpersonal skills needed to succeed in the real world.
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News, Etc.

A Detroit woman died in a house fire because of being forced to use a space heater when her furnace went out:

Moreover, the use of space heaters—which are cheap and available—is highly risky and extremely common. According to the NFPA, space heaters are the second leading cause of household fires in the US after cooking, and the second leading cause of overall fires after smoking.

A report by NFPA issued in 2010, “Space heaters involved in 79 percent of fatal home fires,” states that while space heaters are responsible for 32 percent of house fires in the US, they are responsible for 79 percent of heating fire deaths.

It didn't help her house had security bars, either. Indeed, there should be requirements security bars have release levers like bike wheels so people can get out in case of fires.
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It's a matter of when, not if, Mubarak is forced out of office as protests continue in Egypt.
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"Education on the cheap" is the new mantra. The way to do it is to pit the younger, inexperienced teachers against the older, veteran, experienced teachers, with the aim of making sure the younger teachers NEVER receive pensions or retirement health benefits.

It's not just confined to NYC schools, either.

Can you imagine a principal, a person usually unable to teach or a crony of somebody higher up, or somebody who couldn't stand to be around kids, being able to make it easier to get rid of teachers he or she doesn't like? It's coming. Not that lousy principals can't do it now, what with rigged hearings, rigged documents, and lying colleagues, but the "reformers" would make sure there would be as little legal wrangling as possible.
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For Insomniacs

WCSD's State of Education address by Eli Brodie Heath Morrison:


link


Lots and lots of business-style rhetoric.  In the end, nothing will really change despite the rhetoric, if for no other reason than Nevadans don't value education.  I won't even talk about the real problems in the district in terms of the treatment of its teachers; after all, that isn't unique to this district. Who, Heath, is going to evaluate these dipshit principals, most of whom are failed teachers and failed human beings, under a "new evaluation rubric"? THEIR supervisors are not there closely supervising them. Getting the "numbers" up isn't the only thing principals are supposed to do or to know. Why in the hell would teachers want to "move up the ladder" unless they are burned out or simply can't cut it in the classroom? The "best" teachers are not and never will be looking at upward mobility.

In the end, Morrison will find a bigger gig somewhere else when his contract runs out.

News, Etc.

While American citizens sit on their asses and don't do anything about their deteriorating situation, many in the Middle East feel differently.

One of the Most Important Letters I Ever Received

arrived in my mailbox today:

Dear Susan:

Your application for Service Retirement has been processed and your retirement account has been activated.  Your first check will be in the gross amount of $164.73.  This check represents payment from the date of your retirement through the end of January 2011.  Your regular monthly check will be in the gross amount of $300.40, less authorized deductions.

Retirement checks are mailed on the fourth working day prior to the end of each month.  If you have elected direct deposit, your first check will be mailed to you at the above address.  Subsequent checks will be transferred electronically into your account on the fourth working day prior to the end of each month.

A final calculation of your benefit will be made upon the receipt of final salary information from your employer.  You will be advised to any adjustments to your benefit as a result of the final calculation.

Should you have any questions, please contact us and ask to speak with a Counseling Services representative.

Sincerely,

Production Services Devision
NV PERS



Thank God I am going to get my pension albeit not a huge pension, and I hope to hell Sandoval doesn't pull any shit to destroy this benefit. I had enough shit pulled on me with WCSD cheating me out of my full retirement benefits without politicians doing it.

Cartoon of the Day

This nicely sums up Obama's SOTU speech:

What is NYC Doing With a Schools "Chancellor"

who is basically unfit to run a school on top of being completely unqualified for the job?

Few have asked the question about Cathie Black's background as a publisher of questionable materials.

Teachers have been rendered "unfit for duty" on far, far less.

Berliner:

Although many complained about the mayor's appointment of Black because of her lack of knowledge about schooling, I was surprised there was no mention of the appropriateness of her appointment on the basis of her ethical and moral fitness to lead our schools. Doesn't that count anymore? Where were America's conservatives, such as Alan Bloom and Bill Bennett, when her appointment was announced? I expected them to be outraged. Where was the Christian right, when so clear a secularist and morally suspect person as Black was appointed? Why did Pat Robertson and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council give Black a free ride? Where were the critics, now attacking "Skins," when Black was appointed? Why weren't critics pointing out that the success of Cosmo and other magazines over which Black has editorial responsibility (e. g. Seventeen, Marie Clair), is not based on their literary qualities, unless sexual titillation is the readers' goal.

Get Ready for the Possibility

of a Sharron Angle presidential run.

She didn't rule out the possibility when asked when she was in Iowa attending some movie.

By the way, she didn't "nearly" beat Senator Reid; he won by something like five percentage points.

News, Etc.

The WSWS examines Obama's disgusting SOTU speech.

The only thing missing from the right-wing screed was Obama declaring he was switching political parties.
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A school superintendent whose head is bigger than the rest of his body decides he is going to give his version of the State of the Union or State of the State address.

Unfortunately, WCSD has some structural problems that will never be dealt with because the administrators are all about self-preservation at the expense of teachers.

While many of the comments give their take on what should be cut, typically bloated administrator salaries, what they don't understand is when it comes to jobs being cut, it will be the teachers and support staff who will be let go first. If an administrator is a licensed teacher, he or she will bump the teacher out of his or her job but still receive the same outrageous salary.
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It Isn't Just That "Great" Teachers are Quitting,

but many are also pushed out or outright fired as a cost-cutting measure. Still, this broadcast is worth listening to:

link

The broadcast is from August.

News, Etc.

Birmingham School will be hiring some 60 Temps for America in another example of the undermining of teaching as a profession.
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That'll teach Dennis Kucinich for being a vegan:

U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) is suing the operators of a House cafeteria for alleged negligence stemming from a almost 3-year-old incident involving a sandwich he says left him with significant dental injuries.

And no, the famous McDonald's coffee spilling suit was NOT frivolous, as a new documentary shows. The plaintiff died in 2004.

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Whatever happened to Jacqueline Kennedy's pink pillbox hat that she wore the day her husband was assassinated?
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The Most Right-Wing President in American History

happens to call himself a "Democrat," but his far-right policies were there for all to see last night.

I tried to sit through that speech this morning after I posted the video on the blog, but I couldn't stomach it after he rambled on about education, a topic he knows NOTHING about.

Obama called for intensifying the assault on education conducted under the Bush administration’s “No Child Left Behind” law and his own “Race to the Top” program, both of them predicated on promoting charter and private schools, undermining public schools, and driving down wages, working conditions and job security for teachers.

By any measure, his speech was hogwash.

This bastard CANNOT be our nominee in 2012.

For Insomniacs or Masochists Only

I present the full SOTU speech:

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

And what of this shit of him signing autographs? This man's ego knows no bounds.

Obituaries

In addition to the death of Obama's re-election chances, here are some notable obituaries:

Actor Bruce Gordon, 94, one of my favorite television mobsters, notable for playing in the Untouchables and the shortlived television spoof Run Buddy Run, following a "long illness."

