Another Day, Another Dog

His name is Duffy, and he is a year-and-a-half old Lhasa Apso.

Etc. and News

The HBO version of Mildred Pierce might be good, but I will stick with the 1945 version, thank you very much.
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In case you missed it, the complete Wills and Kate wedding is on YouTube, thanks to the monarchy's own channel:



link


In case you are in for comparisons with Charles and Diana's wedding, somebody on YouTube last year somehow had a videotape of the entire event, back in the days when VHS tapes were rare in the UK, and the quality is absolutely perfect.

Here are parts and two:





You can find parts three through eight at this link

It's hard to watch in the knowledge it was an arranged marriage that was over before the wedding started, but it's worth comparing it with yesterday's event.

Too Many Outrages

My God, with "Democrats" like these, who the fuck needs Republicans?

Do these morons have ANY idea at all what would happen if the debt ceiling isn't raised?

Rename the country the Untied States of America.

The Wedding of the Day

I have to say nobody does weddings like the British royal family. They know how to do it, with all of the ceremony and pomp.

That's why hundreds of millions of not billions of people watch royal weddings like William and Kate's.

I even woke up at ten to three this morning to watch the ceremony live, held at Westminster Abbey, certainly one of the world's great buildings, on BBC America. I woke up just when Queen Elizabeth arrived.

And yes, Kate's dress was absolutely perfect. I was hoping for a Grace Kelly-style dress which is never dated, and I wasn't disappointed. Thank God it wasn't a sleazy dress like so many modern wedding dresses, and it wasn't the goddamned mess Diana's was. Diana's looked like a bunch of bed sheets sewn up together. It swallowed her up although the veil was beautiful. Kate's was perfect, but of course this woman knows how to put herself together.

The big question given recent history is whether the marriage will last. All I can say is if this one doesn't, then just about nobody's will.

Clip of the balcony "kiss" here.

Teachers ARE the Enemy

of the "reformers" because education is one of two factors responsible for upward mobility for the vast majority of people.

The other, of course, is effective unions.

Both must be destroyed in the name of "reform" and "efficiency."

This pisses me off, though:

In this atmosphere of hostility to public schools and teachers, it has become nearly impossible to have a rational discussion among educators, parents, advocates, youth and policy-makers about what should be done. Honest analyses suggest that removing ineffective teachers is an excessively slow and arduous process, though unions are often blamed when administrators have failed to document problems systematically. Likewise, the LIFO system for layoffs does need reform because it contributes to high turnover in the most disadvantaged schools. These schools are the hardest to staff, and in cities like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, many veteran teachers have found ways to avoid being assigned to such schools. But candid conversations about how to solve these problems are extraordinarily difficult when any comment critical of unions is likely to be used as a weapon by the right.

Bull fucking shit about "honest" analyses about how arduous and slow it is to remove "ineffective" teachers.

It is goddamned EASY to get rid of teachers, effective or not, while it is impossible to remove administrators. The ONLY reason it takes long is because of the arbitrators' schedules. That's it, like any other legal proceeding.

Jesus fucking Christ you morons.

Dead News Day News

Despite the existence of Obama's birth announcement in the Honolulu Advertiser in 1961, which should have quelled the "birther" nonsense, some are still trying to get mileage out of it despite the White House actually producing a birth certificate.

I still want Obama's voter registration card.
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Fed chair Ben Bernanke continues to declare open class warfare on the masses.

Another word for it is "austerity."
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Another louse has been appointed a school district superintendent making obscene money.

This jerk is only 39 years old, so you know his teaching experience is limited, if it exists at all.
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It Appears

Washoe County School District is stuck with Superintendent Heath Morrison for the time being. He has gone on the record saying he will NOT return to Montgomery County, Maryland, his former hunting grounds, to take the open superintendent job there.

I suspect the district doesn't pay enough money for him to move back.

Meanwhile, life is tough for new deputy superintendent of instruction for CCSD Pedro Martinez, a Broadie like Morrison, who will take his new job there and get some free housing allowances from "private donors" (anybody want to bet ol' Eli and Bill have something to do with this?). Martinez has utterly NO experience as a classroom teacher but instead is trained as an accountant.

I'd provide a link to this, but it's that Vegas paper, so I won't.

Etc. and News

It didn't matter to the "birthers" there was irrefutable proof of Obama's U.S. citizenship when the birth announcement was published in the Hawaiian papers back in 1961, but the White House decided to issue a copy of the certificate of live birth of the president anyway.

Enough of this shit.

I want proof he is a member of the Democratic Party.
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Don't think for one minute a dictatorship couldn't flourish in the United States of America.

Look no further than Detroit's Bob Bobb, an Eli Broad goon, who is destroying the city's schools over the objections of parents and teachers.

Last week, layoff notices were sent out to all 5,466 teachers in the Detroit school district. Under a new law signed by Republican governor Rick Snyder, emergency financial managers have dictatorial powers to void collective bargaining agreements, dissolve school boards and other elected bodies, and sell off public assets. Bobb has said he will nullify the labor agreement with teachers next month, enabling him to ignore seniority when choosing which instructors to retain.

Bobb has utterly NO qualifications to run a school system, yet he is allowed unilateral powers.

Time to get rid of this shitbag.
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Heller is getting Ensign's job, as everybody knows.

Etc.

It's the poverty, stupid, when it comes to education.

Poverty and transience especially are vastly more important indicators of whether a child does well in school than anything going on in an individual school.
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If we need to generate "good jobs," it is important to define what a "good job" is.

We all know it, of course, and those "good jobs" were there largely because of unions or the possibility of unionization.
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Could Detroit be Eli Broad and the Broad Foundation's Waterloo?

And no, I didn't bother to watch the 60 Minutes puff piece on ol' Eli, either.

Obama Must Not Be Re-Elected,

and that's because he will accelerate America's decline faster than if a Republican does it.

Obama is giving the Republicans everything they want without even putting up a fight; at least if a Republican, even a Tea Party type, was in the White House, the Democrats would act like an opposition party instead of a bumch of fucking wimps.

In many ways he is WORSE than a Republican, especially on education policy, which is right out of the Milton Friedman playbook. The very foundation of democracy is under relentless siege.

Lots more here.

I always said Obama was a goddamned disaster. He exceeded my already low expectations of him.

Considering the Movement

to dismantle public education, there should be NO surprise at all there is a lesser known movement to return this country to the glory days of child labor.

After all, if we are going to limit higher education opportunities to everybody but the rich, the kids have to have something to do.

This is really the goal of education reform, and that's to make sure the masses never advance beyond menial, slavelike labor.

Never mind there is massive unemployment among adults.

