Oldie But Goodie: When NYSED Commissioner John King Compared Himself To Martin Luther King Jr.

I thought I would repost some classic John King material form the past in order to remind people (as if that was really needed) just what a clueless arrogant man King is.

This post is from November 14, 2013:

NYSED Commissioner King Compares Himself To Martin Luther King Jr.

I bet you're thinking, nah, he didn't do that.

Yeah, he did - on Tuesday.

Jessica Bakeman had the story at Capital NY.

Here's the set-up:

ALBANY—In a keynote speech to teachers on Tuesday, education commissioner John King began by describing a cartoon about turkeys who revolt to avoid becoming Thanksgiving dinner, and he ended by comparing the state's adoption of the Common Core standards to the U.S. Civil Rights movement.

King spoke Tuesday morning to teachers from Hudson Valley school districts who traveled to Albany for a Common Core training, and he stressed thankfulness and perseverance.

OK, got the set-up?

Common Core PD with teachers who have traveled to Albany for Common Core training.

King talks about how he is grateful these teachers have ignored the "distractions" of the past few weeks and come to Albany to listen to him say how great the Common Core is and how important the work they are doing is - and then comes this:

As he neared the end of the 20-minute speech, he stressed that worthwhile reform efforts are difficult and require patience and commitment. That's true for the transition to the Common Core like it was true for the Montgomery bus boycott during the Civil Rights movement, he argued.

“Things that matter are hard, and they take sustained commitment,” he said.

Paraphrasing Martin Luther King, Jr., the commissioner said: “In a real sense, this afternoon, we can say that our feet are tired, but our souls are rested.

“Change is hard,” he continued. “It is challenging, and it is tiring, but the goal, their goal, was to advance the cause of civil rights. Our goal is to advance the cause of civil rights through educational justice, through ensuring that all of our students have access to the richest possible instruction that prepares them to succeed when they graduate from high school, in college and careers, and prepares them to be good citizens.

“It will be hard; it will continue to be tiring,” he said. “I am sure there are some sore feet in the room. It will continue to be tiring, but we must remain laser-focused on the outcome we seek for our students.”

Watch here (the Civil Rights talk starts at 17:13).

So now King is Dr. Martin Luther King and these teachers come to Albany to learn the Common Core PD and go back to their schools and teach this drivel to their colleagues are the Freedom Riders.

Unbelievable.

Commissioner King has a messianic complex larger than Merryl Tisch's husband's bank account.

Let me say something directly to Commissioner King:

Commissioner, you are not MLK, the Common Core is not the Civil Rights movement, and the Common Core Fellows or whatever the hell you call these teachers come to Albany for the Common Core PD are not Freedom Riders.

Got that, Sparky?

Christie, Cuomo Ebola Quarantine Plan Marked By Fear, Disorganization

Governor Christie and Governor Cuomo talked real tough yesterday at their press conference announcing a mandatory quarantine of anyone flying into Newark or JFK who was thought to have worked with Ebola patients overseas:

The governors of New York and New Jersey announced Friday afternoon that they were ordering all people entering the country through two area airports who had direct contact with Ebola patients in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea to be quarantined.

The announcement comes one day after an American doctor, who had worked in Guinea and returned to New York City earlier in October, tested positive for Ebola and became the first New York patient of the deadly virus.

“A voluntary Ebola quarantine is not enough,” said Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York. “This is too serious a public health situation.”

And here's how the first mandatory quarantine went:

A health care worker quarantined at a New Jersey hospital because she had contact with Ebola patients in West Africa is sharply criticizing the way she's been treated.

In a first-person account in the Dallas Morning News, Kaci Hickox wrote Saturday that she encountered fear and disorganization when she arrived Friday at Newark Liberty International Airport. She was stopped and questioned over several hours and was left without food for an extended period, she wrote. No one would explain what was going on or what would happen to her, she said in the piece, which was written with the help of a Dallas Morning News staff writer.

Government officials did not immediately return calls seeking comment from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the New Jersey Department of Health and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Hickox is a nurse who had been working with Doctors Without Borders in Sierra Leone. Officials have said she was taken to a hospital after developing a fever, but Hickox wrote that she was merely flushed because she was upset.

Hickox tested negative for Ebola in a preliminary evaluation. Hospital officials won't say whether she will remain quarantined in the hospital for the entire 21 days.

In a statement, Doctors Without Borders said the organization is "very concerned about the conditions and uncertainty (Hickox) is facing and is attempting to obtain information from hospital officials."

"While measures to protect public health are of paramount importance, they must be balanced against the rights of health workers returning from fighting the Ebola outbreak in West Africa to fair and reasonable treatment and the full disclosure of information to them, along with information about intended courses of action from local and state health authorities," the organization said.

As I noted last night, Christie and Cuomo went public with this mandatory quarantine declaration well before they actually have a plan to carry it out.

These two clowns can't get the PATH trains to run well, so you can imagine how swimmingly this mandatory quarantine is going to go.