Gordon resided in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
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Gordon's Untouchables co-star Paul Picerni, 88, died on January 12. The cause of death was a heart attack.
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Music publisher Don Kirshner, 76, of heart failure:

The Brill Building age of pop, named after the Manhattan building where many of its songwriters labored, lasted from the mid-1950s to the mid-’60s and is celebrated for the people behind its innocently aching music: producers like Phil Spector, writing teams like Carole King and Gerry Goffin (“The Loco-Motion”).

But the guiding force behind many of those people was Mr. Kirshner, whose hustle, hit-trained ear and good timing helped shape pop in the days when Tin Pan Alley’s song-craft traditions were being mingled with the rhythms of rock.

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British actress Susanna York, 72, of cancer.

No, I Didn't Watch Any of that Neoliberal Shit

posing as a State of the Union speech. I read dribs and drabs of this bullshit, which you can read here.

I guess he had the Republicans and the Democrats sitting together, which is telling. This means there really IS no difference at all between the two parties other than one is more batshit than the other. But both are beholden to the financial elites who are wrecking this country and the world.

Why there should be a GOP "response" to the speech baffles me. Obama is one of them anyway.

News, Etc.

Detroit is a mess in general, but the school district in particular is in a particularly bad mess--on purpose, of course.
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Despite New Jersey being in bad fiscal shape, its moronic politicians insist on going through with vouchers.
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Expect Obama tonight to pander to Wall Street interests and talk about the need to bend over--er, "bipartisanship." I plan to miss the SOTU speech.
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Hell, even neoliberal goddess Ayn Rand took Social Security and Medicare.
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Not to make light of Jordan Brown's heinous offenses, but trying him as an adult would be a complete and total travesty.

This kid clearly has some serious mental problems. It didn't help he had easy access to weapons, either.
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Anti-public education propaganda film Waiting for Superman didn't make the cut for the Oscars, thank god. At least somebody has some sense.
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Is There Anybody Left in the Democratic Party

who is still drinking the Kool Aid and thinks Obama is a Democrat? His neoliberal, Wall Street, and outright Republican attitudes are right out there in the open for the entire world to see, real Democrats be damned.

This is the same Obama who does not know the main provisions of the Social Security Act of 1935 -- as evinced on repeated occasions. Who put Social Security and Medicare on the rack by rigging his deficit commission with the appointment of Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles. The Obama who avowedly takes his inspiration from Ronald Reagan; who spent his holiday in Hawaii reading an account of how the Gipper's White House office was run for him. The Obama who has reserved his harshest and heartfelt words for attacks on progressives. Political expediency is not the reason for turning his back on his supporters and on his pledges. After all, spurning his constituents and kowtowing to the entrenched interests led to the biggest off-year disaster in American electoral history. In short, all the evidence is that an old-school "moderate" Republican occupies the White House.

I wouldn't call him a moderate but an out-and-out rightwinger.

As one wag over at the Old Elm Tree board notes: "Just yesterday, I was trying to decide if Obama was a Trojan Horse. I decided he was a Trojan rubber instead: a thin film standing between the screwees and the screwers.

He leaks."

I couldn't agree more.

This is a State of the Union Speech

our Sellout-in-Chief should give about education but probably won't.

He's too much in bed with the privatizers to give a shit.

You Can Bet the IMF, WTO, and the World Bank

have bought off our Sellout-in-Chief. Everything he is doing is according to the neoliberal playbook:

In his recent, highly effective efforts to offend me and other Democratic progressives in his headlong tumble rightward on the political spectrum, Barack Obama has renamed the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board to the the "President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness." "Jobs" I can go for. "Competitiveness," in the current context, sends a shiver down my spine.

Who are we "competing" against in this arena, China, India, Indonesia, Korea, the Philippines? How will we enhance our "competitiveness" here? Who is it who will be doing the actual "competing" on the field of play, in a manner different from what we're doing today?

It is my very deep and abiding suspicion that the goal here is to increase exports by making American products cheaper. I also strongly suspect that the decreased costs will be achieved largely through the suppression of American wages and benefits and increasing automation that will put many more Americans out of work. I very seriously doubt that we're talking about improving our educational system or restoring a reasonable degree of protectionism to international trade, a couple of things that might restore American prosperity but at the expense of those persons and corporate entities (redundant since the "Citizens United" decision) whose campaign contributions permit them to own elected officials.

I am not interested in seeing the compensation of American workers fall to a level that would be competitive to those in Bangalore or Djakarta. For one thing, we don't get to rent our apartments for $35/mo. and our metabolic systems are ill-suited to diets consisting largely of rice. But to me and whatever foresight my long years of observing political change has permitted me, this is where we appear to be headed, and Barack Obama seems to be prodding it along.

This analysis is reinforced by President Obama's choice to lead this "Council." He selected the CEO of General Electric (not "former" CEO, but their CURRENT one, and he does not intend to step down), Jeffrey Immelt, a man who has opposed nearly every worthwhile reform Obama started out advocating for us back in what I now regard as the "Good Old Days." Indeed, Mr. Immelt has led the corporate stampede toward outsourcing American jobs and industrial capacity to third-world nations, and has transformed GE from a company that once built fine products for fair prices into one whose revenue largely derives from financial securities and credit.

Do any of you think this is what we need right now? If so, please explain to me why you think this is the case. Do you think it will somehow win Republican admiration for Obama? Let me ask you: In the political arena, how did his "deal" with the health insurance companies work out? How many congressional Democratic candidates did they support last November?

I have had it with this guy. He has been completely co-opted by our political adversaries, and America -- at least that part of America that works for a paycheck, or that wishes it could have the privilege of working for a paycheck again, will be the worse for it for many decades to come, with no hope of recovery until I am long dead in the ground. It has consigned most of us to a lifetime in peasantry, in service to our aristocratic corporate overlords.

I will not forgive him for squandering the huge political mandate we gave him and for betraying our hopes. I'll vote for any real New Dealer who promises to stand up for the American worker and broad-based American prosperity. Barack Obama is not that man.

Obama's a fucking Republican or a Trojan horse to put through Republican policies. I wish more people had seen what I had seen way, way, way back when he was first promoted by the media.

Quite Bluntly,

corporations want to get out of on-the-job training by forcing the training on community colleges and four-year colleges and universities, forcing students to take on monstrous debt. High schools have by and large done away with vocational training which did students a lot of good and started turning into college prep outfits regardless of whether all students had the aptitude or even the desire to go to college.

Corporations are upping the ante for requirements although the jobs never previously required anything much beyond high school.

It's more and more becoming a race to the bottom.

News, Etc.

Don't worry teachers: "They" are coming after your pensions next.
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Not That Keith Olbermann is Really Much of a Liberal

given his support of Obama during the primaries and turned a lot of people off, but his departure is another example of the rightward lurch of the media:

The US federal government last week formally approved the sale, which is expected to close sometime this week. While Comcast denied any involvement, the Washington Post reported, “One person intimate with MSNBC’s management … said there were strong indications that the timing wasn’t coincidental. With Olbermann’s patron, NBC chief executive Jeff Zucker, no longer part of the company’s leadership, ‘the timing was right’ to seek the removal of the successful but difficult host and anchor….”

