Andrew Cuomo's War On Teachers Summed Up - "Pedophiles With Pensions"

Gubner Andy, do you smell that desperation? pic.twitter.com/Nr4N8UOocd
— sean crowley (@rastamick) January 6, 2015

That's the Cuomo strategy going into this legislative session - smear teachers as "pedophiles with pensions."

He signaled it here and here.

It's demagoguery pure and simple - but that's where he's going with the fight.

He's going to tell the public that he wants to put students above the "pedophiles with pensions," unlike those nasty teachers unions that defend sex criminals and incompetents.

Worthy of Joe McCarthy, the coming Cuomo campaign against teachers.

If we're really lucky, he'll give us a McCarthy moment and tell us just how many pedophiles there are in the school system that he says can't be gotten rid of.

But he'll probably just continue to do what he's done so far and make vague accusations and smears against teachers, then let his pals at the Post and Daily News carry the load of the attack for him.

And they will.

They'll use a couple of incidents to smear all teachers as criminals unworthy of a presumption of innocence.

I'd like to point out that FOX 5 has an anchor that was accused of rape (though charges were never filed against him) and a former reporter serving time on child molestation charges.

I could use those two cases to smear all FOX 5 employees as criminals and pedophiles and say there's a crisis of criminality at FOX 5 (as NY Post columnist Andrea Peyser once said of NYCDOE employees even as her fellow Murdoch employees were being arrested left and right in Britain on hacking charges.)

Given the two cases I mentioned at FOX 5, the percentage of accused or convicted criminals at FOX 5 would be comparable to, if not higher, than accused or convicted criminals working in the NYCDOE.

And if you add in all the Murdoch employees arrested for hacking and related charges overseas, well then - you really do have a crisis of criminality in the Murdoch Empire.

That wouldn't be a fair attack, of course, to smear FOX 5 employees for the crimes of one former colleague, an accusation lodged against a current colleague, and the criminal misdeeds of their fellow reporters in Britain, but it would be exactly the kind of thing Murdoch's minions engage in all the time at the Post.

It's a shame that the most powerful politician in the State of New York engages in the same kinds of attacks as employees for Rupert Murdoch.

But that's exactly what he's doing with his "Pedophiles with Pensions" campaign.

When Cuomo reemerges from mourning the passing of his father and goes back to attack teachers as "pedophiles with pensions" again, let's call him on his demagoguery.

Like I said earlier, it's McCarthy stuff, it's a witch hunt, and we can't let him get away with it.

Bad enough the Post and DN do it - we can't allow the Governor of New York to join them too.

NY Post Starts The Attacks On Teacher Tenure In New York In Earnest

I'm not going to link to the story because it deserves as few hits as possible.

But here's the gist - the Post has a prominent story attacking teacher tenure today that complains about the following:

State law requires that an independent hearing officer decide whether a tenured teacher is guilty of charges and, if so, set the punishment.

Each termination case, including witness testimony, cross-examination and arguments, can drag on for months and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Of 133 educators taken to trial since 2013, the city Department of Education has gotten just 50, or 37.6 percent, fired, it said. In 77 cases, hearing officers found the employees guilty of poor performance or wrongdoing, but imposed lesser penalties. Six cases were dismissed.

The Post wants a system where there is no due process for teachers, but even the Postie article acknowledges that when there are bad teachers on the payroll:

Michael Mazzariello, a former chief prosecutor of DOE teachers, faults administrators.

“The principals say we need to get rid of these teachers, but it’s the principals who gave them tenure and rated them ‘satisfactory’ year after year,” he said.

Clearly the attack on teacher tenure in New York is beginning its earnest propaganda phase.

You can bet the Daily News won't be too far behind with another in their series of PERV TEACHER stories and Campbell Brown and some of the other professional teacher concern troll class will be out in full force using a handful of examples of teachers engaging in unethical and/or criminal behavior to push the idea that all teachers are unethical and criminal and therefore not worthy of any due process protections at work.

After the propaganda phase, they'll put pressure on the politicians to gut teacher protections at the state level.

Given that Sheriff Andy Cuomo is engaged in what is turning out to be a real political race for re-election, I am doubtful he'll take the tenure battle up this year, not publicly in statements and certainly not politically since the legislative season ends in a few days.

But you can bet after he's re-elected that he'll be more amenable to the reformers' desires and I can envision a movement here in New York State where some in the political class start talking about gutting teacher due process protections, using both the California teacher tenure case and the propaganda that's coming from the Post and Daily News as cover.

