Success Academies Admits Teacher Turnover Problem Is Unsustainable

Big news out of the "no excuses" charter chain, Success Academies:

Success Academy, the high-achieving charter school network, told employees this week that it would shorten its school day next year, altering a feature that has distinguished the network from New York City’s regular public schools but has also made it hard to retain teachers.

The school day for most students at Success’ elementary schools will go from lasting eight hours 45 minutes to eight hours, with students being dismissed at 3:45 p.m. instead of at 4:30, according to an email from Success’ founder, Eva S. Moskowitz, that was sent to employees on Tuesday.

...

In the email, Ms. Moskowitz said the change, which was reported by Politico New York on Tuesday, was meant to address the concerns of teachers and families.

“We have found that the length of our current school day is difficult for both scholars and teachers, and it doesn’t leave enough time for clubs, sports programs, and the tutoring and extra support that some scholars need,” Ms. Moskowitz wrote. “It is also challenging for staff to find enough personal time to recharge and be at their professional best.”

“This schedule change will allow for more personal time on workdays,” she continued, “and we hope it will allow everyone to find the balance that will best serve our scholars, families, and faculty!”

Gee, you mean the 6:30 AM-6:30 PM workday for teachers, along with the "Homework Help" phone hours until 10:00 PM, was hurting their staff recruitment and retainment efforts?

I can't imagine why.

Go on Idealist and look at all the charter ads for teachers - especially for Success Academies.

They never stop running recruitment ads.

And no wonder - the turnover never stops at their schools.

It will be interesting to see what happens to their test scores and student attrition next year with the schedule changes. 

I would imagine they'll keep the same grueling test prep schedule for the kids, but now it will be shoved into the shorter school day.

That means other stuff - like their vaunted chess matches - will have to make way for the test prep.

That should be a great sell to parents: 

Well, we have shorter days, but the test prep schedule is the same, so we got rid of lunch and afterschool chess.

Don't steal possible.

Many New Jersey Parents Say No To Longer School Day

Governor Chris Christie, in between shutting down the traffic to the George Washington Bridge and extorting real estate development projects in Hoboken, decided he would add extra time and days to schools.

The Star-Ledger reports many parents around the state aren't so into that idea:

As they waited outside the Orange Avenue School one day last week for the dismissal bell to ring, a few dozen Cranford parents debated the merits of Gov. Chris Christie’s call for New Jersey students to spend more time in school.

"They’re in class enough," Scott Laniewski said.

"And the little ones need time to play," added Michelle Howlett, a former special education teacher. "They need downtime."

Standing near a swing set a few yards away, Barry O’Donovan disagreed. "I think they should have a longer year. They don’t go to school enough," he said. "And they’ll learn more."

The discussions are happening at schools and playgrounds around the state, as parents, educators and students discuss the benefits and drawbacks of more school time. Some parents welcome the idea, while others complain that summer vacation is too short already. Jersey’s July temperatures are too hot for school, said some. Others said the kids need time to relax.

"By the end of the day she’s tired," Marisol Quintero of Elizabeth said about her daughter in kindergarten.

...

Charles Sampson, superintendent of the Freehold Regional High School District, said Christie’s proposal will result in local districts taking a close look at how they use their time. But he said the first step is to understand the goal.

"What are we looking to improve? If it is to improve academic achievement on standardized tests, that is a more specific conversation than providing extended opportunities for children," he said. "You’re going to have very different reactions across the state, at the local level, and across households."

The goal is control and compliance- to socialize children to expect to be at work for 10+ hours a day, 50 weeks a year when they grow up, working whatever drudge jobs are still left in 15+ years and not complain or rebel against the system.

This jive about making children "competitive" in an increasingly globalized economy is horse bleep.

The economy is increasingly competitive because multi-national corporations use every piece of leverage they have to exploit workers, tax breaks, etc. to make as much money as they can.

The problem is not that children are not growing up knowing enough to do the work companies need them to do.

The problem is the companies don't actually want to pay people (except for the braintrust at the company, of course) and they'll do anything to outsource, automate, exploit or otherwise cut their labor costs.

That is not something that is going to be solved by adding time and days to school - unless by "solve" you mean socializing children to grow up expecting to be exploited and screwed in their work lives.

Not Adding Value

Barack Obama is a "No Excuses!" education reformer.

He believes teachers have to increase test scores and graduation rates of all students or be fired.

Obama was quite open about that when he cheered the firing of the teachers in Central Falls, Rhode Island back in 2010:

Speaking at an event intended to highlight his strategy for turning around struggling schools by offering an increase in federal funding for local districts that shake up their lowest-achieving campuses, Obama called the controversial firings justified.

"If a school continues to fail its students year after year after year, if it doesn't show signs of improvement, then there's got to be a sense of accountability," he said. "And that's what happened in Rhode Island last week at a chronically troubled school, when just 7 percent of 11th-graders passed state math tests -- 7 percent."

Central Falls is one of the poorest towns in the state of Rhode Island.

As of 2010, 26% of families and nearly 30% of individuals lived below the poverty line in Central Falls.

The town declared itself insolvent in 2010 and declared bankruptcy in 2011.

It can't afford to pay its pensioners, it had to lay off most of its municipal employees.

The factories in the town long ago closed.

Central Falls has all the ancillary problems that come with high rates of poverty - alcoholism, drug abuse, domestic abuse, homelessness, depression, etc.

But Barack Obama doesn't care about any of that.

All he cares is that the teachers in that town increase students' test scores and graduation rates, regardless of what is happening outside of school.

When teachers couldn't do that, Obama wanted the school "turned around" and much of the staff fired.

You see, teachers cannot make excuses when it comes to kids' lives.

Doesn't matter how bad the economy is, how depressed the town is.

NO EXCUSES!!!

Given Obama's "No Excuses!" education policies, what are we to make of the president's own economic record as of today?

(Reuters) - U.S. job growth braked sharply for a third straight month in May and the unemployment rate rose for the first time in nearly a year, raising chances of further monetary stimulus from the Federal Reserve to support the sputtering recovery.

Employers added a paltry 69,000 jobs to their payrolls last month, the least since May of last year, and 49,000 fewer jobs were created in the previous two months than had been thought, the Labor Department said on Friday.

The report is troubling for President Barack Obama, whose prospects of winning re-election in November could hinge on the economy's health. Republican opponent Mitt Romney called the report "a harsh indictment" of Obama's policies.

The jobless rate rose to 8.2 percent in May from 8.1 percent in April, although the increase reflected more people entering the labor force to look for work, a possible sign of growing confidence.

The data offered the clearest evidence yet that the deepening debt crisis in Europe and a slowdown in China were starting to dampen an already lackluster U.S. recovery. Concerns over the course of U.S. fiscal policy may also be weighing.

...

Stocks on Wall Street ended down more than 2 percent, extending May's rout. The Dow Jones industrial average sank into negative territory for the year.

Gee, that seems like a pretty dismal record.

Unemployment is heading back up, fewer people are finding work as we roll toward summer, the stock market is now in negative territory for the year and GDP has fallen below 2%.