Obituaries--Jack LaLanne

Another television icon of note has died: Fitness guru Jack LaLanne, 96, of respiratory failure as a result of pneumonia.

I watched his program in the early 1960s, although I was a small child and certainly not interested in "fitness" in any manner, shape, or form. However, LaLanne was way ahead of his time.

He performed his first feat in 1954, when he was 40 and wanted to prove he wasn't "over the hill." He swam the length of the Golden Gate Bridge — underwater. (He carried two air tanks.)

Other feats in his 40s: swimming from Alcatraz to San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf wearing handcuffs; swimming the Golden Gate Channel while towing a 2,500-pound cabin cruiser; pulling a paddleboard 30 miles from the Farallon Islands to the San Francisco shore.

At age 60, he upped the ante by swimming from Alcatraz to Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco, handcuffed and shackled and towing a 1,000-pound boat.

The next year, he did a similar feat underwater. And at age 70, he towed 70 boats with 70 people from the Queen's Way Bridge in Long Beach Harbor to the Queen Mary — while handcuffed and shackled.

Some Good Programs Here

about the treatment of teachers and education in general:

Karen Horwitz, founder of NAPTA


L.A. teacher Leonard Isenberg His remarks about the union and its law firm are absolutely accurate. Excellent.


Prof. Lois Weiner

I Can Hardly Wait

to miss the State of the Union address whereby Obama will continue his destructive education policies demonizing teachers and enriching his hedge fund and billionaire supporters.

Despite some comments after the piece suggesting Obama should listen to the teachers, it won't ever happen.

I Wrote This at the NYP Following the Blige Piece

I hate to say this, but this kind of problem exists all over the country. If you think by taking a job in the southern states or out in the west will spare you, you have another thing coming. Teachers have utterly no rights in these "right-to-work" states; the unions are junk and collude with school districts. The principals are as bad if not worse in other parts of the country. Iris Blige is, unfortunately, the rule rather than the exception for principals in the United States. It is just that she got caught, albeit she received a slap on the wrist. It is virtually impossible to fire principals in this country. Teachers, contrary to myths perpetuated in the media, are easily gotten rid of and their lives destroyed. They don't have to do something truly egregious or dangerous to be removed. All a principal has to do is fabricate charges with the knowledge the school districts and thus taxpayers will ALWAYS back them up clear through the hearings and into the various courts of appeals. It isn't the same as in private industry because managers and even CEOs are fired all the time for wrongdoing because they pose a threat to the bottom line. Lawsuits can bankrupt a company, unlike a school district. Lower level employees have more job security in the private sector than those higher up the chain. Public education is a completely different ballgame because of the fact there is always a flow of cash and no bottom line to worry about. "Tenure" really needs to be tenure; right now administrative law is treated like toilet paper by school districts around the country; they openly flout the law with the knowledge teachers are typically too destitute to fight. Usually teachers wind up taking piddling settlements, and if they do so, they risk losing unemployment benefits, not to mention "resigning" in lieu of termination is seen by other school districts as an admission of "guilt." Teachers need far more rights, not fewer, because of the nature of the work.

link



I have thought of writing Gov. Sandoval about what education reforms REALLY need to take place in Nevada, but I suppose he is in bed with the same hedge fund crooks and billionaires as almost all of our politicians from both political parties.

News, Etc.

Governor Brian Sandoval of Nevada is going to show all of the people in Nevada he is totally clueless about the economy and education.

He's another one who is on the take from the hedge fund crooks and billionaires who want to run the state's schools into the ground in the name of "reform."

Is there a single politician in either political party in the United States of America who supports teachers and really knows about education?
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More idiots are in college education programs apparently ignorant of what is going on in the real world with budget cutbacks, privatization efforts, and rotten working conditions.

This Important Article is Making the Rounds on the Education Blogs,

so I thought I'd go ahead and post the link here as well.

We are really and truly fucked in this country. These privatizers are using the same lies that the Reagan administration used in its fraudulent A Nation at Risk "report" back in 1983.

Snip from the article:

The smallest of the Big Three,* the Broad Foundation, gets its largest return on education investments from its two training projects. The mission of both is to move professionals from their current careers in business, the military, law, government, and so on into jobs as superintendents and upper-level managers of urban public school districts. In their new jobs, they can implement the foundation’s agenda. One project, the Broad Superintendents Academy, pays all tuition and travel costs for top executives in their fields to go through a course of six extended weekend sessions, assignments, and site visits. Broad then helps to place them in superintendent jobs. The academy is thriving. According to the Web site, “graduates of the program currently work as superintendents or school district executives in fifty-three cities across twenty-eight states. In 2009, 43 percent of all large urban superintendent openings were filled by Broad Academy graduates.”

The second project, the Broad Residency, places professionals with master’s degrees and several years of work experience into full-time managerial jobs in school districts, charter school management organizations, and federal and state education departments. While they’re working, residents get two years of “professional development” from Broad, all costs covered, including travel. The foundation also subsidizes their salaries (50 percent the first year, 25 percent the second year). It’s another success story for Broad, which has placed more than two hundred residents in more than fifty education institutions.

My old school district, WCSD, has at least three Broadies working in the administrative office including the superintendent, Heath Morrison.

Unaccountable Principals

One of the worst principals in NYC and perhaps in the entire United States is allowed to keep her job and her current position at a high school where all of her wrongdoing took place.

I am sure Blige also has a union, and believe me, it is virtually impossible to get rid of administrators as a result.  When they are fired or forced to resign, it makes news because it is so rare.

New York Post:

The two-year probe was conducted only after teachers lodged a host of complaints about Blige's wrongdoings, according to United Federation of Teachers officials.

"I think it's outrageous," said UFT President Michael Mulgrew. "If the price for ruining someone's career is $7,500, where's the accountability?"

Mulgrew could ask that to me.  My principal was merely moved to another school as "punishment" for her incompetence and neglect when she should have been fired; the person ordering my "hit" is still head of human resources.

The more these crooks and cretins screw up, the better they do.

More about Blige is here.

The report is here.

This 2009 protest of Blige didn't do any good, unfortunately:

The WSWS Notes Another Fraud by the Obama Administration

That, of course, is putting in a Jack Welch clone in the position of heading the White House Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.

Of course this means even MORE jobs will be sent overseas.

Neoliberalism and neoliberals in BOTH political parties need to go.

link

The prostration of the Obama administration before corporate America comes as the social crisis in the United States intensifies. The federal government is moving decisively toward austerity, with major cuts in social programs to be announced this year. State governments throughout the country are facing massive budget deficits that will be addressed by slashing education, health care and other basic social services, while laying off tens of thousands of workers, cutting wages and slashing pension benefits.

Twenty six months after the eruption of the financial meltdown in 2008, the American ruling class and the Obama administration are exploiting the crisis to permanently restructure class relations in the US, increasing the wealth of the financial aristocracy on the basis of the impoverishment of tens of millions of working people.

These crooks are going to bleed America dry.  I am coming to believe the only way out is through bloodshed.

One Reason the Country is in a Mess

We need to look no further than the rise and return of the Rubinites, neoliberals who call themselves "Democrats," to understand how the country got so screwed up.