A Coordinated NYCDOE "Perv Teacher" Propaganda Campaign In Motion

Perv teacher beat reporter Ben "Where are the perverts?" Chapman had a rubber room/perv teacher article in today's Daily News.

I dispensed with that article here.

This afternoon, the NY Post has an even more sensationalised article entitled "Abusive, Violent Teachers Let Off The Hook" that, like the DN piece, hammers away at the disciplinary process for teachers and claims guilty, violent perverts are allowed to not only go free from justice but continue teaching children.

Now if you're like me, you have one of those "Hmm..." moments when you see two separate but similar teacher-bashing articles show up in the New York tabloids on the same day.

It seems unlikely that it's a coincidence that four different New York reporters, two for the DN, two for the Post, got the idea to write up "perv teacher" articles on the same day.

Rather, it seems like a coordinated campaign coming out of Tweed to do one last "perv teacher" propaganda push to try and get some changes to the disciplinary process before Bloomberg flies off to Bermuda for good on December 31.

If I had to make a bet about where they go from here, I bet we'll get a Campbell Brown emergence from Galt Gulch or wherever the hell she lives these days to do some public appearances declaring the UFT pedophile defenders and a Chancellor Walcott appearance before some cameras to say how horrified he was to learn of all these instances of abusive and violent teachers still working in the system and how he needs to be given the tools to rid the system of these violent criminals and perverts right away!

Never mind that if these teachers were guilty of any crimes, they would be arrested and put in prison, which makes it hard for the UFT to defend them since, you know, they'd be in prison.

Never mind that it's clear the coordinated propaganda campaign emanated from Walcott's office in the first place, so why should he be surprised about any of these stories when it's his people planting them in the press?

This is the usual smear campaign stuff they do in Bloombergville, but it also has echoes of the Bush strategy over the Iraq war.

Remember when the Bushes, via Scooter Libby, planted the story in the NY Times via Judy Miller that Saddam had WMD's, then used that story as proof positive for why there must be an attack on Iraq - Dick Cheney himself announced this on Meet The Press?

Well, Walcott and the Tweedies are doing the very same thing here.

They're ginning up another perv teacher campaign, with compliant corporate press people happy to give them the space to hawk their agenda, then they'll point to those newspaper stories as proof positive for why the disciplinary process needs to be changed and any teacher accused of a crime should be fired right away regardless of guilt or innocence.

Perhaps with the sun setting on Bloomberg's corporate empire, they think they have one last chance to get something done before the end of the year.

Or perhaps they're just laying down makers for the future, getting ready for another heavy perv teacher blitz when de Blasio takes over.

Either way, these stories are part of a coordinated campaign meant to mislead the public into supporting a revision to the teacher disciplinary process that will give the DOE the power to fire a teacher accused of misconduct without a fair, impartial hearing.

Ben Chapman Goes Back On The Perv Teacher Beat

Daily News reporter Ben Chapman loves to hunt perv teachers.

It's an obsession with him, perhaps stemming from a message he gets from his superiors at Team Zuckerman that this is a story they want covered every few weeks, perhaps originating from something darker and more Freudian.

In any case, it's a subject he comes back to over and over and over.

Today, he and Rachel Monahan have a rubber room piece in the Daily News that reports the city spends $29 million a year on salaries for 326 teachers and administrators who have been "accused of abusing kids, breaking rules or just being lousy educators."

Mulgrew Stumping With Thompson, Attacks Weiner/Spitzer As Too Sleazy To Enter A School

UFT President Michael Mulgrew took a blunt object from his woodshed today and used it on Anthony Weiner and Eliot Spitzer:

At the ferry terminal on Staten Island, Thompson was met by U.F.T. members in blue shirts, who guided commuters over to meet him. U.F.T. president (and Staten Island resident) Michael Mulgrew was there, too.

"The buzz is being created, he's moving up," Mulgrew told me.

Mulgrew also complained about the attention being paid to Weiner and Spitzer.

"You have two candidates for citywide office that couldn't even pass the background check to be a teacher," he said. "And people are debating them as if they are serious candidates who should be given consideration where they wouldn't be allowed to step foot inside of a classroom or a school."

Mulgrew has a point, of course.

Weiner has admitted to texting with a seventeen year old, and while both he and she claim the communications were not sexual in any way, after repeatedly lying to and misleading people about his sexting habits, Weiner's credibility is not exactly at an all-time market high.

As a retired educator told him last week on Staten Island “As a former New York City Department of Education employee, 21 years as a teacher, nine years as an assistant principal, if I conducted myself in the manner you conducted yours, my job would’ve been gone."