While the country is not yet in imminent danger of a double dip recession, it is in danger of one.

It surely doesn't look like our intrepid Obama is adding much value to the American economy, does it?

Uh, uh - it sure doesn't.

Barack Obama is a "No Excuses!" kind of guy, so I bet he manned up and took ownership of these serious economic problems.

I bet Obama didn't try to blame the country's economic woes on outside forces like the Eurozone crisis or China's slowing economy or political gridlock in Washington.

After all, if Central Falls, Rhode Island teachers and teachers all over this country aren't afforded any excuses, why should Obama be afforded any?

He must see that, right?

Wrong:

(Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama told his supporters on Friday he could break Washington's gridlock in a second term, and pushed Congress to enact his "to-do list" prescriptions to heal the economy in spite of it being an election year.

...

The Democratic president has repeatedly blamed his opponents on Capitol Hill for blindly opposing his efforts to kick-start growth and job creation in the hopes that bad economic news would hurt his re-election drive.

Earlier on Friday, responding to a disappointing jobs report that drove down stock markets, he also pointed to high gasoline prices and Europe's brewing economic crisis as factors getting in the way of recovery.

So much for "No Excuses!"

The piss-poor jobs report, the falling GDP - these aren't Obama's fault.

They're China's fault! They're the Eurozone's fault! They're the Republicans' fault!

I guess the president's "No Excuses!" philosophy only counts for teachers, not for presidents with shabby economic records.

If the Obama White House was a school in Rhode Island, Obama himself would call for it to be "turned around" and all the employees fired.

I think America needs to hold Obama to his "No Excuses!" rhetoric.

David Coleman And The Common Core Consortium Bring The Thomas Gradgrind Philosophy Of Education To The Nation

New York Public School Parents blog covered the coming disaster that is Common Core pretty well yesterday.

The developer of the ELA standards, David Coleman, a former McKinsey consultant and Gates Foundation functionary with no actual teaching experience, has decreed that "non-fiction" and "informational texts" will supplant any other kind of reading material in schools, that "testing conditions" for reading must be mimicked so that students cannot be asked their prior knowledge about a subject, cannot be introduced to reading passages before they actually read them, cannot be given any historical context whatsoever

because the prescribed Common Core’s close reading strategy “forces students to rely exclusively on the text instead of privileging background knowledge, and levels the playing field for all.”

The new Common Core Curriculum decrees that 50% of texts read in K-5 be "informational texts." In 6-12, the prescribed percentage of informational texts is 75%.

You see, in the new global economy, only non-fiction, informational texts are privileged or valued; thus the new Common Core Curriculum prescribes just those kinds of texts.

In addition, reader response to texts is out. The Daily Censored sums up Coleman's approach to reading, response and emotion like this:

Common Core Curriculum Standards entrepreneur David Coleman is barnstorming the country claiming that schools need to de-emphasize fiction and obliterate any semblance of reader response. No feelings, no imaginations, no speculations: Just the facts, kid.

What children need, asserts Coleman, whose connection with what US public schoolchildren need is a masters degree from Oxford, is a close reading of “informational text.” That’s what he calls non-fiction. No opinion, no flights of fancy. No creation of new worlds. The teacher’s job is to make sure kids stick just to the text. Informational text, pronounces Coleman, is what will give students the world knowledge necessary to compete as workers in the Global Economy.

As Coleman so famously said at a panel of educators gathered at the New York State Department of Education in April 2011 to talk about the new Common Core standards,

“[A]s you grow up in this world you realize people really don’t give a shit about what you feel or what you think.”

You see, in Coleman's view, education is simply the tool to develop competent, efficient workers and so emotion, reaction, and personal perspective on things are found wanting.

Only facts and information matter:

As premier standards entrepreneur, Coleman is a busy man, having already co-written the Common Core State Curriculum Standards and the Publishers’ Criteria for the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts and Literacy[2]) . Coleman insists that teachers must train students to be workers in the Global Economy. In his words, “It is rare in a working environment that someone says, “Johnson, I need a market analysis by Friday but before that I need a compelling account of your childhood.” Translation to the classroom: No more primary grade essays about lost teeth or middle school essays about prepubescent angst. Instead, students must provide critical analysis of the “Allegory of the Cave” from Plato’s Republic, listed as an “exemplary informational text” in the Common Core State Standards for Language Arts.[3] If that’s judged as over the top for 12-year-olds, there’s always Ronald Reagan’s 1988 “Address to Students at Moscow State University.”

As I was thinking about this coming educational and societal disaster that has been pushed by the Obama administration and funded by Bill Gates and his malanthropic Gates Foundation, I couldn't help but be struck by an article I read in the Times about the new national rugby coach, Mike Tolkin, who is an English teacher at Xavier High School in New York.

The Times article (informational text, btw!) describes Tolkin teaching (shushhhhh, don't tell anybody!) Shakespeare:

Mike Tolkin, the newly appointed head coach of the United States men’s national rugby team, steps in front of his audience and begins speaking.

But there is no talk of drop goals or scrums. Rather, he deftly explains inverted syntax and figurative language. The topic is Shakespeare’s 18th sonnet, the one that begins, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day.” And the audience is a class of seniors at a Jesuit school in Manhattan, where Tolkin has spent more than 20 years as an English teacher.

The accompanying photo shows Tolkien teaching in front of a blackboard with (Omigod, how can such a school abuse its students this way!) a chalked outline on it.

No "smart" board there, no electronic media - just chalk, blackboard, Shakespeare, and discussion.

Clearly this man knows nothing from the Common Core and just what makes for good teaching. And clearly this must be a bad school that graduates barely literate cretins who cannot function in the globalized economy.

Because as the Common Core people keeping telling us, we must dispense with the old and the archaic, we must bring 21st Century technologies and ways of thinking and knowing the world to our classrooms or imprison students in an unemployable and impoverished future.

So it's time to throw out Shakespeare and revel in the minutes from Federal Reserve Open Committee meetings, preferably on iPads.

Interestingly enough, while the Common Core people like to promote their curriculum and philosophy of education as "cutting edge," there is something very familiar about a school of education that pushes nothing but facts and information.

Now please don't get upset with me, but I'm going to quote from a piece of fiction called Hard Times. And please don't misunderstand, but I'd like to give you some context - the novel was written by a fellow from the Victorian era named Charles Dickens.

Here is the relevant text, as published in 1854. It's long, but you can channel the Common Core approach by not having any feelings about the text as you read it or thinking about any of the context I just gave as background.

IN OTHER WORDS, JUST STICK WITH JUST THE TEXT!!!

Chapter I — The One Thing Needful

“NOW, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!”The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a schoolroom, and the speaker’s square forefinger emphasized his observations by underscoring every sentence with a line on the schoolmaster’s sleeve.

...

“In this life, we want nothing but Facts, sir; nothing but Facts!”