This piece focuses on Larry Summers, who, along with Robert Rubin and the others, should be doing jail time instead of being "promoted" to cushy jobs in government and at Harvard.

In a bigger sense, the decades-long dance of Rubin and Summers in and out of Washington has become emblematic of a second Gilded Age that wouldn’t even measure well against the first one from a century ago. Much of the public has come to view the Obama Administration as the latest round in a quickening game of musical chairs, played by the same old politicians who owe their fortunes or their careers to the same financial institutions that destroyed the economy, each round further consolidating their unaccountable power, each round bringing fresh disillusionment.

Harvard University is right at the center of all of this mess thanks to these crooks going in and out of government and ruining the country.

Harvard should have the same reputation as the University of Phoenix.

News, Etc.

Don't think the financial mess is simply limited to this country.

It's deliberate policy, and it is worldwide.
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If major local employer Harry & David goes under, it would have a devastating effect on the area's economy.

Blame  Wasserstein & Co. for wrecking this company:

In some people's minds, the die was cast more than six years ago when a group led by private equity firm Wasserstein & Co., acquired Bear Creek Corp. from Yamanouchi in June 2004 for $252.9 million. When an attempt to take the company public in August 2005 went nowhere, the initial public offering was withdrawn in May of 2008.

While the company and its employees have suffered financially, numerous sources say the Wasserstein investors have made a tidy profit.

Former Ashland Mayor Alan DeBoer, whose holdings include Town & Country Chevrolet and the Shoppes at Exit 24, said the wrong approach at the wrong time has hurt the company, if not the investors.

"It's a classic case where somebody bought a highly leveraged company so they could flip it and make a lot of money and then got caught in the downturn," DeBoer said. "The people who bought it with leveraged debt and the people who put the deals together, made millions in fees, with other people's money."

It's the same old story.  Buy it up, milk it, and then force a company to go belly-up.
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Keith Olbermann is out at MSNBC.

Tonight was his final broadcast.

_____

Nevada's unemployment rate now stands at 14.5 percent.

Las Vegas unemployment is now at a staggering 14.9 percent.
______

Jack Shit

Obama does know Jack Shit, er Jack Welch, for he has tapped a protege of Welch's to help Obama further outsource 

News, Etc.

John Ensign, whose only regret in life is having been caught screwing around on his wife, is intent on screwing over the voters further by running for re-election.
_____

The rest of the country's gain is Sacramento's loss as Michelle Rhee has taken herself and her organization to California in order to keep a watchful eye on her wayward fiance.

Here is another story.  The comments following it are great.

And the comments are great here.

This Must Count as the Most Pathetic Post Ever on a Blog

at any time, at any place.  It is really pathetic this person, unless he is a mole for the privatizers, to actually swallow the bilge they are selling.

The goal of the privatizers is to destroy public education, one of the last bastions of democracy.  The privatizers despise democracy and all of its institutions.

Naturally this organization is a front for Bill Gates and his ilk.  Gates helps fund it.

The blogger needs to read Lois Weiner's work, and then he will throw his membership to this outfit in the trash where it belongs.  Weiner nails it on the head about what the school privatization movement is REALLY about.

I Don't Have to Take Ron Reagan's Word

his father suffered from early Alzheimer's disease in his presidency.  It was pretty obvious something was wrong by the end of his first term, especially during one of the debates with challenger Walter Mondale in 1984.


I also remember journalist Leslie Stahl having a very unnerving experience with the then-president which pointed towards senility.  I also remember reading about how Gorbachev reacted to some of Reagan's truly off-the-wall behavior.

Snip:

Stahl tells me that she is certain that after that Oval Office encounter with Reagan, she discussed with her producers whether to report on Reagan's mental condition. "I would have to have skirted around the words 'senility,' 'Alzheimer's,' 'dementia,'" she notes. "I would have been declaring the president unfit to serve, or at least raising the possibility." That undoubtedly would have set off a political detonation. And such a report would have suggested a White House cover-up—at a time when tense foreign policy matters were in the news and midterm elections were a few months off.

Whether or not Stahl made the right call—she seems to believe she should have reported something at the time—the evidence she later gathered indicates that Reagan aides were concerned about his mental condition during his presidency. Perhaps it wasn't Alzheimer's but another health issue. Yet her account and her subsequent reporting suggests Ron Reagan is closer to the truth than Michael Reagan. The Gipper was slipping while he was occupying the most powerful position in the world, and the public was kept in the dark.

In hindsight, it should have been reported at the time.  Sure it would have created a bit of an uproar, but the twenty-fifth amendment would have been invoked as Reagan was clearly not capable of running things.

In truth, the second term was what I call "the presidency of the two Bakers," meaning Howard Baker and James Baker.  They actually ran the country.

News, Etc.

The mother doesn't come off looking too good, but it is a miracle WCSD has actually admitted it screwed up in this case.
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With his kissing up to corporate America, Obama proves he is not a true Democrat, at least of the party I grew up with.
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Southern Oregon employer Harry & David did not do well in the holiday season.  This despite a big push on venues like Oprah and QVC.
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Another Reason Why Obama is a Sellout,

a Republican who has a "D" in front of his name, a lying sack of shit who doesn't deserve to be called a "Democrat":

Social Security may be on the White House chopping block, a US Senator recently told Raw Story, expressing deep uneasiness about President Barack Obama's noncommittal attitude toward staving off cuts to the cherished program.

"I have to tell you, I have been on the phone to the very, very, very highest levels of the Obama administration, and the responses that I am getting are not assuring," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said in an exclusive interview. "What I’m told is that no definitive decisions have been made on the issue of Social Security – I expect that is probably true."

Obama is a piece of shit and should be run out of town on a rail.  The ONLY people against Social Security are the financial elites and their hack politicians--the vast majority of people depend on Social Security for their retirement.  For many, it is the ONLY lifeline.

What a criminal sack of shit Obama is.  But we were warned about him years ago.

Obituaries--Sargent Shriver

Vice presidential candidate and Peace Corps founder Sargent Shriver died today at the age of 95.

Following the assassination of RFK, it had been suggested Shriver be a running mate for eventual Democratic nominee Hubert Humphrey, but it didn't happen because the Kennedy family wasn't happy about the idea.  Instead, Shriver ended up being a running mate for George McGovern following a big controversy over his original running mate Thomas Eagleton, who stepped down.  Since Nixon's boys picked McGovern over more electable candidates via the Watergate dirty tricks campaign, it was a foregone conclusion the McGovern-Shriver ticket would take a beating.

WSJ:

Mr. Shriver stayed on in the Johnson administration, where he added to his portfolio a New Deal-style flowering of programs meant to alleviate poverty under the rubric of the Office of Economic Opportunity. Among these was Job Corps, to train urban youth; Vista, a kind of domestic Peace Corps; and Head Start, a child-development program. He spoke of eliminating poverty within a decade.

When he took on the post, Mr. Shriver said the War on Poverty would be "noisy, visible, dirty, uncomfortable and sometimes politically unpopular." He may have understated just how unpopular it would become in some quarters.