Years Ago

I gave up the idea of purchasing women's clothing in the so-called standard sizing and now merely buy clothes in the XS-3x-sizing range. I stopped wearing dresses years ago, so it's mostly pants and tops. I also wear two different sizes, with a larger size on the bottom.

The fact my weight, like many people, fluctuates, makes buying standard sizes a complete waste of time and money. What is the point in buying clothing in three or four sizes depending on the time of year, as the weight gain is primarily in the winter months?

I also long, long ago quit buying anything with a tailored waist. It's elastic waistbands for me now and always, as my waist is almost nonexistent.

Best thing ever invented.

Etc.

When it comes to the social safety net, there is not a dime's worth of difference between the two national political parties anymore.
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Playing politics: If Democrats were really serious about raising tax rates on the rich, they'd have done it when they had control over both houses of Congress.

All they are doing with this is gearing up for 2012.
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A man reviled by researchers for peddling unproven causes of autism now has his theories getting a second look.
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Cross Off Nevada

as a state which gives a crap about teachers and whether the state gets any good ones, for if this "reform" goes through, advanced degrees won't count towards the salary of teachers.

This despite the fact teachers have to pay--at their own expense--courses to get those degrees and the fact they must take courses in order to renew their licenses.

These reformers feel there are so many out-of-work teachers, these teachers will take any kind of shit and abuse hurled at them.

And then when the supply dries up, the standards will be lowered so that high school graduates will be "teachers."

When You Have Gone on the Record

as admiring Ronald Reagan, should it be a surprise at all that when you are elected president, you emulate him to the point of having almost identical or even more rightwing policies?

Of course the outrage is this guy is supposed to be a "Democrat."

He is selling the country down the river by going against the best interests of those who elected him.

Surprise, Surprise!

Another Broadie appears to be unqualified, in this case a deputy superintendent of instruction.

Martinez is giving a pretty lame excuse why he should get the job and not somebody vastly more qualified:

Martinez, 41, said his lack of classroom experience is partly “by design“ so he can provide a fresh perspective. He said he’s part of a national trend of nontraditional candidates becoming educators. He noted that U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan was never a classroom teacher, either.

Note when a person quoted in the article says we need to expect more unqualified people polluting the education landscape in the name of "reform."

Etc. and News

This is almost as bad as the outrageous Seath Jackson case.

There are going to be lots and lots of money paid out in lawsuits.

The victim describes the attack at this link.

Obituaries

One of television's greatest comedy writers has died. Madelyn Pugh Davis, who with Bob Carroll, Jr., wrote the scripts for the legendary I Love Lucy television series, has died at the age of 90.

She continued to work with Lucille Ball over the following decades.

"Madelyn was such a class act," Arnaz said. "She was a very private person, very soft-spoken, genteel, feminine — all those lovely words you associate with great ladies. And yet she had the ability to write this wacky, insane comedy for my mother.

"She and Bob together were just such a wonderful team, a great match-up. They complemented each other's zaniness."

Davis and Carroll, who were along for the "I Love Lucy" show's entire ride, wrote a string of classic episodes such as the ones in which Lucy and Ethel ( Vivian Vance) are chocolate candy dippers trying to contend with a fast-moving conveyor belt, Lucy stomps grapes in Italy, and she gets increasingly drunk doing a TV commercial for the health tonic Vitameatavegamin.

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Republican strategist William Rusher, who also published William F. Buckley's magazine National Review, after a long illness. He was 87.
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Actor Michael Sarrazin, 70, of cancer.
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Norwegian distance runner Greta Waitz, 57, after a six-year battle with cancer.
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Etc.

If you're a public school teacher, you have many, many reasons to be outraged over the "reforms" instituted and are coming down the pike.
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In this climate of fear and intimidation, teachers over 50 and veteran teachers are not safe from administrator wrath.

No matter how petty the charges, they will find a way to get rid of teachers as a pure cost-saving measure, just as it was done to me. And if a principal screws up, well, the higher-ups will make sure they defend these nitwits to the hilt.

ALL veteran teachers and all older teachers will be scapegoated and kicked out of the system.
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Yes, Sarah Palin really is the mother of Trig.

Not that any further proof is really needed.
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Diane Ravitch gives the current education "reforms" a resounding "F."
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It's pass the trash time as disgraced former Seattle schools superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson is in line for a sup gig in Newark, Jersey.

The worse administrators are, the better they do.

If You Want Any Further Proof

we no longer have a democracy, just look at what is being proposed in Washington under the guise of "austerity."

Of course this is something being pushed by the WTO, World Bank, and IMF, neoliberals all wanting even more tax breaks for the tiny number of rich by placing the financial burden on everybody else.

link

Thanks to Obama, there really is NO difference at all between Democrats and Republicans, only the latter being comprised more of circus show freaks than the former.

Etc.

Some backdoor deals must have been in the works ever since Shelley Berkley announced her intention of running for the Nevada Senate seat.

Now that Ensign is resigning in a couple of weeks, Gov. Sandoval can put in a GOP replacement who will be an incumbent when up for election.
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Another Broadie screwed up things for taxpayers.

The Answer is Widespread Cheating

This is just fucking unbelievable, but this district is yet another one taken over by Broadies:

Many educators and parents are petrified because they know that high-stakes standardized tests don’t measure real learning and result all too frequently in narrowed curriculum, cheating and a climate of fear. And linking student test scores to teachers’ grades is plain unfair, given that teachers don’t control most of the factors that go into how a student is prepared to take a test on any given day.

Of course the tests don't actually measure learning, and students regularly blow off the tests. By the way, it isn't only standardized (or norm-referenced) tests that are the problem but also CRTs, which seek to measure a student's performance against state or school district benchmarks for different grade levels and subject areas. Ostensibly they are supposed to be more "fair," but the same problems can happen as with the norm-referenced Iowa or Stanford Achievement tests.

The first comment says it all:

As I posed earlier regarding a different article, the reason why the Charlottes-Mecklenburg schools are going testing crazy is that the superintendent of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools is Peter Gorman, who is a Broad Superintendent Academy alum.

Anyone who knows about the Broad Foundation knows that it pushes a corporate business-model approach to school "reform." It wrongly ties the "economic competitiveness" of the U.S. to student test scores. The Broad Foundation touts "competition" like charters and vouchers.

Gorman is one of those education "leaders" who has very, very limited teaching experience himself.

He recently told the Charlotte are Board of Realtors that standardized tests were, in fact, "scientific." Apparently he doesn't know very much about assessment.

He also told the Board of Realtors that "The teachers from Teach for America – a program that puts recent college graduates who didn’t major in education
into the classroom for two years – is one of our best sources of energetic, effective teachers." Apparently he hasn't read very much of the research on Teach for America teachers.