Chapter II — Murdering The Innocents

THOMAS GRADGRIND, sir. A man of realities. A man of facts and calculations. A man who proceeds upon the principle that two and two are four, and nothing over, and who is not to be talked into allowing for anything over. Thomas Gradgrind, sir — peremptorily Thomas — Thomas Gradgrind. With a rule and a pair of scales, and the multiplication table always in his pocket, sir, ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature, and tell you exactly what it comes to. It is a mere question of figures, a case of simple arithmetic. You might hope to get some other nonsensical belief into the head of George Gradgrind, or Augustus Gradgrind, or John Gradgrind, or Joseph Gradgrind (all supposititious, non-existent persons), but into the head of Thomas Gradgrind - no, sir!

In such terms Mr Gradgrind always mentally introduced himself, whether to his private circle of acquaintance, or to the public in general. In such terms, no doubt, substituting the words ‘boys and girls,’ for ‘sir,’ Thomas Gradgrind now presented Thomas Gradgrind to the little pitchers before him, who were to be filled so full of facts.

Indeed, as he eagerly sparkled at them from the cellarage before mentioned, he seemed a kind of cannon loaded to the muzzle with facts, and prepared to blow them clean out of the regions of childhood at one discharge. He seemed a galvanizing apparatus, too, charged with a grim mechanical substitute for the tender young imaginations that were to be stormed away.

‘Girl number twenty,’ said Mr Gradgrind, squarely pointing with his square forefinger, ‘I don’t know that girl. Who is that girl?’

‘Sissy Jupe, sir,’ explained number twenty, blushing, standing up, and curtseying.

‘Sissy is not a name,’ said Mr Gradgrind. ‘Don’t call yourself Sissy. Call yourself Cecilia.’

‘It’s father as calls me Sissy, sir,’ returned the young girl in a trembling voice, and with another curtsey.

‘Then he has no business to do it,’ said Mr Gradgrind. ‘Tell him he mustn’t. Cecilia Jupe. Let me see. What is your father?’

‘He belongs to the horse-riding, if you please, sir.’

Mr Gradgrind frowned, and waved off the objectionable calling with his hand.

‘We don’t want to know anything about that, here. You mustn’t tell us about that, here. Your father breaks horses, don’t he?’

‘If you please, sir, when they can get any to break, they do break horses in the ring, sir.’

‘You mustn’t tell us about the ring, here. Very well, then. Describe your father as a horsebreaker. He doctors sick horses, I dare say?’

‘Oh yes, sir.’

‘Very well, then. He is a veterinary surgeon, a farrier, and horsebreaker. Give me your definition of a horse.’

(Sissy Jupe thrown into the greatest alarm by this demand.)

‘Girl number twenty unable to define a horse!’ said Mr Gradgrind, for the general behoof of all the little pitchers. ‘Girl number twenty possessed of no facts, in reference to one of the commonest of animals! Some boy’s definition of a horse. Bitzer, yours.’

...

‘Bitzer,’ said Thomas Gradgrind. ‘Your definition of a horse.’

‘Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth.’ Thus (and much more) Bitzer.

‘Now girl number twenty,’ said Mr Gradgrind. ‘You know what a horse is.’

The Gradgrind theory of education, the David Coleman Common Core Curriculum.

Just the facts.

Just the information.

No feelings.

No thoughts.

No personal perspective.

That's Gradgrind's theory of education - but it's David Coleman's too.

It's what lies underneath the Common Core Curriculum, the education "reforms" pushed by Obama and Bloomberg and the other corporate reformers, the prevailing ideology promoted by the Gates Foundation.

So cutting edge a philosophy of education, the Common Core could have been around in 1854.

Obama Moves G-8 From Chicago To Camp David

Looks like the Obama Campaign, er, Obama White House wants to avoid ugly video of people protesting the G-8 in Chicago:

In a surprise turnaround, the White House announced Monday afternoon that Chicago won’t be hosting the controversial G-8 summit after all.

It will be held at Camp David instead of Chicago.

The NATO summit will proceed here May 20-21.

City Hall insisted that it was President Obama’s decision — that Mayor Rahm Emanuel did not ask the White House to take the more controversial of the two summits off Chicago’s hands.

One leading demonstrator pledged the protests “will go forward” despite the switch.

The White House issued a terse statement dropping the bombshell shortly before 3 p.m.

“In May, the United States looks forward to hosting the G-8 and NATO summits. To facilitate a free-flowing discussion with our close G-8 partners, the president is inviting his fellow G-8 leaders to Camp David on May 18-19 for the G-8 summit, which will address a broad range of economic, political and security issues,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said.

“The president will then welcome NATO allies and partners to his hometown of Chicago for the NATO summit on May 20-21, which will be the premier opportunity this year for the President to continue his efforts to strengthen NATO in order to ensure that the Atlantic Alliance remains the most successful alliance in history, while charting the way forward in Afghanistan.”

The Coalition Against the G-8 said the change won't make much difference - the protests will still go forward, albeit with minor changes:

Andy Thayer, a spokesman for the Coalition Against NATO-G-8, didn’t buy the City Hall spin. He believes that pressure from local business leaders concerned about an international onslaught of protesters convinced the mayor to cut the risk in half.

“There’s been a lot of grumbling from business leaders in the city about what a total pain in the neck this thing would be. [The White House] probably looked at what a mess they were gonna make of the city and decided to move part of it to Camp David,” Thayer said.

“I really think the business community began to lean on Emanuel and Emanuel probably realized he was in over his head.”

Although the economic summit will be held in the secluded environment around Camp David, Thayer stressed that the demonstrations in Chicago “will go forward, but maybe not on the 19th” of May.

“Our protest will go forward because NATO is the military arm of the G-8. NATO has bombed whole countries to smithereens and is currently engaged in the U.S.’s longest war in history,” Thayer said.

“I’d say plenty of people have got tons to be upset with NATO about. If anything, people understood much more readily what NATO was about than G-8, which is more of a shadowy institution in people’s minds.”

As for why the Obama Campaign, er, White House decided to change the venue:

Asked why the G-8 was moved from Chicago to Camp David, National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said, “The President felt that Camp David would provide an informal and intimate setting to have a free-flowing discussion with his fellow leaders. He very much looks forward to coming to his hometown for a critically important NATO Summit, as planned.”

The Obama administration and the Emanuel administration apparently under-estimated the hometown opposition to the summit and the fears of rioting that accompanied it.

Yeah, video of riots and stuff burning in the streets doesn't look so good in a Presidential Election Year.

It's a shame both Mayor Emanuel and President Obama aren't more curious about WHY so many people want to come and protest the political face of oligarchy as it makes decisions that sell most of us down the river for the benefit of the few, the powerful and the privileged.

Mass Teacher Firings: Betrayed Trust

That's how Providence, Rhode Island teachers feel about the notices this week that went out telling ALL Providence teachers they had been FIRED:

PROVIDENCE — After two hours of contentious discussion, the School Board voted 4 to 3 Thursday night to send out termination notices to each of the city’s 1,926 public school teachers.

More than 700 teachers jammed a high school gymnasium to tell school officials that their hearts were broken, their trust violated and their futures as teachers jeopardized.