NYT:

“Shriver’s relationship with the Kennedys was complex,” Scott Stossel wrote in “Sarge: The Life and Times of Sargent Shriver,” a 2004 biography. “They buoyed him up to heights and achievements he would never otherwise have attained — and they held him back, thwarting his political advancement.”

The book and reports in The New York Times, The Washington Post and other publications suggested that Mr. Shriver’s hopes to run for governor of Illinois in 1960 and vice president in 1964 and 1968 were abandoned to help promote, or at least not compete with, Kennedy aspirations. Mr. Shriver’s vice-presidential race in 1972, on a ticket with Senator George S. McGovern, and a brief primary run for president in 1976 were crushed by the voters.
 

Political Blood Letting

Reality show star and ex-politician Sarah Palin expresses her complete disinterest in any future political career by digging herself into a deeper hole trying to "explain" her idiotic "blood libel" remark of last week.

She or her speechwriter cribbed the term from a dumbass blogger posing as a law professor--obviously NOT a historian or somebody from the Jewish community--and still doesn't see how offensive it is.

Misusing a specific term to try and score political points basically shot to shit what future she has outside of show business.

More

One could argue, however, that Glenn Reynolds, the culprit who started the whole ball rolling, should also be taken to task for using vile rhetoric as this, but he's a guy, so it's okay.

News, Etc.

This is where education is headed, unfortunately, unless people wake the hell up.
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The fact is teaching cannot be quantified because the "product," student learning, is highly individual and subject to outside influences over which teachers have utterly NO control.

But this is about getting rid of more "expensive" teachers and what is left of unions in this country.
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It's time to look at some of the myths of public education as promoted by the Chicago School crackpots.
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Joe Lieberman has made a declaration of independence and will not seek a fifth term, in a decision that is welcome news to many in the blogosphere.

Of course Joe isn't needed to knife Democrats in the back.  There is already a Backstabber-in-Chief in the White House.

Obama is Hellbent on Being

the worst president in the history of the country by vowing to do whatever his corporate masters want.

The media goes around and claims he is "moving to the center."  No, he's on the right and plans to stay there.  To hell with what's best for the country.

Obama might just as well switch parties and be done with it.

News, Etc.

The Eclipse Awards winners are being announced today.

Zenyatta should get Horse of the Year honors, but you never know with this bunch.  She should have gotten it last year, and she didn't.

Cartoon of the Day

This sums it up, I'm afraid:

I am going to get a print of that when I finally get a little bit more money in.

This is the link to the cartoonist.

How Are Politicians Like School Administrators?

Well, the more corrupt or incompetent they are, the better they do.  If by some quirk of fate they get removed from their previous jobs, they simply bounce back and do better than ever.

Why Shouldn't 9 Buck an Hour "Parapros"

be required to take complicated tests proving they can work for peanuts and no benefits?  Don't be a fool and think school board members or Hahvahd graduate Arne Duncan need to pass similar tests.

It's a scandal how much or little parapros are paid, especially when in many states they take on duties they shouldn't be allowed to take, such as actually teaching classes to students when they aren't certified teachers.  The problem is especially serious with special education students, for they are supposed to be taught by certified special education teachers.

As We Remember Martin Luther King, Jr.

today, it is perhaps important to note that if it weren't for the holiday, the political career of a noted racist perhaps wouldn't have gone as far as it did, and perhaps we would have been spared the craziness of the GOP "mainstream" today.

The real purpose of Jesse Helms' opposition to the MLK holiday was to help advance his own re-election chances in North Carolina.

News, Etc.

Former Nevada state senator Bill Raggio hit it on the head about his own party's need to move away from the "radical right."  I would interpret that as including Sharron Angle in that equation.
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A 17-year-old Nebraska wingnut with ambitions to attend the ultra-rightwing Patrick Henry University and pollute the judiciary and political worlds won the Miss America pageant held in Sin City, Nevada.  The person who should have won, Alyse Eady of Arkansas, was first runner-up.  Many people agree with me Eady was far more deserving:



Unlike most ventriloquists, you can't even tell Eady is "throwing her voice."  It is difficult to pull that off.

But judges love Barbie doll wingnuts better than somebody who really does have talent.  While I believe beauty contests are outdated and send the wrong message to young women, Eady did get robbed.
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News, Etc.

In his new book about his father, Ron Reagan states the obvious.

President Reagan displayed increasingly erratic behavior as president, especially some of the things he was saying that appeared completely off the wall. I also think the assassination attempt against him thirty years ago helped accelerate his decline.
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One Can Talk,

as Paul Krugman does in this piece, about there being basically two sets of moralities when it comes to politics, but it boils down to just one thing: It's altruism versus selfishness. As of now, selfishness is running the show, and our country is on the verge of ruination because of it.

We have Ayn Rand and crackpot economist Milton Friedman to thank for this dismal state of affairs. They believed in some childish, utopian notion of "libertarianism." However, it doesn't exist and cannot exist as long as there are two people in the world.

Once upon a time, both political parties believed in the role of government in helping to rein in the worst tendencies of so-called "free markets." Now, though, you have idiots like Sharron Angle who think the very concept of government is illegitimate. Far from extreme, this is now "mainstream" GOP "thinking."

Because the Economy is So Bad,

employers have found all kinds of creative--and frankly illegal--means of skirting age discrimination law by putting in all kinds of idiotic requirements for their jobs.

The recent outcry over "no unemployed persons need apply" is just one of several creative ways to weed out "undesirables," especially those over 50.

I really love the weight lifting requirements and phrases like "energetic," "high energy level," and other age discrimination euphemisms found more and more on job announcements. There are job applications which say you must list every single job you have ever held, not just jobs in the past ten years, for the simple reason the employer can estimate your age. I for one can't even REMEMBER all of the jobs I have held in 35 years in the labor force, let alone dates of employment; a lot of the jobs I had were "little" jobs of a temporary or part-time nature while I was working on my master's degree in the 1990s.

This article spells out the ways HR departments weed out the older applicants or those who are currently unemployed.

Online job postings frequently specify that a candidate "must be currently employed" in order to be considered for a position, and headhunter Isang Inokon told HuffPost in December that he has trouble placing unemployed people in jobs because employers "want somebody who's wanted."

More than 6 million long-term unemployed job-seekers are left to guess why their applications don't earn them a phone call. But Judy Conti, a lobbyist for the National Employment Law Project, said she is confident that these discriminatory practices will eventually be brought to light.

"More often than not, when employers of any sort try to be too clever by half, they end up getting tripped up with the laws anyway," Conti said. "I'm quite confident that if this kind of scheme really gets out there, there will be really clever employment lawyers that figure out how to go at it."

I am not holding my breath things will change and get better for older unemployed workers.

Of Course Facts Don't Bear Out

the effectiveness of "value-added" measures of teacher "performance"; we who have knowledge of education know that "performance" measures can't be quantified when it comes to teaching because there are so many outside factors outside the teachers' control affecting student "achievement."

That isn't the point of the "reforms." These "reformers" like Gates want older and/or veteran teachers out as a cost-cutting measure.

link

News, Etc.