As for Spitzer, last time I looked hiring hookers was a felony punishable by jail time and using state cell phones to hire hookers and state cars to drive you to the hotel to meet those hookers is a violation for state employees - even the governor.

Were Spitzer a teacher instead of a politician, he would have been fired from his DOE job when he was caught hiring hookers, arrested and prosecuted along with some of the other johns Spitzer himself put away.

He certainly wouldn't be entering a classroom or working in a school - and yet, if elected comptroller, he could be auditing school data while Weiner, if elected mayor, could be running the school system.

So Mulgrew has a point here about the hypocrisy of Weiner and Spitzer.

Of course, given the Mulgrew/Grady woodshed story that was never fully explained and the conflict of interest involving his sister, the NYCDOE and $11 million dollars, Michael Mulgrew shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a school either, let alone running the teachers union.

Former Teacher/Assistant Principal Confronts Anthony Weiner Over Character Issue

Many people have been saying for awhile here in the edu-blogosphere that if a teacher conducted himself/herself the way Anthony Weiner has conducted himself over the past three years, he/she would be fired.

Today on Staten Island, Weiner was confronted by a teacher who told him this to his face:

During a press event this afternoon in Tottenville, a local resident directly and repeatedly confronted Mr. Weiner over his escalating controversy, grilling the former congressman and questioning his “moral authority” as more than a dozen cameras clicked away.

Mr. Weiner was in the neighborhood to discuss home repair issues in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. But the media, which traveled in droves to the far-flung corner of the borough, was far more interested in Mr. Weiner’s scandals, which have driven national headlines all week.

“As a former New York City Department of Education employee, 21 years as a teacher, nine years as an assistant principal, if I conducted myself in the manner you conducted yours, my job would’ve been gone,” said resident Peg Grunda, a thicket of reporters ringing her and Mr. Weiner.

Mr. Weiner tried to defend himself, returning to a point he has often made: that his texting was a personal, private failing.

“In the privacy of your home?” Mr. Weiner asked the woman.

“In the privacy of my home,” she responded.

“I respect your decision,” he said.

But the woman wasn’t finished.

“Standing there, it wouldn’t have mattered if one year went by or five years went by. I don’t quite understand how you would have the moral authority as the head administrator in this city to oversee employees when your standard of conduct is so much lower than the standard of conduct that’s expected of us,” Ms. Grunda continued.

“Are you not voting for me?” Mr. Weiner asked.

“I would not vote for you, sir,” she affirmed.

“I want to let other people make that decision, fair enough?” asked Mr. Weiner. “My view is that I want to let your neighbors make their decision for themselves based on all the information they have … You wouldn’t deny them the right to make their decisions, would you?”

At that point, a Fox News reporter interrupted to reiterate Ms. Grunda’s question and insisted Mr. Weiner was not answering. After a brief back-and-forth, the ex-congressman invited her to ask another question.

“I know this is going to sound a little crass, sir, how do you present yourself on the public stage?” she inquired.

Mr. Weiner tried to pivot the conversation, arguing that people should be judging him based on the ideas he’s presented or his record, rather than the salacious details of his sexting controversy.

“I need people all the time to say to me, ‘I don’t like you Mr. Weiner because of something in your background, because of a vote you cast, something in your ideas book,” he said as Ms. Grunda attempted to get a word in and steer the conversation back to his scandal. “That’s what elections are. Politicians, people running for office, need people that like them. Sometimes they need people that don’t. That’s the way the process works. But that does not mean that I stop running because I run into a person who respectfully asks me a question and they disagree with me.”

Mr. Weiner, telling Ms. Grunda his mother was a schoolteacher, repeated that he cared about the struggles of the middle class. But she was unconvinced.

“Quite honestly sir, I think you care more about your ego then anything else,” she said.

Reporters, naturally, flocked to Ms. Grunda, whose home suffered significant storm damage last year, to get her followup reaction to the exchange.

“I was offended by the tone he took with me, But then again, I can’t say I was surprised. It seems his tone with women leaves something to be desired,” she said.

That was a great job by Peg Grunda to let Weiner know the double standard educators live with

He is unable to hear it, of course, because he doesn't think he did anything wrong.

That's often the case with these people in charge.

One standard for them, another one for everyone else.

And as NYC Educator keeps pointing out, a special standard for educators where accusation alone proves guilt.

Ben Chapman Back On The Pervert Propaganda Beat

Ben "Where Are The Perv Teachers" Chapman has another ridiculous piece of propaganda in the Daily News today "reporting" the following:

A parents advocacy group will spend $100,000 to rip mayoral candidates William Thompson, Anthony Weiner, Bill de Blasio and John Liu as soft on perv teachers.