Gorman is one of those suck-ups who applauds Arne Duncan at every opportunity. He praises Race to the Top. He drools over Bill Gates and he lauds the Broad Foundation. And he seeks and takes their money.

Gorman is a guy who fancies himself a "leader" but who simply follows the corporate business-model "reform" crowd. He as stated that in the Charlotte schools, "We will link pay to performance and create standards that are rigorous and explicit to measure effectiveness. " And, continues Gorman, "we
will consider their [teacher] input ." How noble of him

Apparently Gorman is also not well-acquainted with the research on pay for performance (merit pay) either. Indeed, if a school system or organization were go ing to implement such a pay system the very first critical requirement is that it be designed and administered with the direct cooperation and consent of those it will affect.

Gorman cites that conservative canard (think Eric Hanushek) that having a "great teacher" three or four years in a row eliminates the "achievement gap." You don't have to do anything about poverty or motivation or parenting or any other social problems...the teacher can and will fix it all. But it just isn't true.

Gorman is a "leader" who slobbers when he talks about Teach for America. He's been criticized for laying off veteran teachers in the Charlotte schools while hiring TFA teachers, and he vows to continue that policy. Gorman calls his administrators his "boots on the ground for identifying and rewarding excellence." and while he says teachers will be involved in developing value-added evaluations , it appears that the work comes mostly from the Gates Foundation and a small in-house group of top aides.

Gorman is a self-aggrandizer who claims he'll "lead the way" to education "reform."

But he seems to be "leading" from behind.

You're not kidding.

Education Follies

A disgraced Eli Broadie lands on his feet and gets a job working in Chicago.

He is sure a real winner.

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Another one has appointed himself dictator of Detroit schools. The "Democrats," of course, are just as if not more culpable than the Tea Party types.


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News, Comments, Etc.

Neoliberalism or libertarianism and Nazism are two sides of the same filthy, ruinious coin.
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Hey, There Are Always Jobs at McDonald's

This is absolutely pathetic:

The addition of thousands of positions at an employer such as McDonalds is, however, indicative of a significant trend taking hold throughout the US economy; to whatever degree large manufacturers and service companies are adding jobs, they are doing so on the basis of poverty wages. In the auto industry, for example, the major companies are in the process of increasing the number of employees at their plants who work for $14 an hour, as opposed to the average $28 an hour previously earned by workers at these enterprises. They are doing so with the active support of the trade unions.

And we have Republican assholes and neoliberal Democrats who want to abolish Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

Disgusting.

News, Etc.

As we know, the United States is no longer an attractive place for the multinationals to hire, thanks to neoliberal politics.

All by design, of course.
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Obama is gallivanting around the country campaigning for the Republican nomination by proposing the country needs to screw over the vast majority of Americans to protect the top one percent.
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The GOP doesn't want the brainwashed public to know that tax increases on the rich actually pay off the national debt.
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Every district that has a Broadie turns to shit.

There is not one single exception.

A whole lot more is here.
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Aside from the questionable assumption arbitrators are impartial and objective, the situation for Alabama teachers will get far, far worse as principals will be able to do whatever the hell they want to them.

It's the principals, stupid, that are the problem.

Surprise, Surprise!

Little George Bush may be gone, but his spirit lives on in Barack Obama.

On issue after issue Obama apes the "chimp" and one would argue even surpasses him, especially when it comes to educational "reform."

Morphing into Bush was not a willful act," said Aaron David Miller, a scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. "It was acquiescence to the policies his predecessor shaped and the cruel realities that Obama inherited."

That's giving Obama too much of the benefit of a doubt. The fact is he subscribes to the very same policies because he is a neoliberal, not a Democrat.

News, Etc.

The United States needs to follow Sweden's example and criminalize the purchase of sex rather than jail the prostitutes; this would virtually end it and certainly diminish the need for sex trafficking.

When people quit believing prostitution is a "victimless crime" but is instead a human rights violation, that's when real reform can happen and the practice all but stopped.

Men who exploit others should have their names plastered all over the media and subject to shame and humilation.
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The Nevada legislature thinks some "protections" for a tiny, tiny minority of frankly mentally ill people who are confused about identity are more important than legislation that would actually help many, many thousands of people such as banning discrimination against the longterm unemployed and banning credit checks for most job openings.

I guess the jobless are much less vocal than the "transgendered" community.

I have stated on this blog my position about "transgendered" people, and it goes against what most liberals or progressives believe. That's too bad, so sad, but just because one has cosmetic surgery to act out a fantasy doesn't mean one is the opposite sex. You are what you were born with. I am not referring to the very, very tiny number of people who are "intersexed" with physical defects, either, the only cases where "reassignment" surgery may be justified.

If You Ever Wanted to Know Why Ed "Reformers"

seem to know absolutely nothing about public education, education, and teaching in general, just look at where these idiots went to school.

Hint: Most of them NEVER went to public schools.

I like Michael Winerip because he is one of the few "reporters" who really knows about education.

Coming to a School District Near You

is the Shirley Jackson method of principals and school boards getting rid of teachers they don't want.

Of course, ANY teacher can be rated "unsatisfactory" or put on a "plan of improvement" because the principal holds ALL of the cards. A lottery is used as a last resort after the "dregs" are gotten rid of, but in fact all teachers in this district are vulnerable without "tenure."

Yet people are still stupid enough to train for this "career," naively thinking it is a "calling" to "make a difference." Idiots all.

A Senate Subcommittee Report Came Out the Other Day

which told everybody what everybody already knew, and that the Wall Street crash was a result of widespread criminality.

I would say aided and abetted by corrupt politicians in Washington who decided regulations were too cumbersome, or if they supported regulations, their donors did not.

Of course, nobody has gone to jail for this.

One reason for the absence of prosecutions is the power of the individuals involved, all of whom wield immense influence over politicians, the media and the legal system. But it goes deeper than the status of individuals, just as the sordid state of affairs as a whole arises not from individual greed, but rather from a profound crisis of the entire system.

The criminalization of the American ruling class is the outcome of more than three decades in which the accumulation of wealth by the corporate-financial elite has become increasingly separated from real production. In its pursuit of profit, the ruling class has dismantled huge sections of industry and turned ever more decisively to financial manipulation and speculation.
The ascendancy of the most parasitic sections of the capitalist class has been accompanied by a sharp decline in the living standards of the working class. The richest and most powerful layers have acquired staggering levels of wealth by plundering society.

The ruling class itself senses that to prosecute any of the leading figures in the defrauding of the American people (and the rest of humankind) would rapidly expose the criminality of the entire system.

It would mean putting the capitalist system itself on trial.

Well, yeah.

News, Etc.

Do cellphones cause brain cancer? Current evidence shows there isn't any real link.
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Unlike many serial killers or accused serial killers, accused murderer Joseph Naso wasn't considered by some of his neighbors to be a nice guy, if a little weird.