The foreclosure business is doing better than ever.
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Education "reformers" absolutely hate low income students, or else they wouldn't push to have shitty curriculum and unqualified or underqualified teachers in the classroom.

The goal, of course, is to limit higher education access, including high school.
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You don't need a Ph.D. in economics to know the whole point of the downturn is to drastically lower wages and thus opportunities for millions of people.

The downturn is a result of deliberate policy, thanks to our corrupt "representatives" in Washington in both parties.
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I thought I'd link this little "appreciation" piece of David Nelson. It sums up nicely his contribution to the success of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.

News, Etc.

Special education students already get the shaft as it is, but districts are looking for ways to save money while still "complying" with federal law.

There really is no evidence "inclusion" is more beneficial to sped students, at least in terms of learning. The whole point of "inclusion" in the first place was to save money on rooms and even teachers. Socializing with the general student population is certainly to be encouraged, but let's not kid ourselves the students will improve academically when they really need intensive instruction without outside distractions.

What I have seen being a substitute "aide" (trying to survive the winter if I can) I can only describe as appalling because the life skills special education teachers don't actually teach the students by and large up here in Oregon, unlike Nevada. Instead, the teachers plan the lessons and write the IEPs, but they serve basically as supervisors to the aides, who do most of the work, even work that is really legally questionable. Aides should NOT be allowed to teach whole class lessons, not even do "read alouds"; it is illegal unless the aides are special education certified. Having an AA degree is not equal to being certified to teach. Even though I am a certified special education teacher, I am not Oregon certified, so I am not legally allowed to teach students. I would not unless or until I am certified.

The Reason Obama Should NEVER Be Re-Elected

If NCLB is reauthorized, with Obama and Duncan's destructive proposals added in, you can kiss off the public school system in the United States goodbye, and with it, democracy.

This area is where Obama's REAL political orientation lies. He is more right-wing on this issue than are the Republicans.

Obama and Duncan are big on charters because their backers, the Wall Street crooks, want to mine taxpayer money for their filthy profit.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Toastmaster General of the United States,

and I don't mean George Jessel:

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

I probably shouldn't ridicule Obama; this was a decent speech as far as speeches go, and besides, this was about last Saturday's unspeakable tragedies in Tucson and deserves to be treated seriously.

Still, Obama would do better being a professional eulogy giver than a president.

Predictably, the WSWS didn't think much of Obama's speech.

A Good Question Being Raised

in Susan Ohanian's comments before an article about a charter school closing is why there is so much interest by crooks--er, hedge fund types--in scamming the taxpayers by opening up charters?

If you guessed our illustrious elected officials, including a Democrat, Bill Clinton, you'd be right, as she quotes a Democracy Now interview:

There's a lot of money to be made in charter schools, and I'm not talking just about the for-profit management companies that run a lot of these charter schools.

It turns out that at the tail end of the Clinton administration in 2000, Congress passed a new kind of tax credit called a New Markets tax credit. What this allows is it gives enormous federal tax credit to banks and equity funds that invest in community projects in underserved communities and it's been used heavily now for the last several years for charter schools. I have focused on Albany, New York, which in New York state, is the district with the highest percentage of children in charter schools, twenty percent of the schoolchildren in Albany attend are now attending charter schools. I discovered that quite a few of the charter schools there have been built using these New Markets tax credits.

What happens is the investors who put up the money to build charter schools get to basically or virtually double their money in seven years through a thirty-nine percent tax credit from the federal government. In addition, this is a tax credit on money that they're lending, so they're also collecting interest on the loans as well as getting the thirty-nine percent tax credit. They piggy-back the tax credit on other kinds of federal tax credits like historic preservation or job creation or brownfields credits.

If there is anything Congress does anymore or in the recent past that isn't designed to screw over the taxpayers to benefit the few, I'd like to know what it is.

News, Etc.

Don't blame me, says Sharron.

It might be irrelevant to debate whether or not her stupid rhetoric created the situation in which people might resort to committing crimes as what happened last Saturday in Tucson, but when one thinks about the whole thing, the right probably IS responsible for a Jared Loughner in that they went out of their way to cut funding for the mentally ill.
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Sarah Palin should probably consult a dictionary or an encyclopedia before spouting off stupid statements. Or else hire a speechwriter who knows something about history:

Vigorous and spirited public debates during elections are among our most cherished traditions. And after the election, we shake hands and get back to work, and often both sides find common ground back in D.C. and elsewhere. If you don’t like a person’s vision for the country, you’re free to debate that vision. If you don’t like their ideas, you’re free to propose better ideas. But, especially within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.

It's not hard to find out what "blood libel" really is. A Google search would also help. Needless to say, more than a few in the Jewish community are not happy with her "liberal" use of a very specific term.

Video of her making a (bigger) fool of herself:



Could a widely read rightwing blogger actually be the "source" of the misuse of the "blood libel" phrase?

Conservative blogger Glenn Reynolds first used the term this week in the context of the Giffords shooting.

"So as the usual talking heads begin their 'have you no decency?' routine aimed at talk radio and Republican politicians, perhaps we should turn the question around. Where is the decency in blood libel?" he wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed titled "The Arizona tragedy and the politics of blood libel."

What a Disgrace

Andrew Cuomo, governor of New York, is a far cry from his father, let me tell you. He acts like a fucking damned Republican with his attacks on education and public services.

Obituaries--David Nelson

The end of an era, it seems: David Nelson, the last surviving member of the iconic Nelson family of Ozzie and Harriet fame, has died at the age of 74 following a battle with colon cancer.

David had a less colorful part onscreen than his brother Ricky. Although both brothers ended up getting law degrees on the show like their father Ozzie did before he went into show business, I don't believe either of them ever went to college in real life. They didn't have to. David also directed and produced many episodes of the series as well as other projects.

He was married to June Blair, who appeared with him on the show in its later years, but they later divorced. He married his second wife in the mid-seventies and adopted her three children. Nelson is survived by his wife Yvonne, five children, and seven grandchildren.

More from the L.A. Times.

The Nelson family interviewed with Mike Douglas back in 1966:

I Am Not Convinced

the Arizona shootings were other than the act of a lone nutter, but there are plenty who feel the far right bears some responsibility:

The New York Times, typically, tried to have it both ways, editorializing, “It is facile and mistaken to attribute this particular madman’s act directly to Republicans or Tea Party members. But it is legitimate to hold Republicans and particularly their most virulent supporters in the media responsible for the gale of anger that has produced the vast majority of these threats, setting the nation on edge.”

The last assertion is a deliberate cover-up of the real source of the “gale of anger” building in America, which is the economic collapse that has devastated the lives of tens of millions of people, and for which no faction of the capitalist political establishment, Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, has any solution.

A long news analysis in the Times provides valuable details on the ideological connections between Loughner and several of the more bizarre factions of the far right, but it nonetheless declares that the assassin’s political motivation cannot be known with certainty: “Investigators will have to wrestle with the difficult question of whether Mr. Loughner’s parroting the views of extremist groups was somehow more a cause of the shootings or simply a symptom of a troubled life.”

Much more is here.

News, Etc.