“How do we feel? Disrespected,” said Julie Latessa, a special-needs teacher, before the vote. “We are broken. How do you repair the damage you have done today?”

Every teacher received a certified letter from the School Department on Thursday informing them that they might be terminated at the end of the school year. It also said the School Board would vote on the proposed dismissals at Thursday night’s meeting, which was moved to the Providence Career and Technical Academy to accommodate the huge turnout.

Many of the teachers were caught off guard by Mayor Angel Taveras’ decision to terminate teachers instead of laying them off. Last night, speakers questioned the mayor’s rationale: a $40-million school budget deficit and a March 1 deadline by which the School Department must notify teachers if their jobs are in jeopardy.

“This is a quasi-legal power grab,” said Richard Larkin, a teacher at Classical High School. “You want to pick and choose teachers. Well, we will not be bullied.”

...

Speaker after speaker demanded to know why they were being fired. Didn’t the teachers union sign on to the federal Race to the Top initiative? Hasn’t the union collaborated with Supt. Tom Brady on new curricula? Isn’t the union working with the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers on a new teacher evaluation?

“I’m feeling disrespected, devalued and marginalized,” said Ed Gorden. “Termination is a career-ender. You are putting a scarlet letter on every one of us.”

Teachers begged the School Board to issue layoffs rather than fire them outright because, under the layoff provisions, teachers are recalled based on seniority. There is no guarantee that seniority would be used to bring back any of the fired teachers. School leaders have been vague about exactly how seniority will play out in the case of terminations.

It's very simple - Providence, Rhode Island just busted the teachers' union.

They can hire the cheapest teachers now, dispense with the more expensive vets and save the district millions.

So what if the school system is destabilized beyond breaking?

This is ABOUT THE MONEY.

The rich oligarchs - these guys, the superrich who already own 85% of the country's wealth - want more, more, more.

The last powerful union - the teachers union - is being broken in their power grab.

And of course this has been done with the full consent and help of "liberals" like Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and George Miller.

Even worse, the teachers union leadership doesn't seem to understand the danger.

Or maybe they're on the neo-liberal payroll too, just like "liberals" like Barack Obama, George Miller and Bill Clinton.

Either way, while teachers are being fired all over the country for the simple of crime of making too much money or being a member of a union, AFT head Randi Weingarten is putting out plans on how to fire teachers with more ease.

Hey, Randi, haven't you noticed the oligarchs have been doing this pretty easily already?

So now we're down the the end game. Hundreds of thousands of teachers will be fired across the country this year, evaluation rules have been changed so that in the near future most teachers will be graded using value-added systems tied to test scores with huge margins of error, setting up perhaps a million teachers to be fired in the next few years.

And that's not hyperbole - that's reality.

Hell, they just fired nearly two thousand in Providence alone.

Oh, and those teachers in Central Falls, Rhode Island who were fired as a result of Obama's RttT policy who got their jobs back because they collaborated with the ed deformers to add time, days and other goodies to the school?

They got fired this week too.

ALL of them.

The lesson for teachers is to STOP COLLABORATING with the ed deform movement or their political shills.

How many fired teachers will it take for the NEA and AFT leadership to get that through their heads?

Or will it take an Egypt-like coup inside the teachers unions to finally bring the point across - NO MORE COLLABORATION.

COLLABORATION LEADS TO EXPLOITATION AND MASS FIRINGS.

The Providence teachers collaborated and gave the reformers everything they wanted.

They were fired for their collaborative efforts.

Same for the Central Falls teachers.

And the same will happen all across this country until teachers FIGHT BACK AGAINST THE OLIGARCHS

WTF?

Headline in the Times as of 4:12 PM:

January 7, 2011

Obama Shifts Economic Team to Focus on a Recovery

Explain to me what the f#$% the Obama economic team was doing BEFORE this?

Oh, wait - I bet I know.

Here's another headline and accompanying story that caught my eye and really explains what the Obama economic team was focusing on:

The Revolving Door

Just days after he left the White House, former Obama economic adviser Larry Summers was announced as the keynote speaker at the 17th Annual Global Hedge Fund Summit in Bermuda.

With yet ANOTHER anemic jobs report out today, perhaps the Obama administration will actually focus on creating jobs here in the U.S. and making sure middle and working class people either can get a job or keep the one they have.

But I doubt it - the new Obama chief of staff William Daley has been put in place to make the hedge fund criminals and banksters happy.

You can be sure that means f@#$ing middle and working class people - especially government workers and union members.

The Attacks On Unions

Both Republican and Democratic politicians are attacking unions these days.

They say things like unionized employees make too much money, have too many benefits, shouldn't have work protections, etc.

The Times covers the barrage of attacks on unions today:

Faced with growing budget deficits and restive taxpayers, elected officials from Maine to Alabama, Ohio to Arizona, are pushing new legislation to limit the power of labor unions, particularly those representing government workers, in collective bargaining and politics.

State officials from both parties are wrestling with ways to curb the salaries and pensions of government employees, which typically make up a significant percentage of state budgets. On Wednesday, for example, New York’s new Democratic governor, Andrew M. Cuomo, is expected to call for a one-year salary freeze for state workers, a move that would save $200 million to $400 million and challenge labor’s traditional clout in Albany.

But in some cases — mostly in states with Republican governors and Republican statehouse majorities — officials are seeking more far-reaching, structural changes that would weaken the bargaining power and political influence of unions, including private sector ones.

For example, Republican lawmakers in Indiana, Maine, Missouri and seven other states plan to introduce legislation that would bar private sector unions from forcing workers they represent to pay dues or fees, reducing the flow of funds into union treasuries. In Ohio, the new Republican governor, following the precedent of many other states, wants to ban strikes by public school teachers.

Some new governors, most notably Scott Walker of Wisconsin, are even threatening to take away government workers’ right to form unions and bargain contracts.

“We can no longer live in a society where the public employees are the haves and taxpayers who foot the bills are the have-nots,” Mr. Walker, a Republican, said in a speech. “The bottom line is that we are going to look at every legal means we have to try to put that balance more on the side of taxpayers.”

I would like to make two points here:

Notice how the debate is framed - union members are the "haves" and taxpayers are the "have-nots."

When did union members and not rich people, hedge fund managers, Wall Street CEO's and financial industry people become the "haves"?

Hell, these guys are the haves (see here and here.)

Next, notice how the politics are framed - Dems are going after union power and money, but Repubs plan to destroy unions completely.

This will be the meme sold by Cuomo, Obama and other anti-union Dems to continue to win union support for elections.

Yeah, we're bad, but the Repubs are WORSE.

I say, not good enough.

Unions need to fight both anti-union Repubs and anti-union Dems.

And they need to frame a new message - union members aren't the "haves".

They are middle class people who have work protections because they are part of unions. Other people could have these work protections too if middle and working class people worked together to fight the REAL haves - the hedge fund criminal class, Wall Street, the financial industry, etc.