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D.C. teachers made their views known when they protested the Washington Post's anti-teacher reporting.
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It was certainly no paradise when the Bhagwan decided to move his cult to eastern Oregon some 25 or 30 years ago.
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It's Been a Bad Month to Be

a school privatizer, especially one of the Eli Broad Academy mold, but these cretins always somehow land on their feet and do better than ever.

I wish I could say the same for teachers who are forced out illegally, but it's downhill for a lot of us. We are destroyed economically.

The article posts the link to the article of Rockford superintendent's resignation, and I will have it here as well for future reference, if the story stays up.

Fat Chance Nevada Teachers Have a Chance

trying to argue against "tenure" when the public has been brainwashed into thinking these jobs are "lifetime jobs," which they are not.

Another ugly fact is if a vindictive or incompetent administrator wants to get rid of you, he or she can do it with the full support of the district and thus taxpayers. Teachers are under the mistaken belief they actually have rights.

I say this at the link:

Too bad, so sad, these Barbie doll bimbos (beloved by administrators because they are cheap and malleable) want to argue they were laid off and think they were better than teachers who had years in and actually know how to do their jobs It takes YEARS to be a good teacher, despite bimbos' claims to the contrary. One of these days THOSE bimbos will be veteran teachers, or teachers with more than one or two years in, or over 50, and they will soon discover this "reform" is nothing but an attempt to legalize age discrimination and cheat teachers out of their future pensions or deny them vesting altogether. The reformers don't care one bit about the kids and their rights to a stable learning environment, which having revolving door teachers does NOT allow. It's all about the money, always has been, always will be.

The public has been so brainwashed into believing "tenure" is a "lifetime job" when in fact it is nothing of the kind in K-12 public education. In theory it means a teacher cannot be fired without "due process" and has a right to a continuing contract. I say "in theory" because in reality the schools are so infested with lousy and incompetent administrators, beginning at the principal level, teachers discover they have no rights at all, certainly far fewer than in the private sector. Good principals are almost nonexistent in public ed; those who were good bailed out of the system when the idiotic reforms took hold a decade ago. So the ones who remain are the dregs unless they are at an age right before retirement. If these idiots want to get rid of a teacher, they can pretty much do it and for any reason or even fabricate a reason. Once the termination process starts, it is next to impossible for a teacher to "win" these rigged hearings. At WCSD, district officials encourage colleagues to lie under oath, destroy documents, deny witnesses for teachers, collude with the "union" and

continued) law firm, and other criminal acts but school officials cannot be prosecuted. The arbitrators, who are supposed to be impartial, are paid for by district monies and have hearings on school property. The hearings are a total farce. Although I know from experience WCSD's scheme of getting rid of teachers, this is standard operating procedure in almost every school district in the United States. Far from helping teachers, the "unions" are typically in bed with the districts and cut deals in some hope these corrupt officials will be in line for some cushy golden parachute district job when they leave their "unions." Most teachers thrown out are not thrown out for real misconduct; a principal can merely decide he or she doesn't want you or wants to cover up their own ineptitude and fabricate a case with the knowledge THEY cannot be removed from their jobs (they are unionized and tenaciously tenured).

Because the districts don't want to spend the money on litigation, they try to starve unwanted teachers into settling by forcing them on unpaid leave if they are "dismissed" by the principal. Of course a teacher gives up all legal rights in doing so and for a pittance in some mistaken idea the "resignation" would help them in future jobs, but there is no evidence of this. Many thousands of teachers lose their jobs each year besides reduction in force, contrary to the lies that it is "impossible" to fire a teacher. It is laughably easy.

"Tenure" in reality protects school districts from even more litigation by teachers by putting the brakes on a principal's worst impulses to get rid of people he or she doesn't want. But once that process of termination happens, it is almost impossible for a teacher to win an administrative hearing or afford an appeal or afford to sue in civil court.

THIS is the reality of teaching in Nevada and in other states.

News, Etc.

Thirty years after Reagan was deemed a "hero" for firing the air traffic controllers, nobody should be surprised at the scandals of lone controllers working graveyard at various airports around the country falling asleep on the job and risking the lives of those on aircraft.

Having lone controllers is merely to save money and to hell with safety:

Like everything else in the US, air safety is subordinated to cost. That dozens of major airports across the US rely on a single air traffic controller for overnight “graveyard” shifts raises deeply troubling questions. What if this lone controller becomes physically incapacitated? What happens if an emergency arises in which one airplane must receive the full attention of the lone air traffic controller?

There is abundant evidence to suggest that sleeping on the job is the inevitable outcome of working conditions imposed on air traffic controllers
.
A study by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) four years ago found that 61 percent of air traffic controllers had work schedules that “opposed normal sleep-wake patterns,” Bloomberg reports. “A schedule may look like this, the NTSB said then: The first day, a 3 p.m. shift start; the second day, a 2 p.m. start; the third day, 7 a.m.; the fourth day, 6 a.m. The worker may return to work a fifth shift at 10 p.m. on the fourth day to get a longer weekend, the board said.” Many air traffic controllers have only eight hours off between shifts, which leaves only a few hours for sleeping.

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A "Present" from the House Democrats

to the House Republicans, who promptly shot themselves in the ass.

I wish there was more of this.

The Speech Obama Should Have Given

It's a lot more effective than any pretty weasel words Obama would have said.

News, Comments, Etc.

It sounds like the new flick Atlas Shrugged, based on the Ayn Rand novel, is just as big a disaster as the 1949 version of Rand's The Fountainhead.

Rand, by the way, wrote the screenplay for the latter film.

In other words, not a single critic to date, from major and minor outlet, high or lowest of low of lowbrow, likes it one bit. I like the headline over the Chicago Tribune review: "Taxing Indeed." Still waiting for "Don't Go (Galt) There." Or "Born Under a Bad Ayn."

link
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While the veteran teachers are justified in taking early retirement, it's the kids who get screwed over when they have bimbos teaching in their place.

And of course the bimbos won't last five years in the system, not long enough to be vested.
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A former judge in a piece written last month says it's time to get rid of the charade called capital punishment.

The outrageous case of convicted serial killer Rodney Alcala, who has been incarcerated for 32 years following the murder of 12-year-old Robin Samsoe in 1979, demonstrates what a total mockery the death penalty is.

Before 67-year-old Alcala exhausts all of his appeals for his THIRD conviction, he will be dead of old age.
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Another Eli Broadie will pollute the Clark County School District.

No doubt another one will fill his job at WCSD.

Movie of the Weak

I never saw this documentary, The One Percent, until today. It was made five years ago, but it sure as hell is relevant today.