Who says corrupt politicians are like everybody else?

Former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay today was sentenced to three years in prison for his conviction on a charge of conspiracy to commit political money laundering. He also was sentenced to five years in prison on a money laundering conviction, but the judge probated that to 10 years of community supervision.

DeLay was taken into custody by Travis County deputies, but will be released on $10,000 bail pending appeal.

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Fortunately, Sharron Angle isn't interested in the Nevada state senate seat being vacated by longtime incumbent Bill Raggio.

A Dimwit Judge

decides it is okay to release completely unreliable and libelous "data" which does nothing but further decimate the teaching profession.

Test scores don't mean fucking shit; there are too many variables, and kids screw around on them all the time. But a judge thinks teachers are a bunch of lazy shits sponging off the taxpayer dime, and therefore their jobs can be measurable.

A Manhattan judge ruled Monday that the Department of Education can release the names and job rankings of more than 12,000 public school teachers.

The decision by Justice Cynthia Kern is a blow to the United Federation of Teachers, which tried to block the DOE from making the internal ratings system public.

A good comment is here.

And where is the union on this? If it's like WEA, it's busy sucking off administrators in hopes of getting cushy little golden parachute jobs in their district and to hell with the teachers.

A Disturbing Picture

emerges of alleged assassin Jared Loughner, whose incoherent ramblings on YouTube appear to have some right-wing basis.

Loughner should not be the only one held accountable for Saturday's tragedies.

Honestly, I don't think they are going to stop. There is no way to put the genie back into the bottle.

The killings were well planned in advance regardless of whether or not Loughner was of sound mind.

I Find Frank Rich's Column

a bit odd, especially given the fact Obama absolutely idolizes Ronald Reagan and is consciously trying to ape him. I also find it odd he would even comment on a "Democrat" who in truth is actually to the right of both Reagan and Bush II and will give in to the GOP every time in the spirit of "bipartisanship."

And what IS this shit about Obama's Christmas "resurrection"? He's absolutely detested by people across the political spectrum, especially by those on the left who have finally seen through this fraud of a Democrat.

Obama is not going to behave as a Democrat because he isn't one to begin with. His "style" of "leadership" has little to do with why he is such a fucking disaster. It's his neoliberal policies, or the lack of any policies, that will do him in.

News, Etc.

It appears Rep. Gabrielle Giffords will survive yesterday's shooting which resulted in six deaths, but she is still in critical condition.

Officials are now looking at a possible accomplice.
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Law school students are finding themselves buried under a pile of debt and not able to find work in their field when they graduate. Of course, they can't erase their debts in bankruptcy; the loan sharks guaranteed that.

You can say the same for paralegals, too, which were never too numerous to begin with. About the only jobs available were legal secretary jobs, which pay absolute crap for the most part and certainly don't require near the training of a paralegal or a lawyer.

It's back to doing shit sales jobs selling Chinese-made trinkets, I'm afraid.
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I am not as optimistic as Stephanie Coontz who believes same-sex marriage is "inevitable."
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Ed "Reform"

Actually, the "reformers" couldn't care less about the wealthier districts and schools unless they are private schools; the whole point of "reform" is to limit higher educational opportunities for the masses since there aren't enough good paying to absorb all of the graduates. This goes for anybody who isn't in the top 1 percent of the population in income.

Or so these neolibs believe.

News, Etc.

Representative Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona has been reportedly shot in the head, condition unknown at this time:

The Democrat, who was re-elected to her third term in November, was hosting a "Congress on Your Corner" event at the Safeway in northwest Tucson when a gunman ran up and started shooting, according to Peter Michaels, news director of Arizona Public Media, NPR reported

At least 12 were injured, including Giffords. A suspect in the shooting is reportedly in police custody.

Is this YouTube channel "the" guy suspected in the shootings?

Can Bloggers "Live On" After They Have Died?

Some are looking at preserving digital content after bloggers have left this planet to the Great Beyond.

I never even though of preserving what I have written, photographed, and videotaped and uploaded on the net. It never occurred to me I would actually die one of these days, and there would be nobody to preserve my rambling diatribes. In any case, if I do ever die, I am not going to give a shit whether my words or pictures live on or not.

While the "Figures" Were Manipulated to Look

as rosy as possible, it rings hollow to those of us who are unemployed or are underemployed.

News, Etc.

LAUSD is slated to go from bad to worse in superintendents.

As shown in the article, you don't even have to be qualified at anything to be superintendent, just have the correct political connections.
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This guy should be in the running for national Principal of the Year.

He's bad enough Obama would approve.

Thanks to Washington's Indifference or Downright Hostility

towards working people and thus the voting public, expect nothing to be done to reverse the staggering amount of poverty in what was once the greatest country on earth.

Poverty is Going Through the Roof

what with 15.7% of Americans are now in it, and you can expect the rest of the population, except for the top 1 percent, are or will be teetering on the brink.

We have to be competitive with the Chinese, after all.

The Media Have No Shame

They simply can't stop trashing the Edwards family, not even after death. So freaking what if John was "cut out" of Elizabeth's will--they were estranged, and she was dying of cancer and had to update it.

It's hardly newsworthy except as some kind of cheap shot against the family.

No, I am not going to supply a link; the "story" is all over the place.

The LAST Thing Any Teachers "Union" or "Association" Needs

is a NON-TEACHER to be an "executive director." It doesn't matter if he headed the ACLU because teachers in Nevada (as in virtually every state in the union, though in most states it isn't as obvious) have utterly NO legal rights at all. Public education is a whole lot different than other entities; the law simply doesn't apply to school districts. Federal anti-discrimination laws don't apply, state laws don't apply, administrative laws don't apply. As long as nobody is truly overseeing the districts--school boards don't count--to make sure malfeasance against teachers is kept at a minimum, nothing is going to happen to improve teachers' lot.

The big problem is teachers have no "due process" rights; the states' administrative laws are frequently flouted by school districts, whose administrators will do anything to keep their cushy jobs, even committing what would normally be termed criminal acts to keep them at the teachers' expense. In Nevada, the "process" is a complete farce from beginning to end. Fabricate bogus charges against a teacher, then, when caught after realizing they have no case and their hatchet person completely screwed up, merely rig the "due process" hearing by bribing an "association" executive director with a make-work lifetime job working under the crook who initiates the "investigation" against the teacher by putting the principal up to doing his dirty work, make sure there are no witnesses for the teacher, character assassinate the teacher, suborn perjury and tamper with witnesses, commit perjury in the hearing, put in outdated documents to defraud the arbitrator, destroy documents that would help the teacher, collude with the association's law firm, and on it goes. No big deal because nobody ever gets caught committing these white-collar crimes.

Since Peck isn't a teacher, he hasn't a clue. Being a daddy doesn't qualify one to run a teachers' association.

link

News, Etc.

Another Chicago crony of Obama's gets a cushy White House job.
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Hey, It's Great to Be a Bankruptcy Attorney,

as bankruptcies have shot up to 1.5 million, the highest since 2005.

I thought the Credit Card Bailout Act was supposed to STEM the tide of bankruptcies. It doesn't appear to be this way.