The Parents Transparency Project, headed by former CNN anchor Campbell Brown, will begin airing an ad Monday to paint the foursome as too afraid of the teachers union to protect city students from sexual predators.

Four other candidates — Christine Quinn, Sal Albanese, Joe Lhota and George McDonald — signed the group’s pledge to not sign a new contract with teachers until the process for removing teachers accused of inappropriate behavior is overhauled. The union, which endorsed Thompson, has opposed legislation to streamline the process.

Chapman fails to report that the "perv" teachers still working in the NYC school system have never had criminal charges or allegations substantiated against them, which is why they're still working in the NYC school system.

As NYC Educator wrote in his post on the Chapman "perv" piece:

The charges are simply untrue. Legal expert Brown contends that most teachers charged are still working. That's a fact because they were not convicted. I realize that legal expert Brown and the Daily News cannot distinguish between charges and actual guilt, but it's kind of irresponsible they mislead their readers like this. For example, not a single person relying on the Daily News for information will realize that legal expert Campbell Brown wants Walcott to fire teachers who were not convicted.

We have now gotten to a world where unsubstantiated allegations are enough to get you fired and declared guilty in the newspapers - if you're a teacher.   

This is amazing when you think about it, because we still pay lip service in this country to being a "nation of laws" where you are presumed innocent unless guilt of a crime is established and proven.

If guilt is not established and proven, they don't throw you in jail or get you fired from your job or declare you a "perv" when writing about you in the newspaper.

Yeah, that last part is actually part of the presumption of innocence idea, although it's being broken here by the Daily News and Ben Chapman.

To wit:

Guaranteeing the presumption of innocence extends beyond the judicial system. For instance, in many countries journalistic codes of ethics state that journalists should refrain from referring to suspects as though their guilt is certain. For example, they use "suspect" or "defendant" when referring to the suspect, and use "alleged" when referring to the criminal activity that the suspect is accused of.

And if allegations are not substantiated and guilt is not established, the journalistic code of ethics extends to not writing about these teachers as if the allegations were substantiated or guilt was established, when neither is the case.

I wouldn't expect Campbell Brown, the right wing corporatist media shill with the union-busting agenda who is married to neo-con/Students First board member Dan Senor, to explain the disconnect between her charge that the NYCDOE cannot fire "perv" teachers from the reality that these teachers are not guilty of any crime, but it would be nice if the "journalist" from the Daily News would.

But it seems that although Ben Chapman calls himself a "journalist," he's actually a paid propagandist for the powers that be looking to smear teachers as "perverts," turn the public against them and strip them of their constitutional rights.

If Chapman were writing as a journalist he'd report the facts as they are instead of the facts the way Campbell Brown and Chapman's Daily News Boss, Mort Zuckerman, want them reported.

But I guess it's asking too much for Ben Chapman to report facts and truth rather than the propaganda his wealthy oligarch boss wants him to spew.

Alas, such is the state of "journalism" in America these days.

Where Is Campbell Brown On This?

From The Daily News:

An NYPD veteran plied a teenager with porn and booze before a Fourth of July sexual encounter that ended when his wife found the two in bed, police sources said.

Peter Ciollo, 29, was off duty when he allegedly targeted the 16-year-old victim over the holiday weekend, the sources said.

Ciollo was partying with two 16-year-old girls before participating in “multiple sexual acts” with the victim, Staten Island prosecutor Victoria Levin said Thursday at the cop’s arraignment.

Levin, reading from the criminal complaint, said the accused officer blamed the victim for what started on the night of July 4 and finished around 2 a.m. the next day.

 “She came on to me,” Ciollo reportedly told authorities. “She told me she was 17.”

Ciollo was released after posting $1,500 bail following his arraignment on seven misdemeanor charges, including attempted rape and sexual abuse.

 His purportedly cheated-on wife turned out to support her husband, and his lawyer said that Ciollo was innocent.

“Peter denies the allegations, maintains his innocence and looks forward to his day in court to get rid of these charges,” said defense attorney Richard Barrett.

 The wife wept on another relative’s shoulder as she left the courtroom with Ciollo.

According to the sources, Ciollo gave the victim alcohol before letting her drive his car. The cop allegedly provided her with more to drink before they returned to his home.

Ciollo, at some point, used a computer to show the girl pornography before kissing her on the lips and urging her to take her shirt off, the sources said.