It really helps the filmmaker, a member of the Johnson family fortune, had the connections to talk to these dimwits, these assholes, and provide a firsthand account of their arrogance.

Crackpot "economist" Milton Friedman, may he burn in hell, is perhaps the worst of the bunch interviewed.

Part One (and you can watch the rest by clicking on the link on the video):

News, Etc.

Representative Shelly Berkley has announced her intentions to run for John Ensign's Senate seat.

Her likely opponent is Congressman Dean Heller from the second district.
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NYC students protest a teacher's suspension after a retaliatory principal was said to have written a false and defamatory letter about the teacher.

The teacher will likely be fired; after all, the principal must be protected at all costs.
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Despite First Amendment protections for teachers (and other public employees), an Allentown, Pennsylvania, superintendent plans to make good on his threat against teachers if they don't keep their mouths shut.
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Reno has been in the news quite a bit in the past couple of days. First a former resident was arrested in connection with four murders dating back from the 1970s and 1990s, Joseph Naso, and even more notorious is the fact one air traffic controller at the Reno-Tahoe International Airport was discovered sleeping on the job.
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This is a very good piece about the rise and fall of an iconic company.

The site is pay to play but there is free limited access.

Long before the fiscal crisis leading to Chapter 11 bankruptcy, however, ultimate control of the company and its profit left Jackson County. Transition to outside ownership began under John H.R. Holmes, son of the company's namesake Harry Holmes.

Ashland resident John Fox III, vice president of strategic planning when he left the company in 1987, said there was some angst when John Holmes relinquished controlling interest to R.J. Reynolds Development Corp. in a $74.1 million leveraged buyout in1986. Holmes became the company's president in 1968 and took the company public in 1976. Two years later, he and other veteran leaders were gone and RJR Nabisco had sold the company to Shaklee Corp. for $123 million.

"Everyone knows what generally happens after a merger," Fox said. "The new owner puts its own people in and those who were there are winnowed out. I don't think anybody resented Holmes selling, but there was some trepidation about what the new guys were going to do."

To say the least.
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A bullshit post in the Daily Kos which was later pulled was the start of a hoax about Sarah Palin being the grandmother of her son Trig rather than actually the mother, which she is.

Frankly, these assholes thought Palin should have aborted the pregnancy because of their extreme distaste that somebody would deliberately have a child with Down syndrome, and it pissed them off to no end that somebody who espoused anti-abortion views actually lived her beliefs.

Now a "report" from a so-called Ph.D. is making the rounds claiming the hoax about Palin being the grandmother of Trig could possibly be the truth and that Palin did commit a hoax by covering up for her daughter Bristol, who just happened to have a baby of her own some ten or 11 months after Trig was born.

In other words, we have an "academic" questioning the story which was a nonstory to begin with and merely a blogosphere rumor and wondering why more wasn't made out of it. This despite numerous photographs showing Palin obviously pregnant with having NO reason AT ALL for covering this up (after all, she didn't become McCain's running mate until months after Trig's birth). And this despite the fact Down syndrome is extremely rare in Bristol's age bracket percentage wise and the incidence more common with women in her mother's.

Truth didn't matter when it came to this. And still doesn't, apparently.

Does this "professor" have tenure, by the way? If so, it should be yanked.

He's a professor of communications, so evidently his credentials aren't a hoax.
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Obituary: Walter Breuning, 114, the world's oldest man, has died:

People began to arrive in Great Falls searching for work. He recalled transplants from North Dakota telling tales of desperate families pulling weeds from the ground and cooking them up for food.

Breuning's seniority paid off again — he held onto his job. But he and his wife never built their house. They sold the lot for $25, making a tidy $10 profit. It turned out to be the only time Breuning ever owned property — he was renter for the rest of his life.

Despite the hard times of the decade, he said what he considered the nation's greatest achievement came in 1935, when President Franklin Roosevelt signed Social Security into law as part of his New Deal.

"I think when Roosevelt created Social Security, he probably did the best thing for people," Breuning said. "You hear so much about throwing Social Security out. Don't look for it. Hang on to your hat. It'll never go away."

He should have run for president.
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What in the HELL was Zsa Zsa Gabor thinking when she married her bogus prince?

Von Anhalt is reportedly working with Dr. Mark Surry of the Southern California Reproductive Center in Beverly Hills. He made a sperm donation yesterday and told TMZ that he's spending close to $100,000 to go through the surrogate process.

"It was always my wife's dream for us to have a child ... and even though we won't be using any of her eggs, she would be thrilled to know I'm going through with this," Von Anhalt told TMZ. "I am so excited!! I hope Zsa Zsa is going to hang around for awhile. I want her to see and hold the baby's hand. She will be a mother again at 95!! It was her wish to have a boy

If the doctor goes through with this, he should lose his license.
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Another obit of note: Arthur Marx, 89, son of Groucho and author of two books about the comedian as well as many others:

Taken together, Arthur Marx’s two books about his father offered a bittersweet picture of life in the Marx home. He described himself as desperate both to escape from his father’s shadow and to please him, an impossible task. The comic genius who kept millions in stitches was, in his private life, miserly and emotionally distant.

“No matter how much he loves you, he’ll rarely stick up for you,” Mr. Marx wrote in “Son of Groucho.” “He’ll make some sort of wisecrack instead to keep from getting involved. It’s a form of cowardice that can be more frustrating than his monetary habits.”

When “Life With Groucho,” which was much sunnier than the sequel, was being serialized in The Saturday Evening Post, Groucho denounced it as “scurrilous” and threatened legal action unless substantial changes were made.

Arthur sent him a phony set of galley proofs with the requested changes but had the book published as written. Groucho never brought the matter up again.

Try Telling This Idiot-in-Chief

that Medicare isn't the problem, but the solution, as Robert Reich does.

If anything, it needs to be expanded and not cut.

Naturally the radical rightists want to rob seniors of any way to pay for medical care; if they aren't rich and can pay for their health care out of pocket, they can die.

But what does this neoliberal asshole in the White House propose for "spending cuts," when in fact REVENUE needs to be raised by taxing the hell out of the top one percent?

Here it is:

Obama made only one fleeting reference to this most important aspect of the economic crisis. He condemned the Ryan plan for proposing another $1 trillion in tax breaks for the wealthy, then added:

“In the last decade, the average income of the bottom 90 percent of all working Americans actually declined. The top 1 percent saw their income rise by an average of more than a quarter of a million dollars each.”

He then asked rhetorically, “And that’s who needs to pay less taxes? They want to give people like me a $200,000 tax cut that’s paid for by asking 33 seniors to each pay $6,000 more in health costs. That’s not right, and it’s not going to happen as long as I’m president.”