The growth in personal insolvency last year was seen in virtually every part of the country, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute. The sharpest rise was in the Southwest and Southeast, with Nevada recording 15,000 filings per million, more than double the 6,600 filings per million recorded nationwide. The state has the nation’s highest unemployment rate and credit card and mortgage delinquency, and one in every 99 homes are in foreclosure, according to realtytrac.com.

After Nevada, Georgia and Tennessee had the highest filing rates, each with more than 10,000 filings per million, according to the report. The states with the highest year-to-year increase were Hawaii (22 percent), California (19 percent), Utah (19 percent) and Arizona (18 percent).

Good ol' Nevada. Still another record to be proud of.

This is Obama, Not Truman, You Are Talking About,

Joe, and since this president idolizes Reagan, fat chance he is going to do anything but bend over and take it in the ass.

The American people will continue to take it in the ass because both political parties are bought off by the same financial elite which has destroyed this country as a matter of "libertarian" or "neoliberal" ideology.

We HAVE to get a candidate to go up against Obama in the primaries. If we don't, Democrats are going to risk being wiped out again.

If it meant ridding the party of the neolibs, that would be a good thing, but I have doubts the party could ever get back into power.

Conason:

No doubt the Obama White House, which too often prefers "bipartisanship" to principled confrontation, will be tempted to make such a deal. The problem is that cutting the budget so drastically will undo the stimulative effects of the December tax-and-spending agreement — and plunge the economy back into recession. The President loses either way.

Perhaps the time has come for the Democrats to adopt a different strategy. Let the Republicans govern, or misgovern. Don't rescue them from their own recklessness. Don't vote to raise the debt ceiling unless and until the Republican leadership supports the bill — and if they refuse, let them take the responsibility for the consequences. Let's see how long they can listen to the screaming of their major contributors on Wall Street as the world economy shudders. Make the hostage takers surrender this time.

When Your Goal is to Ultimately Privatize Everything,

including education, because it is a matter of birdbrained "libertarian"/Friedmanite ideology, facts are not important, Mr. Krashen.

We need to rid our national politics of neoliberalism in ALL of its toxic forms, including and especially in public education.

The WSWS Takes Note of Wall Street's

further stranglehold on the White House.

The personnel shifts between the White House and high finance have a definite sociological significance. Even the more “liberal” aides move easily from top government posts to lucrative positions in the financial industry. This poses no difficulty because the policies of the Obama administration are so organically aligned with the well-being of Wall Street.

The musical chairs aspect of the personnel switches―Daley is being considered to replace Emanuel, who is running to replace Daley’s brother as mayor of Chicago; Plouffe and Axelrod change places as chief inside and outside political aide―also underscores the narrow, politically inbred and isolated character of the Obama administration.

Bad News for (REAL) Democrats

as Robert Gibbs is stepping down as White House press secretary in order to work on Obama's re-election campaign. This despite the fact Obama has been a total failure as president and would permanently marginalize the party.

We HAVE to force Obama to step down so we can field a real candidate against the likes of Mitt Romney (I don't believe, as many do, Jeb Bush will run) and reverse this disastrous course.

It's also nice to know one of the Chicago mob (as opposed to mobsters) who helped make Obama's unlikely push to the national stage and a brother of Mayor Richard Daley is in the running for Chief of Staff.

link

News, Etc.

Although I didn't hit it big last night with the Mega Millions jackpot, two people who bought tickets in the Pacific Northwest did.

One winning ticket came from Ephrata, Washington, and the other one from Idaho.
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Expect the GOP majority in the House to work overtime trying to further wreck the economy in order to hang Obama with it.

Not that Obama really needs any help in that regard.
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Obituaries

A famed "shoe tree" on Highway 50 between Fallon and Austin, Nevada, unknown age, of vandalism.

There are several "shoe trees" around the country, including one north of Reno on 395, which I took a couple of pictures of awhile back.

Video report:



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How Did Barry Screw Over the Democrats

who voted for him? Look no further than the health care reform.

He wasted all that time on a "reform" which was even worse than the problem it was designed to fix, all the while ignoring the economy going further and further into the ditch.

Bedbugs Have More Rights Than Teachers,

and they don't even have "tenure":

I've been a teacher for 26 years. I don't much agree with Mayor Bloomberg, and I'm not altogether sanguine over Cathie Black's prospects as chancellor. Truth be told, I've disagreed with UFT leadership from time to time as well. But you'd think we'd all find common ground somewhere.

For example, there are bedbugs -- we're against them. We ought to do all in our power to avoid them. Yet the Department of Education's policy toward bedbugs baffles the imagination; it will not provide lists of schools that have bedbugs. That's truly disturbing. And the rationale that schools have few beds, is plainly absurd. (If you aren't Lou Gehrig, does that mean you can't get Lou Gehrig's Disease?)

Right now the UFT and the DOE are fighting in court over whether they should release the names and scores of teachers who participated in a value-added experiment. The UFT says the scores are invalid and inaccurate, and the DOE seems to feel they're of vital importance.

More

A Detroit Charter School Teacher

tells what it is really like to work in a system hailed as a "reform" because the public system was neglected--on purpose--for decades:

It’s very different at the charter, despite the fact that the teachers and staff are doing a lot of preparatory work. It seems we are doing more work and getting less out of it. A much bigger workload gets put on teachers at the charter school. A lot more is asked of us—things that would normally be done by secretarial or administrative staff, such as hallway procedures.

Teachers were asked to develop those procedures after the school year had started. We were asked to come up with bathroom procedures, as well as disciplinary procedures. None of these were in place when school began. How can a school function without those basic rules and procedures in place? If the teachers don’t know what’s going on, the students certainly can’t be expected to.

I can tell you a lot of the teachers feel overworked and unappreciated. The biggest fear among us is losing your job. There is no union, there is no job security. Some of the new teachers have not even signed any form of a contract. Informational packets for new hires are not complete. It sometimes takes a month or so after you start work before you realize things are missing—including documents as important as forms for the health care plan. So some of the new teachers did not have health care for a month, though they eventually got it, retroactively.

You have to realize "reformers" and politicians will merely lower the standards to "teach" kids if they can't find enough suckers to major in education anymore.

With the Election of Barack Obama

it is very clear that both political parties have been hijacked by the neoliberals who are hellbent on destroying this country, but I wouldn't claim that the "left" has nowhere to go.

It is the VOTER who has nowhere to go, regardless of political party, or philosophy, unless he or she is in the tiny economic elite of this country.

Our biggest problems are apathy and a sense of helplessness. But we literally have NO time to screw around. Our major social safety net programs are just about to be destroyed so the crooks can have everything.

There is no major difference between a McCain administration, a Bush and an Obama administration. Obama, in fact, is in many ways worse. McCain, like Bush, exposes the naked face of corporate power. Obama, who professes to support core liberal values while carrying out policies that mock these values, mutes and disempowers liberals, progressives and leftists. Environmental and anti-war groups, who plead with Obama to address their issues, are little more than ineffectual supplicants.

This son of a bitch is much worse than a McCain or even a Bush, so you KNOW that's bad.