Cuomo: People Can't Afford Any More Taxes

Little Andy today:

“People can’t afford to pay any more taxes, period,” Mr. Cuomo said. “In the real world, taxes are going up 5, 6, 7 percent. No one’s income is going up 5, 6, 7 percent. No one’s bank account is going up 5, 6, 7 percent. No one’s home value is going up 5, 6, 7 percent.”

Actually there is a group of people who are experiencing income growth of 5, 6, 7 percent.

That would be these guys.

And these guys.

But Cuomo doesn't want to raise taxes on either the hedge fund industry or Wall Street.

So instead we will get budget cuts, layoffs and pension cuts.

We will get the very same plan Bloomberg has brought to New York City.

Cuomo will lay off state workers, slash school aid, bust the public employees union and take away pensions from current and future government worker retirees.

He says we all have to sacrifice to make New York work.

But you know who doesn't seem to have to sacrifice?

These guys and these guys.

Not even the ones that helped bring about the 2007-2008 financial collapse.

Nope - it's the cops and firemen and teachers and sanitation personnel and government workers who Cuomo thinks should sacrifice.

As usual in the new Feudal America.

NY Times: "Educational Differences" Are Not The Reason For Rampant Joblessness And Income Inequality

Usually public schools, unions and teachers get blamed on theop-ed pages of the Times for the unemployment problem and income inequality in the country.

But a surprisingly sane editorial in today's Times says not so:

A college education is better than no college education and correlates with higher pay. But as a cure for unemployment or as a way to narrow the chasm between the rich and everyone else, “more college” is a too-easy answer. Over the past year, for example, the unemployment rate for college grads under age 25 has averaged 9.2 percent, up from 8.8 percent a year earlier and 5.8 percent in the first year of the recession that began in December 2007. That means recent grads have about the same level of unemployment as the general population. It also suggests that many employed recent grads may be doing work that doesn’t require a college degree.

Even more disturbing, there is no guarantee that unemployed or underemployed college grads will move into much better jobs as conditions improve. Early bouts of joblessness, or starting in a lower-level job with lower pay, can mean lower levels of career attainment and earnings over a lifetime.Graduates who have been out of work or underemployed in the downturn may also find themselves at a competitive disadvantage with freshly minted college graduates as the economy improves.

When it comes to income inequality, college-educated workers make more than noncollege-educated ones. But higher pay for college grads cannot explain the profound inequality in the United States. The latest installment of the groundbreaking work on income inequality by the economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez shows that the richest 1 percent of American households — those making more than $370,000 a year — received 21 percent of total income in 2008. That was slightly below the highs of the bubble years but still among the highest percentages since the Roaring Twenties.

The top 10 percent — those making more than $110,000 — received 48 percent of total income, leaving 52 percent for the bottom 90 percent. Where are college-educated workers? Their median pay has basically stagnated for the past 10 years, at roughly $72,000 a year for men and $52,000 a year for women.

A big reason for the huge gains at the top is the outsize pay of executives, bankers and traders. Lower on the income ladder, workers have not fared well, in part because health care has consumed an ever-larger share of compensation and bargaining power has diminished with the decline in labor unions.

College is still the path to higher-paying professions. But without a concerted effort to develop new industries, the weakened economy will be hard pressed to create enough better-paid positions to absorb all graduates.

And to combat inequality, the drive for more college and more jobs must coincide with efforts to preserve and improve the policies, programs and institutions that have fostered shared prosperity and broad opportunity — Social Security, Medicare, public schools, progressive taxation, unions, affirmative action, regulation of financial markets and enforcement of labor laws.

It's so interesting how the Times editorial writers think unions and the enforcement of labor laws will help combat income inequality in the country as a whole.

Whenever they write about teachers unions, they always say the unions ARE the problem and there needs to be fewer job protections and labor laws to protect teachers.

I guess unions are only good for workers outside of schools and the NY Times?

Regardless, it is good to see somebody dispense with this "Education Attainment Will Lift All Boats" jive.

Education attainment will certainly make these two guys even richer than they already are.

After all, one owns 38% of a for-profit college company and the other makes shitty computer software that tracks data, test scores and other numbers that excite ed deform types.

But it will NOT solve the income inequality problem

Forcibly taking money from the banksters and hedge fund criminals, throwing the crooked ones in jail, fairly taxing the rest, and ending corporate sponsorship of elections by making ALL campaign spending public would go a long way toward that.

Let's Get Rid Of The Professional Technocrats And Managers

Caroline Arnold at Common Dreams REALLY nailed this one:

Recently, on a cold morning with a little snow fooling around in the bright air, I was chilled by this sentence in an AP news story:

"The idea isn't to just raise revenue, economists say, but finally to turn Americans into frugal health-care consumers by having them face the full costs of their medical decisions ("Tax Break on Employer Health Plans Targeted" Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, AP 11/29/10)

Oh, of course -- all Americans should face the full costs of their decisions to have broken bones, heart attacks, or sick children, right?

Even more chilling to me were the underlying assumptions that economists/technocrats decide what's best for everyone, and that it's just as important -- if not more important -- to turn Americans into tame consumers for the private sector as it is to raise revenues for the common good.

This led me to some further, chillier assumptions:

* democracy and politics are messy and unmanageable and must be replaced by the disciplined professionalism of scientists, technicians and economists.
* ordinary citizens lack the ability to deal with the "real world" of money, brokerage, extraction of natural resources, wars, weapons and political power, and must be kept out of decisions about them or even knowing about them.
* our most important moral obligation to our children is to not leave them any debts.
* to be secure we must pre-emptively kill terrorists, would-be terrorists, might-be terrorists, geriatric terrorists, stone-throwing juvenile terrorists.....
* the economically sound is the morally right.

In his recent book "The Logic of Discipline", Alasdair Roberts proposes that democracy has been undermined by financial liberalization, free trade and a globalized economy. Technicians, economists and managers, he observes, are very skeptical of the ability of democracy to make "the right decisions" for financial stability and security, and they doubt that ordinary politicians and voters are ‘disciplined' enough to make sensible policy decisions.

That's why, Roberts suggests, we have a new generation of professional technocrats and managers supported by corporate money and ideology who are running not only our giant corporations but our political parties and our governments. They have reconfigured central banking, fiscal control, farm policy, taxes, health and safety regulations, port and airport management, infrastructure development and energy policy to meet the economic needs of multinational corporations in a global economy, not the needs of human beings on a fragile planet. And they have determined that secrecy is a basic necessity for good management, to keep the public from interfering with the professionals' decisions.

That's why we have public officials, democratically-elected (sic) politicians, banks and giant corporations like Amazon & PayPal all deciding that WikiLeaks is a criminal operation and Julian Assange is a terrorist who deserves to die.

Roberts further notes that the world of fiscal discipline is amoral: efficiency and objectivity always trump emotional and unreliable ideas of right and wrong

That's why -- or at least how -- in the pursuit of profit, efficiency and financial stability in global marketplaces, Americans are losing our moral compass. Many people now believe -- or say they believe -- that our most important moral responsibility is to the economy: reduce the deficit, cut taxes, protect profits, and shrink government spending, and keep actions of public officials secret.