This was the high point of Obama’s populist demagogy, a typical dog-and-pony show in which the Democrats pretend to be the tribunes of the common man and the Republicans are assigned the role of Wall Street stooges.

Given the Fact We Have a Terrible Economy,

the 40 percent figure is probably conservative.

On the other hand, we have financial "experts" telling people they need to save a million dollars or more for retirement, and that's ridiculous. Many people get by just on Social Security if they really watch what they spend.

My former neighbor in Reno did that; she lived for years in a house that was long paid for. She managed to live just fine on $800 a month, and that was before her retired daughter moved in.

Of course the assholes in Washington can't allow for people to have anything in their retirement. Just simply raise the retirement age to 80 or 85 and get rid of Medicare and Medicaid, and all the world's problems would be solved when people die off in droves.

Sign the Pledge

It's pretty much a given to yours truly Obama didn't mean a goddamned word he said today and that he will sell seniors and the poor down the river in the name of "austerity." I didn't watch the shitbag's speech; in fact, he's worse than Bush to listen to because I KNOW he is a goddamned liar in bed with Wall Street and the neolibs.

Anyway, Democratic supporters of Obama who are worried he is going to (again) sell them down the river have signed a pledge they will not give a dime or donate one minute of their time to him if he caves in to the GOP.

I am not going to support him anyway. I was probably the first Democrat in blogland to have totally opposed him in the first place and saw right through him.

article

Sign the petition

Talk Is Cheap,

Mr. Lawn Chair:

Right now he's talking about tax rates. He is trying to achieve what he could have achieved (and then some) five short months ago when chose to break his word to his supporters to do otherwise and extend Bush's absolutely unconscionable tax cuts for the rich.

But he has just squandered his last chance to stand up to the Republican bullies. A temporary government shutdown would have been a small price to pay to take the Republicans and their childish arrogance down a notch, but he capitulated instead. He and Democrats in general would have benefited greatly had he stood and fought as Bill Clinton did in 1995, but instead he folded and gave the Republicans what they wanted, even MORE THAN they asked for when negotiations commenced. I wish I could claim credit for this joke but it comes from the political cartoonist Stu Carlson: What's the difference between a lawn chair and Barack Obama? Obama folds faster.

More about the speech.



Obama will never change. He is more concerned about "making nice" with people who will not compromise even if it means throwing the Great Society and the New Deal under the bus.

Thanks to Successful Propaganda,

people who are not rich don't know the truth about taxes.

The article is pretty good at exposing the truth and should be distributed far and wide.

Charles Schumer of New York, fought to keep the tax rate on hedge-fund managers at 15 percent, arguing that the profits from hedge funds should be considered capital gains, not ordinary income, which got a lot of attention in the news.
What the news media missed is that hedge-fund managers don’t even pay 15 percent. At least, not currently. So long as they leave their money, known as “carried interest,” in the hedge fund, their taxes are deferred. They only pay taxes when they cash out, which could be decades from now for younger managers. How do these hedge-fund managers get money in the meantime? By borrowing against the carried interest, often at absurdly low rates—currently about 2 percent.

Lots of other people live tax-free, too. I have Donald Trump’s tax records for four years early in his career. He paid no taxes for two of those years. Big real-estate investors enjoy tax-free living under a 1993 law President Clinton signed. It lets “professional” real-estate investors use paper losses like depreciation on their buildings against any cash income, even if they end up with negative incomes like Trump.

Frank and Jamie McCourt, who own the Los Angeles Dodgers, have not paid any income taxes since at least 2004, their divorce case revealed. Yet they spent $45 million one year alone. How? They just borrowed against Dodger ticket revenue and other assets. To the IRS, they look like paupers.

In Wisconsin, Terrence Wall, who unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in 2010, paid no income taxes on as much as $14 million of recent income, his disclosure forms showed. Asked about his living tax-free while working people pay taxes, he had a simple response: Everyone should pay less.

The rest of us, no matter how poor, are burdened with taxes so these bums can live high on the hog.

News, Etc.

Any "study" that claims there are more job openings now in education, an area where there are mass layoffs all over the country, cannot be taken seriously at all.
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It's been 150 years since the beginning of the Civil War in 1861, and as far as I am concerned, we as a country are headed right back to those days.
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DeFazio Should Be President and Not

this capitulating Reaganite sack of shit pretending to be a "Democrat":



It doesn't matter what the people want, for it's what the aristocracy and Wall Street want.

Don't expect Obama to do jack shit to help the American people.

True to His Neoliberal Roots,

the Shitbag-in-Chief plans to capitulate to the GOP and wage war on the elderly, disabled, and poor by proposing "austerity measures" on Medicare and Medicaid.

The Democratic Party needs to get rid of him and the rest of the neoliberal and crooked scum festering the White House and Congress.

Obama is really aiming for the Worst Democratic President in History, giving James Buchanan a run for his money.

I'd say Obama is actually well in the running for being the worst president in American history, bar none:

The main program we need to fear losing here is Medicare. When Gingrich shut down the government in 1995 over proposed cuts to Medicare, Clinton's courage in standing firmly up to him rehabilitated his presidency. But Obama is no Bill Clinton. Before another two months pass we may very well see Medicare, like Obama's once highly-touted health care reform proposal, handed fully into the hands of for-profit insurers. We will see seniors expected to pay half their Social Security into the hands of these insurers even to obtain half the coverage Medicare provides to them now.

And Obama has let his last chance to stop it go by the wayside. There is now no longer any way to stop the Republicans from using the threat of default to get whatever they want.

Barack Obama is the worst Democratic president since James A. Buchanan. He is weaker by far than any other, and the result is that we have now lost not only the Great Society and the New Deal, but will almost certainly lose many of the reforms that we have achieved since the 1870s or maybe even before (don't forget their attack on the 14th amendment). And it's all because Barack Obama "just wants to be friends," wants to be "President of ALL the people."

This piece of shit has to go.

News, Comments, Etc.

Donald Trump can't lose what he never had.

Never underestimate the stupidity of the American people, many of whom actually give credence to a billionaire who knows absolutely nothing outside his narrow area of expertise.
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Given how lousy and ineffective the teachers "unions" are in Nevada, I expect Sandoval will get his way about screwing over education in that state, as if it needs any further help in that direction.
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If teachers don't stand up for themselves, then who is going to do it?
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At least Dennis Kucinich had enough sense to marry his child bride.

Talk about in-your-face politics. And Kitzhaber's squeeze has ethics issues to boot.

There really IS nothing stupider than an old man. Kitz gets his trophy girlfriend to brag about and show off while she's living rent free with him, and she gets to further her own political ambitions in the process.

Disgusting.
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Movie of the Week

The Billionaires' Tea Party, or, How the Koch Brothers are Getting Away With Murder.

Viewing is free until the end of the month.