The pair wound up in bed, where the officer had the teen climb on top of him while he rubbed his genitals against hers, the sources said.

The woozy girl later said she remembers waking up in somebody else’s underwear before Ciollo’s wife found the two in bed, the sources said.

The Staten Island cop, who joined the force in 2006, was suspended without pay from the 120th Precinct.

NYPD cops (or former cops) have been accused of this kind of thing before.

Last summer, for example, the New York Post reported the following:

An NYPD traffic agent has been arrested on a rape charge, police said yesterday.

A female acquaintance who went on a date with Charles Taylor, 25, of The Bronx, Sunday night told a relative the parking-enforcement worker slipped a drug in her drink while they chatted at Junior’s cheesecake restaurant in Brooklyn, sources said.

The alleged victim said Taylor drove her around, and she wasn’t sure where she was when he took her into an apartment building and raped her, sources added.

The accuser and the alleged attacker had also exchanged texts for at least a week, sources said.

New York Magazine reported that the victim in the Taylor case was 17 years old.

And then there was this case, also from last summer:

Brooklyn cop Arthur Roldan was arrested last night and charged with rape, menacing, and assault for allegedly attacking a woman he used to date at gunpoint while off-duty in Staten Island. He's been suspended without pay, the Daily News reports. NYPD officer Michael Pena was convicted of sexual assault and pleaded guilty to rape in June for a similar crime.

Then there was the case of the former NYPD officer convicted of statutory rape of a 14 year old suffering trauma from the death of her mother.

While I appreciate the Daily News covering some of these crimes and alleged crimes in the pages of their fine newspaper, I wonder where Campbell Brown is with her week-long DN series about all these "pervert" cops having sex with underage girls or assaulting women they taken out for the evening.

These cases all were reported in 2012 and 2013, so it's not like you have to go too far back to find a track record of NYPD cops or former cops engaging in this behavior.

And yet, no week-long series from Brown smearing all cops and law enforcement officers as perverts and rapists.

Maybe she's just been very busy with her "pervert teacher" series and is working on the "pervert cop" series for the future?

Or maybe she just doesn't give a crap about the cops and is going after teachers because she has an agenda (smear teachers/break union protections/bust the union)?

Anthony Weiner's Lucky He's Not A Teacher - Ben Chapman Would Have To Write About Him

@leoniehaimson Wiener's lucky he isn't a teacher, or it would be him on cover of Daily News.
— Arthur Goldstein (@TeacherArthurG) June 26, 2013

I eagerly await Ben Chapman's Daily News article investigating Anthony Weiner's Twitter communications with a seventeen year old female two years ago.

You see, Ben specializes in writing sensationalized articles in the Daily Mirror, er, News, on "pervert teachers" - even one's who have been cleared of wrongdoing.

But who cares if these teachers were cleared of the allegations?

For Ben Chapman and his corporate masters at the Daily News, the allegations alone are enough to prove guilt.

But while Ben's on the "pervert teacher beat" again, I suggest he ought take a closer look at former Congressman Anthony Weiner and his Twitter communications with a then-seventeen year old two years ago.

Weiner was communicating with this seventeen year old via Twitter at the same time he was sexting with other women and sending them pictures of his penis over his Twitter account.

Weiner claimed he never sexted with the seventeen year old, sent her any photos of a sexual nature or had any inappropriate communications with her, but he said the same thing about Ginger Lee, the porn actress who did indeed receive sexual communications and photos from Congressman Weiner.

When one of those photos was sent out to his entire Twitter feed, Weiner tried to get Ginger Lee to lie about the matter, even offering her his p.r. team to help her craft lies to feed to the media.

Lee declined that help and told the truth, helping to put an end to Weiner's Congressional career.

Given how Weiner tried to get Lee to lie about their sexual communications on Twitter and continued to lie about the matter himself until no one believed his b.s. anymore and he was finally forced to tell the truth, the claims Weiner has made about his Twitter communications with the seventeen year old bear some scrutiny.

Weiner's now running for mayor and has placed first in the latest Marist poll for the Democratic primary and second in the latest Quinnipiac poll.

If Weiner were elected mayor, he would be the head of the NYC school system.

It is quite possible that the head of the NYC school system could be a man who sexted with a seventeen year old a few years ago.

Seems to me this would be a story right up Ben "'Pervert Teacher' Beat" Chapman's alley, but so far, he is too busy going after teachers who have been cleared of wrongdoing to look into the Weiner matter.

The DN covered the Weiner/17 year old story a little a few years ago.

How about getting Ben Chapman and Campbell Brown back on that beat and getting to the bottom of that story?