So: we have messed up the entire world socially, economically, politically and morally, and have failed to address our habits of consumption that are warming the planet and destroying ecosystems that sustain the web of life. The oceans are rising, disaster and disease stalk humans and ecosystems, war and destruction consume natural resources, but the most important things to us are to cut taxes and government spending, reduce the deficit and keep secret the actions and words of government officials because we the people can't be trusted.

We don't even trust coming generations to find better ways to live together. Instead, we base our expenditures for their education, nutrition and health care on principles of profit and "fiscal responsibility", we teach them that killing in war is noble and exciting, and that most strangers should be feared and mistrusted, while we use up the natural resources they will need to survive.

What now? In this Christmas season it's tempting to speculate: What if God, finally fed up with our arrogance, pride, greed, cruelty and bungling, decided to send down a new prophet, a few more angels, or another Savior, what would they recommend?

A new prophet could hardly do better than Micah: "...what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?"

The angels of the nativity story gave us a fine moral ideal to aspire to: Peace on earth and good will toward all, but it's never caught on. Neither has the excellent advice of Jesus of Nazareth: Love your neighbors, turn the other cheek, go the extra mile.

Because finally, democracy and freedom cannot be created by a Savior, or by economists or presidents. Democracy can only be created by the people within it. If people can be "turned into frugal consumers" or kept in the dark about how their government operates, they aren't free and there is no democracy: they are not participants but pawns, not citizens but subjects.

Someone in the comments at Common Dreams wrote that "Anyone who wants to see what the current trends are leading us to should read the novels of Dickens."

That's so true.

If education reform were a Dickens novel, Joel Klein would be Gradgrind from Hard Times, Michelle Rhee would be Wackford Squeers from Nicholas Nickleby and Bloomberg would be Josiah Bounderby from Hard Times.

Make a helluva Dickens novel, yes it would.

Getting The Attention Of The Ruling Classes

This is one way to express anger at the way the ruling classes and the banksters are continuing to live it up even as the livelihoods and living standards of working and middle class people are destroyed and get the attention of the establishment:

LONDON – Furious student protesters attacked a car carrying Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla, vandalized buildings and battled riot police Thursday as a controversial hike in university fees triggered Britain's worst political violence in years.

In a major security breach, demonstrators set upon the heir to the throne's Rolls Royce as it drove through London's busy West End on its way to a theater. A group of up to 20 struck it with fists, sticks and bottles, breaking a window and splattering the gleaming black vehicle with paint.

In the frenzy, some chanted "off with their heads!"

Adnan Nazir, a 23-year-old podiatrist who was following the protesters, said Charles, 62, kept his calm, gently pushing his 63-year-old wife toward the floor to get her out of the line of fire.

"Charles got her on the floor and put his hands on her," Nazir said. "Charles was still waving and giving the thumb's up.

"It was just a surreal thing," he said. "It was completely manic."

...

Protesters erupted in anger after legislators in the House of Commons approved a plan to triple university fees to 9,000 pounds ($14,000) a year.

As thousands of students were corralled by police near Parliament, some strummed guitars and sang Beatles songs — but others hurled chunks of paving stones at police and smashed windows in a government building.

Another group ran riot through the busy shopping streets of London's West End, smashing store windows and setting fire to a giant Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square.

Police condemned the "wanton vandalism." They said 43 protesters and 12 officers had been injured, while 22 people were arrested. Police said the number of arrests would likely rise.

Home Secretary Theresa May said that "what we are seeing in London tonight, the wanton vandalism, smashing of windows, has nothing to do with peaceful protest."

The violence overshadowed the tuition vote, a crucial test for governing Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, and for the government's austerity plans to reduce Britain's budget deficit.

It was approved 323-302 in the House of Commons, a close vote given the government's 84-seat majority.

Many in the thousands-strong crowd outside booed and chanted "shame" when they heard the result of the vote, and pressed against metal barriers and lines of riot police penning them in.

Earlier small groups of protesters threw flares, billiard balls and paint bombs, and officers, some on horses, rushed to reinforce the security cordon.

The scuffles broke out after students marched through central London and converged on Parliament Square, waving placards and chanting "education is not for sale" to cap weeks of nationwide protests aimed at pressuring lawmakers to reverse course.

The vote put Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and his Liberal Democrat party in an awkward spot. Liberal Democrats signed a pre-election pledge to oppose any such tuition hike, and reserved the right to abstain in the vote even though they are part of the governing coalition proposing the change.

Those protesting were particularly incensed by the broken pledge from Clegg's party.

"I'm here because the Liberal Democrats broke their promise," said 19-year-old Kings College student Shivan David. "I don't think education should be free but I do think that tripling fees doesn't make any sense. We are paying more for less."

Clegg defended the proposals, saying the plans represent the "best possible choice" at a time of economic uncertainty.

Sure, it's the "best possible choice."

God knows, we couldn't make the banksters and hedge fund managers pay their fair shares, right?

Or make Charles and Camilla take the subway to theater.

But tripling college fees in England while Charles and Camilla party it up, or lowering the minimum wage in Ireland and imposing a 500 euro tax on every family while keeping the corporate tax rates at 12.5%, or raising taxes here in the U.S. on individuals making less than $20,000 and families making less than $40,000 while extending the Bush tax cuts - that we can do.

Boy, how'd you like to see Bill and Melinda Gates get rocked in their limo by a riotous crowd?

Or people chanting "Off with their heads!"

How about Bloomberg and Cathie Black encountering that kind of thing from the plebes?

That really would get there attentions, wouldn't it?

Obama Sells Out Workers On Korean Trade Agreement

Firedoglake covers the latest Obama broadside against the American worker pretty well:

This morning the White House announced that the following noble protectors of American workers endorsed the NAFTA-style Korea Free Trade agreement:

US Chamber of Commerce CEO Tom Donohue; President of the National Association of Manufacturers John Engler; Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit; JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon; Amway CEO and top Republican funder Dick DeVos; Big Bank lobby group Financial Services Roundtable President Steve Bartlett; and more. [Also, the MPAA]

That’s an impressive array of people who are dedicated to protecting the ultra-rich and not giving a damn about real working Americans or American jobs. How could the Obama White House top that?

Here’s the second round of endorsements from the White House for NAFTA-style Korea Free Trade; mind you the White House is actually bragging about these names:

* PhRMA
* Wal-Mart
* RIAA
* AT&T
* Mitch McConnell

It’s like a party for the Corporate Axis of Evil, and Obama’s throwing a kegger.

How's that for Change We Can Believe In?

The CEO's of Walmart, Citigroup, Amway, AT&T, JP Morgan Chase, big bank lobbyists, the chamber of commerce and Big Pharma backing an Obama trade agreement that will sell the American worker out and help enrich corporate coffers.

And let's remember, it has ALREADY been the most profitable quarter for American corporations EVER while the unemployment rate has gone up to 9.8% and long-term unemployment is even WORSE.

Heckuva job, Barack!

Still selling the American worker down the river even after corporate shill Rahm "F#$% The UAW!" Emanuel has left the building.

I guess we know what Obama really values.