Chris Hedges Should Talk to Lois Weiner

and get the FULL picture of why there is a relentless attack against public education.

It's a worldwide trend in keeping with neoliberal ideas. It's all about limiting opportunities for the masses so that they can "compete" with China. Never mind the logistics that in these countries, the cost of living is far cheaper. The neolibs haven't thought about THAT problem.

Hedges:

“Imagine,” said a public school teacher in New York City, who asked that I not use his name, “going to work each day knowing a great deal of what you are doing is fraudulent, knowing in no way are you preparing your students for life in an ever more brutal world, knowing that if you don’t continue along your scripted test prep course and indeed get better at it you will be out of a job. Up until very recently, the principal of a school was something like the conductor of an orchestra: a person who had deep experience and knowledge of the part and place of every member and every instrument. In the past 10 years we’ve had the emergence of both [Mayor] Mike Bloomberg’s Leadership Academy and Eli Broad’s Superintendents Academy, both created exclusively to produce instant principals and superintendents who model themselves after CEOs. How is this kind of thing even legal? How are such ‘academies’ accredited? What quality of leader needs a ‘leadership academy’? What kind of society would allow such people to run their children’s schools? The high-stakes tests may be worthless as pedagogy but they are a brilliant mechanism for undermining the school systems, instilling fear and creating a rationale for corporate takeover. There is something grotesque about the fact the education reform is being led not by educators but by financers and speculators and billionaires.”

Of course the "academies" are not accredited, and these "leaders" by and large have limited classroom experience. There are a few exceptions, but not many.

News, Comments, Etc.

There is very little "value" added in those "value-added" "reforms" peddled by the privatizers.

Don't expect the "liberal" media to tell the truth.
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I Would Suspect the Budget Cuts,

dear L.A. Times, is why there isn't a quicker resolution to the cases of 300 teachers accused of (real) misconduct and are in jeopardy of losing their licenses.

One would think reading this typical hit piece of teachers there were all of these perverts running around the schools when in fact it is an extremely tiny number. Not everybody accused, by the way, is actually guilty of "misconduct."

More comments about the article.

President AWOL

I am not referring to George W. Bush, either, who never really WAS president, but instead I am referring to the current occupant of the Oval Office.

He is supposed to give a speech on Wednesday night, and his proposals sound like a total sellout to the GOP.

Why doesn't he simply change political parties and be done with it?

Krugman:

What’s going on here? Despite the ferocious opposition he has faced since the day he took office, Mr. Obama is clearly still clinging to his vision of himself as a figure who can transcend America’s partisan differences. And his political strategists seem to believe that he can win re-election by positioning himself as being conciliatory and reasonable, by always being willing to compromise.

But if you ask me, I’d say that the nation wants — and more important, the nation needs — a president who believes in something, and is willing to take a stand. And that’s not what we’re seeing. 

You can't be above "partisanship" in this political climate. Obama needs to do what the people who elected him demanded he do, but since his contributors were not "the people," he is listening to them instead.

Cartoon of the Day

(H/T Cannonfire. Too good to pass up.)

Pear Blossom Parade 2011--Medford, Oregon

News, Obits, Etc.

With all of the confusion about whether HRT is good for menopausal women, not to mention whether a low-fat diet is beneficial or that vitamin D and calcium prevent osteoporosis, women might just as well call it a day and die.
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Director Sidney Lumet, known for his work on films like Twelve Angry Men, Network, and Dog Day Afternoon, has died from lymphoma. He was 86.

He avoided Hollywood like the plague, which is helpful for one's sanity.
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Former NY governor Mario Cuomo tries to keep the liberal faith while his son Andrew has turned out to be a neoliberal piece of shit:

Except that it has. In the years after Cuomo delivered that address, a restive middle class, beset by industrial collapse and the dissolution of whole communities that went with it, grew ever more skeptical of liberal government, with its focus on poor and minority communities. And so Bill Clinton’s innovation in the 1990s was, in effect, to invert Mario Cuomo’s formulation. Most Democrats giving that speech in the post-Clinton era, Obama included, would have said that the party’s main mission was to serve the middle class without crushing the poor, rather than the other way around. That was, perhaps, the defining difference between Cuomo’s liberal moment and this one, and when I argued this point to Cuomo, he allowed that it was true.

What Cuomo didn’t say is that this probably also explains the political dissonance between him and his son, who seems to identify with a generation of Democrats who care more about the prose of government — restoring the faith of a jaded middle class through metrics and efficiencies — than about the poetry of liberalism. Although he consults with his father privately and speaks warmly of him publicly, Andrew Cuomo doesn’t talk much about his immigrant heritage or his passion for public housing, or anything else that might seem to place him squarely in his father’s tradition. In the weeks after I visited Mario, I tried repeatedly to reach the current governor to talk about his father. He declined to return the call.

His son is a spoiled rotten, clueless sack of shit, just like Barack Obama. Neoliberalism is a political poison and needs to be eradicated before it completely destroys the country.
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No surprise as new NYC schools "chancellor" Dennis Walcott has absolutely no classroom teaching experience.

One Thing Obama is NOT and That's He's a "Centrist."

He is so far to the right it isn't even funny. He gives the Republicans everything they want and doesn't stand for one goddamned thing.

It isn't even that he dislikes confrontation but that he actually ADHERES to just about everything the GOP wants.

He needs to step aside ala LBJ for the good of the country.

The New Face of Education

KCMO schools, headed by a Broadie called John Covington, has decided to sack a slew of probationary teachers, teachers who were trained to be teachers through a more or less traditional education program, no doubt to make way for a slew of Temps for America. The latter of course are "trained" to be "teachers" in a five-week crash course that prepares them for NOTHING when they are dumped into the hardest schools in which to teach.

Let's see...KCMO released 115 probationary teachers, yet it is going to hire 150-170 TFA "teachers" this fall.

Makes sense to me--NOT.

If I Were Robert Reich

I wouldn't count on the "Democrats" to do anything else but capitulate to the Koch brothers and their puppets' demands.

To paraphrase what John Edwards once said, you simply can't make nice with these people. They play for keeps, will not compromise, with the knowledge the Democrats will cave every single time.

The Democrats should have allowed the banks to go under and then start over to put back all of the regulations including Glass-Stegall (and to hell with what the World Trade Organization wants), raise taxes on the billionaires, millionaires, and corporations so that we once again have a progressive tax system, and perhaps this country would have a hope of getting back on the right track.

But now that the same neoliberal interests have bought off both political parties, it seems all but impossible to turn this country around.

Reich:

That we got into the Great Recession because Wall Street went bonkers and government failed to do its job at regulating financial markets. And that much of the current deficit comes from the necessary response to that financial crisis.