The Death of the American Middle Class

Very sad, and sadly true.

Sigh.

It isn't going to get any better when we have corrupt politicians like Andrew Cuomo saying rich people don't have enough say in government and pay too much in tax.

UPDATE: I wrote this post and scheduled it BEFORE the job numbers came out at 8:30 AM.

Those numbers do not give one confidence that things are turning around for the middle class:

In a jolting surprise to the economic recovery and market expectations, the United States economy added just 39,000 jobs in November, and the unemployment rate rose to 9.8 percent, according to the Department of Labor.

November’s numbers were far below the consensus forecast of close to 150,000 jobs added and an unchanged unemployment rate of 9.6 percent.

More than 15 million people remained out of work last month, and 6.3 million of them have been unemployed for six months or longer.

Private companies, which have been hiring since the beginning of the year, added 50,000 jobs in November. Most of those increases came in the form of temporary help, where 40,000 jobs were added, and in health care, with an additional 19,000 jobs.

Retail jobs declined by 28,000 in November, while manufacturing, which had showed some strength earlier in the year, lost 13,000 jobs. Government jobs dropped by 11,000 in the month.

Bad. Really bad.

But President Obama has it all figured out - he's going to freeze the salaries of federal workers and promote policies that call for teachers to be paid by commission instead of salary.

And Repubs plan a government spending freeze totally.

I bet Obama will jump on that idea and call it his own.

Yeah, that should turn things around.

Maybe that'll turn things around right back to double digit unemployment.

Instability At Charter Schools

Gee - I can't imagine why people who are expected to put in 60-70 hour/6 day work weeks burn out so fast:

Seventy-one percent of charter school leaders say they plan to leave their schools within five years, raising questions about the stability of the culture of those schools, according to a report released last month by the Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington.

The rate of turnover of leadership is based on a 2007 survey, which had 400 respondents who were charter school leaders in six states.

This study of charter school attrition rates for school leaders comes on top of a study released this summer that revealed teacher attrition rates at charter schools are double the rates at traditional public schools.

Some education reform advocates and charter school proponents like to say that the people leaving these schools are bad teachers and principals, so the high rate of attrition is actually a sign of quality, not a sign of weakness.

Perhaps.

Or perhaps the 60-70 hour /6 day work week isn't healthy for individuals or sustainable for institutions?

Of course, since this is the culture charter schools and education reform advocates are trying to promote all across this country, maybe we will all be doing 70 hour/6 day work weeks soon.

Welcome to the machine.

Corporate Profits Highest On Record - But Here Come The Public Sector Layoffs

The top 1% have stolen the country:

The nation’s workers may be struggling, but American companies just had their best quarter ever.

American businesses earned profits at an annual rate of $1.659 trillion in the third quarter, according to a Commerce Department report released Tuesday. That is the highest figure recorded since the government began keeping track over 60 years ago, at least in nominal or noninflation-adjusted terms.

The government does not adjust the numbers for inflation, in part because these corporate profits can be affected by pricing changes from all over the world. The next-highest annual corporate profits level on record was in the third quarter of 2006, when they were $1.655 trillion.

Corporate profits have been doing extremely well for a while. Since their cyclical low in the fourth quarter of 2008, profits have grown for seven consecutive quarters, at some of the fastest rates in history.

Best quarter ever for the corporations - but Cuomo and Christie and Bloomberg and the rest of the corporate shills are crying poverty and calling for budget cuts, layoffs and benefit erosion.

How is it that corporate America could be doing so well while everybody else is scared they're going to lose their jobs, their health care, their pensions or 401(K)'s, and their Social Security?

The best emblem of corporate America I can think of today - Cathie "Lay 'Em Off With A Smile" Black - is coming into the NYC school system to lay off 8,000 teachers, change the salary structure from steps to bonus-based, and rid the system of as many veteran salaries and benefits as she can.

Even if Black doesn't get the job, some other corporate shill will do it for Bloomberg.

Meanwhile corporate profits are at an all-time high and Wall Street is handing out hiring perks like no-interest loans, signing bonuses, and unlimited expense accounts.

This is the kind of stuff that has been happening in the private sector ever since Reagan and that is the largest reason why corporate America just had its best quarter ever and everybody else is struggling.

They're squeezing costs and squeezing labor.

Now corporate America is bringing these "corporate values" to the public sector.

And rather than fight this stuff and call them out on it, the unions say "Well, what can you do? We have to save as many jobs as we can, so we'll take the paycuts and benefit cuts."

No wonder they own us like serfs.

No one is fighting them.

Canceling Recess

Some school districts are canceling recess because students haven't made the "benchmarks" set for the battery of standardized tests they have to take every year.

What a swell idea!

Additional test prep and drilling will certainly make them better test takers.

Maybe.

Or maybe not.

Sometimes taking a break to move around, socialize, breathe, or just run with joy to not be doing test prep goes a long way toward helping students to focus later on test prep and drills.

But in the current climate, I'm sure all the ed deform editorial boards and politicians will applaud this move to cancel recess and replace it with test prep and drills.

Perhaps they will even call for the canceling of evenings and weekends as well.

There can never be too much test prep for these people.

Unless their own children attend a school in that district, of course.

You can be sure President Accountability would hit the roof if this happened at Sasha's school.

As Bloomberg Lays Off Teachers, Wall Street Hires Tens Of Thousands With Perks

Herein lies the problem with modern America:

While the economy limps forward, high-powered, lucrative jobs are returning to Wall Street, causing critical shortages of skilled financial services workers, labor experts tell The Post.

Firms are tripping over each other for talent, bringing combined financial employment in the industry for New York City to some 432,200 in September, a jump of 10,000 since February, according to the Labor Department.

The hot new sectors, coming with six-figure salaries, bonuses and flashy perks, include capital markets, investment banking, compliance, fixed income, back-office operations and wealth management. Meanwhile, demand for MBAs has grown as firms ratchet up offers to graduates straight out of business school.

A shortage of suitable candidates is not surprising. Wall Street is recovering from the worst of the credit crisis disaster that toppled Lehman Brothers in 2008, and younger, promising candidates looked elsewhere, including Washington, DC, for high-paying positions, while Wall Street licked its wounds the last two years.

"Firms are starting to recognize some opportunities for growth and are carefully maneuvering their positions after the bloodletting in 2008 and 2009," said Jim Ross, a Wall Street veteran who's searching for employment himself after a stint as a senior executive at the New York Stock Exchange.

...

Perks are rising as well. Unlimited expense accounts and no-interest loans are being held out to entice candidates into adviser and broker positions.

...

Bonus expectations are heating up too. The 2011 Glocap Hedge Fund Compensation Report notes that year-end bonuses among hedge fund pros are expected to climb five percent on average this year, the second consecutive year that bonuses have increased.

An eFinancialCareer.com survey this month found pros in the financial tech sector hold a 4.8 percent unemployment rate compared with the nation's 9.6 percent rate, and are expecting bigger bonuses this year compared to last.