That the only ways to deal with the long-term budget problem is to demand that the rich pay their fair share of taxes, and to slow down soaring health-care costs.

And that, at a deeper level, the increasingly lopsided distribution of income and wealth has robbed the vast working middle class of the purchasing power they need to keep the economy going at full capacity.

“We preserved the investments we need to win the future,” he said last night. That’s not true. The budget he just approved will cut Pell grants to poor kids, while states continue massive cutbacks in school spending — firing tens of thousands of teachers and raising fees at public universities. The budget he approved is cruel to the nation’s working class and poor.

It is impossible to fight bullies merely by saying they’re going too far.

2012 Follies

Since Duncan and Obama are almost singlehandedly responsible for the demonizing of public school teachers and teachers' "unions," Duncan has a lot of goddamned gall criticizing Koch brothers puppet Scott Walker for doing the same thing in Wisconsin.

It's all about 2012 and pandering to a source of traditional Democratic Party donations, but teachers all over the country are royally pissed off at both parties.

The Government Shitdown

There are few things in life that are certain: death, taxes, and Obama and the Dems folding like lawn chairs.

These "Democrats" should have allowed a shutdown of the government and then subject the GOP to widespread ridicule. But, no, these goddamned worthless pieces of shit give the Republicans, or rather the Koch brothers, whatever they want.

They are worthless, completely and totally worthless.
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Contrary to What the Dictator of New York

or his hatchetpeople who serve as his "chancellors," few students will remember or give a shit about him or them when they leave the city's schools.

Unfortunately, mayoral control wrecks havoc everywhere in the system. As flawed as school boards are, they are far preferable to a one-man dictatorship, especially a man who is completely ignorant about public education.

Quote of the Day

"Come and get me, fucker."--Aiden Elliott to police. Aiden is the eight-year-old who was pepper sprayed by police at his Colorado elementary school after he had a severe meltdown threatening staff and other students.

A future Ted Bundy if he doesn't get major help.

From this GMA video, it appears mom is little more than an enabler.

News, Comments, Etc.

Just because Bloomberg ditched Cathie Black doesn't mean his successor, another unqualified "chancellor," is any better. If anything, he will likely be worse.
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Some 800,000 workers are threatened to be laid off as a result of a federal shutdown.
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Teacher trashing is nothing more than a vendetta, and it isn't based on the truth about education.
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Psychological screening should also be required of WCSD's principal candidates. Of course, the cronies will be able to jettison this long, convoluted process demonstrated by this flowchart.

They are pulling similar crap with the teachers. Now that they have been exposed as already gutting the "tenure" process by making all new hires one-year-only contracted workers, the district has decided to make sure NOBODY on the outside knows the duration of the jobs being advertised. A prospective teacher goes through a screening process with HR, the most corrupt and ignorant of all of the departments at WCSD, and then and only then do they get put on an eligibility list for principals.

The people with the same last names as current employees will merely circumvent the system, as they always do.

It's Not a Good Time to Be a Broadie

Yet another Eli Broad Superintendent Academy graduate comes under fire. This one, LaVonne Sheffield of Rockford, Illinois, and "class" of 2002, has been served with papers alleging defamation.

How juicy it is:

The former president of the Louisiana School Boards Association, Hammatt said the case is more about protecting the Rockford community and his professional reputation.

“Such public, defamatory statements cannot be left unchallenged,” Hammatt said. “The totally fallacious claims the superintendent made that night in February, during the televised school board meeting, were clearly designed to stifle public participation and to have a chilling effect on those who would dare to question her policies.”

Hammatt, of Baton Rouge, La., works as an independent researcher and public speaker. He has also been an instructor at Louisiana State University.

For fun, here is a copy of the actual complaint:

Noel Hammatt v. LaVonne Sheffield

It's Really Not About the Budget at All but About Ideology

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

The Republicans and neolib Democrats couldn't care less about the budget.

Oh, Happy Day

Another education "reformer" with no knowledge of education has bitten the dust:

Black and Mayor Michael Bloomberg met Thursday morning and "mutually agreed that it is in the city's best interest if she steps down as chancellor," Bloomberg said.

"We both agreed that the story had become her and it should be about the students," the mayor said at a City Hall news conference. Black did not attend.

The mayor appointed Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott as the new schools chancellor.

Of course the REAL problem is with mayoral control of schools rather than the traditional school board held accountable to voters. Until Bloomberg is sent packing, don't expect NYC school policies to change.

Michellini

The biggest "superhero" in "reforming" public education has turned out to be a wholesale con, a cheater, a fraud.

I am surprised she hasn't run for president.

During three tumultuous years as chancellor, Rhee sacked dozens of principals and over 600 teachers until D.C. voters turned Mayor Adrian Fenty out of office in an election in which her tenure was a major issue.

Ah, but Rhee had become famous for making the trains run on time, handing out $1.5 million in bonuses to principals and teachers of Washington schools that produced dramatic jumps in student achievement.

Except now it appears she really didn't. An exposé by USA Today reveals that scores of high-performing Washington schools displayed "extraordinarily high numbers of erasures on standardized tests. The consistent pattern was that wrong answers were erased and changed to right ones."

If you run schools like businesses, expect even more fraud.

Economist Joseph Stiglitz,

who wrote a great piece for Vanity Fair which was linked yesterday, gives an interview with Democracy Now! expanding on what he has written.

Snip:

JOSEPH STIGLITZ: That’s right. Why is it? I mentioned before that there are two ways of cutting the deficit. One is raising revenue; the other is cutting expenditures. Well, what’s the best way of getting tax revenue up? It’s to put America back to work. If America were growing, if we were back to our full potential, our output would be higher, and tax revenue would be substantially higher. So the best way to reduce the deficit, as I said, is to put America back to work.

Now, I thought that Bowles-Simpson is a recipe for making our economy weaker. If you start cutting budgets now, spending now, before the economy is back to health—you know, we already suffer from the deregulation, now this is going—we’re going to suffer again from the thoughtless deficit reduction. That means people are going to be out of jobs. That means revenues are going to be lower, and our economy is going to be weaker.

But the second point I raise is that it goes back to: look at where the revenues are going to be. When you have so much money going to the upper one percent, the only way of fixing the revenue problem is to raise taxes and have a more fair tax system. What they proposed was eliminating some of the deductions, say, for housing, mortgages. Well, if you do that now, house prices, which have continued to decline, would decline even more. But the more fundamental point is, even if from the long-term point of view you want to get rid of these mortgage deductions, you shouldn’t do that on the backs of the middle class. That should be viewed as a revenue-neutral. You lower the mortgage deduction, but you also lower the tax rates to offset it. That’s not a revenue—shouldn’t be a revenue enhancer. These are the people who have been doing very badly for the last 10, 15, 20 years.