So while cities and states all across the country lay government workers off, cut programs and slash pay and benefits, Wall Street big shots - many working for the same firms that nearly brought economic collapse to the country in 2008 and are now bringing fraudclosure to the country in 2010 - are taking jobs with unlimited expense accounts, no-interest loans, expectations of high bonuses and other perks.

No wonder 85% of the wealth in this country is owned by 20% of the people.

And the crazy thing is, it's STILL not enough for them.

The top 20% are STILL trying to drive down wages, grab more of the wealth, screw more and more of the working and middle classes, and bust all of the unions.

Until we DO something about this, middle and working class Americans - the vast majority of the country - will continue to fight for a smaller and smaller piece of the economy.

Right now, the Obamas and the Bloombergs and the Cuomos blame this wealth disparity on education levels and claim the problem lies with the American education system, not corporations.

But that's garbage.

We're in the tail end of class war that the financial class declared 30 years ago.

With the help of politicians in both parties and a corporate-owned media spreading the message of free market ideology, things do look bleak.

When politicians from Rahm Emanuel to Little Andy Cuomo claim the best way to solve problems is to make everything into a Darwinian competition a la Race to the Top, you know we're in trouble.

And they're the Democrats, the party that is supposed to represent the interests of working and middle class Americans.

But even with the game rigged so badly against working and middle class Americans, there are a couple of things we can do.

The first is to STOP voting for Dems because they're the lesser of two corporate evils.

Rahm Emanuel may have nicer social policies than Tom Delay, but when it comes to issues relevant to union members and working and middle class people, he and Delay are the same - on the side of the banksters and the corporations.

Next, we CAN support politicians who are champions of the working and middle classes and unions - even if they're going to lose the election.

Backing a winner does NOT make me a winner.

Backing a politician who supports policies that benefit me makes me a winner.

Remember what Eugene Debs said: "I'd rather vote for what I want and not get it than vote for what I don't want and get it."

For too long, we've done it the other way around.

Finally, we can continue to try and educate others to blame the right people who created this mess we're in.

Union members didn't create this mess.

Teachers didn't create this mess.

The crooks on Wall Street, the hedge fund criminals and the real estate developers created this mess with the aid of politicians of BOTH parties and the Federal Reserve.

Let us KEEP repeating this message until it sinks in and people begin to organize against the real criminals.

The anger is palpable and to quote Joe Strummer, "Anger can be used."

Let's use it against the crooks who stole our country.

Kinda like this Irish parliamentary member:

D.C. Considers Adding Time To School Day

So much for the days of Rheeform going out the door with Rhee:

The two Southeast Washington middle schools are less than a mile apart. The real distance that separates them is the number of hours their students spend in class each week.

At Johnson Middle School, the day is 61/2 hours, 8:45 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. Students at AIM Academy, a KIPP charter school, stay for nine hours, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Thursday, and 71/2 hours on Friday. That doesn't count the mandatory 15 days of summer school and numerous four-hour Saturday sessions. In all, AIM kids spend 40 percent more time in class than their D.C. public school peers.

Longer school days are expensive and complicated to execute, requiring buy-in from teachers, parents, after-school programs and child-care providers. And the evidence that extended schedules actually improve academic performance is mixed at best.

But new support for a school calendar that breaks the traditional 61/2-hour, 180-day mold may force the District to give the idea more serious consideration. President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan have called for longer days and shorter summer breaks. And school districts across the country are experimenting with extended days, especially as a way to help low-income students. Last month, D.C. Council member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3) introduced legislation that would add 30 minutes to the public school schedule.

...

One unanswered question is whether a longer day leads to more learning. The most extensive ongoing experiment has yielded mixed results. Creators of the Massachusetts Expanded Learning Time Initiative, which involves 22 public schools across the state, say the additional 300 hours a year have given students a richer academic experience and provided more time for teachers to plan and collaborate. They report that the schools are in higher demand among parents.

But an independent evaluation found that, with the exception of higher science scores for fifth-graders, there were no statistically significant differences between schools on expanded schedules and those with conventional days.

"ELT seems to have had no significant effect on a whole range of student outcomes, including [standardized test] scores, attendance, participation in out-of-school activities . . . or level of engagement in school," said Elena Silva, a senior policy analyst at Education Sector, a Washington think tank.

They keep using KIPP schools, which have 9 hour days and a few Saturdays a month on the school schedule, as a model for Rheeform.

And the KIPP people say they are "passionate" about the longer school days.

Yet there is NO evidence that longer school days do what Rheeformers claim they are doing.

So why add extra time to the day and year?

Might the added time and days not be about academic outcomes at all?

Might they be a social control mechanism?

I have said for a long time now that the Rheeformers - all funded by corporate sources - are looking to socialize students to grow up to be compliant corporate employees willing to work longer and harder for less money than their parents.

That's one of the primary motivations of the Rheeform movement.

Given the evidence that extended time and days does not have any significant effect on academic outcomes, what other reason can the Rheeformers have than wanting to get people used to a 60 hour/6 day work week?

We Live In A Third World Country

Here's more evidence of that:

Thousands of commuters into New York City confronted another round of potentially heavy delays on the Long Island Rail Road on Tuesday morning, a day after an electrical short in a pair of cables sparked a fire in a control tower, causing an almost total shutdown of train traffic for part of the day.

The railroad canceled 33 westbound trains into the city from Long Island — about one-fourth of its normal morning rush-hour traffic — and warned of “significant schedule changes and delays” for the morning and evening rushes.

Rail service was also temporarily suspended along the busy Northeast Corridor for the second time in less than two weeks because of an Amtrak power problem. New Jersey Transit officials said the problem was affecting Northeast Corridor, North Jersey Coast Line and Midtown Direct trains.

Infrastructure is falling to pieces and instead of using stimulus money to rebuild it, they used it to fire teachers, close schools and open charters.

And the economy is tanking anyway - here's the latest evidence of that:

Housing sales in July plunged to their lowest level in more than a decade, exceeding even the grimmest forecasts.

The National Association of Realtors said Tuesday that the seasonally adjusted annual sales rate of 3.83 million was 25.5 percent below the level of July a year ago.

July was the first month that buyers could not qualify for a tax credit of up to $8,000, so analysts were expecting weak results. But their consensus called for a decline of about 13 percent.

“Truly gut-wrenching,” said Jennifer H. Lee, senior economist for BMO Capital Markets.

July sales were down 27.2 percent from June. It was the lowest rate for existing-home sales, which include houses, condos, co-ops and town houses, since 1999. For sales of single-family homes, it was the lowest rate since 1995.

The number of homes on the market increased only slightly but the large drop in sales was enough to push inventory levels up to 12.5 months. A normal market has an inventory level of about six months.

Higher inventories tend to cause prices to decline, as many sellers compete to take advantage of fewer buyers.

The drop in sales came despite the lowest mortgage rates in decades.

Foreclosures continuing to rise, 13 months of inventory already on the market, lots more "shadow inventory" of foreclosed properties and homes not yet put on the market - whew!

Look out below!

Well, at least NY State won money to fire teachers, close schools and open up charters.