With the New York and New Jersey governors now apparently sticking anybody they suspect of contact with an Ebola patient into detention for an undisclosed period of time, you can be sure fewer health care professionals are going to want to go and help out with the epidemic in West Africa.

In effect, Cuomo's and Christie's playing politics with the Ebola crisis here in the New York metro area could cause the disease to spread wider.

Cuomo Gets Self--Pitying In An Interview With New York Magazine

Chris Smith in New York:

The phone is Andrew Cuomo’s instrument. Somehow distance brings out the governor’s full range of operatic inflections and rhetorical flourishes that he doesn’t deploy effectively in person. Today, on the phone, three weeks from Election Day, cruising toward a second term, he is in full Rodney Dangerfield mode.

“I passed gay marriage! I passed the toughest gun law in the country! I closed more prison cells than any governor in the history of the state! Minority job vouchers! My record of progressive accomplishment tops anyone!” Pause, dramatic reduction in volume. “Now, do you have some voices on the left that are impossible to placate in any realistic way? Yeah … Ask yourself: If he were more liberal, he would have done what? What more could I have possibly done? You’re gonna use the tax code just to take money from the rich and give it to the poor? That’s not liberalism. That’s confiscation! Liberalism was ‘Lift up the poor’ … The problem for liberals and progressives—of which I am proudly one—is you have to demonstrate you can actually do what you talk about. And that’s what I’ve been doing. My government works.”

Cuomo is quite clear here about what constitutes "liberalism" to him.

His stance on social issues make him "liberal."

Economic issues, he's clearly here:

Not that he cares to dwell on some pesky liberal carping when he’s got the whole state to worry about. Cuomo believes the center is still the most responsible place from which to govern New York—and the country, though he’s merely an informed spectator on that front, of course. Aren’t national politics increasingly polarized, with the right and the left wings setting the agendas for the Republicans and the Democrats? “That’s always been true,” Cuomo says, quickly warming to the subject. “But you’re leaving out a big piece of history. Bill Clinton wins saying to the left of the party, ‘You are unelectable.’ Bill Clinton gives a speech saying, ‘Mario Cuomo, Dukakis, Ted Kennedy are the politics of a failed Democratic Party.’ Bill Clinton does Sister Souljah, puts his finger in the chest of Jesse Jackson. That was after a period of left dominance. Clinton is then centrist-moderate-left, right? Sort of tacks back and forth between the two. Where is the national Democratic Party now? Well, they’re talking about Hillary Clinton. Her last name is Clinton, which represented that centrist-left platform. So I think that’s where the party is nationwide. And the Clinton philosophy is still a winning philosophy.”

That he doesn't understand why liberals and progressives in the state detest him shows you how clueless he is.

He remains fixated on the Clinton 90's, an era of centrism he thinks he's brought back here in NY and would like to bring back nationwide in the future.

Those days are over, however.

Income inequality since the 90's has widened considerably and Cuomo's "Lift All Boats" policies isn't working.

Alas, he doesn't seem to notice or care.

NY Post: Farina Says No Excuse For Students Who Took A Snow Day

Wow, Chancellor Farina now rivaling Cathie Black for eye-raising statements.

Here's the latest, as reported by the NY Post:

Farina also callously declared that students who were absent from school Thursday would not be given a pass for taking the day off.

“At the course of a whole day, you can still get to school,” she said.

The Daily News reports that only 45% of NYC school children showed up to school today, so that's an awful lot of unexcused absences Chancellor Farina will be tallying up.

I was too busy teaching the handful of students who showed up to my classes today a rigorous Common Core-based lesson to watch the De Blasio/Farina presser, but I have to say that's the kind of statement that pisses parents off and solidifies the meme that the person who made the statement is clueless (as the Post put it.)

Especially when the same person earlier said “It’s absolutely a beautiful day out there..." as it was sleeting and raining on top of the 9-10 inches of snow that had fallen.

BTW, the chancellor's town hall meeting that was to be held in Brownsville tonight was canceled “due to inclement weather.”

Not so beautiful a day that the town hall meeting could go on.

The problem for Farina here is that she not only made a very poor decision to call school at 10:30 the night before the storm even started, but she has defended that decision with absolutely tone deaf statements that have helped make her one of the newest Internet memes.

Like here:

Or here:

She's not helping herself by stating that students who took the day off will not be given a pass because “At the course of a whole day, you can still get to school."

In fact, De Blasio and Farina both spent a lot of political capital today defending a poor decision.

It's never good when something you say becomes the target of Internet meme mockery or the target of an Al Roker twitter barrage.

De Blasio had no problem apologizing to the entire UES over a manufactured snow outrage last month.

But for some reason, neither he nor his chancellor will acknowledge the poor decision they made here or stop compounding it by saying stupid stuff to defend it.

Mayor Bloomberg Plans On Bringing NYC's Homeless Problem To The Rest Of The World

Mayor Bloomberg, fresh from arguing that there's no place as good as NYC to be homeless and down on your luck, brags that the consulting firm he has put together to help governments around the world make their income inequality problems as bad as NYC's is very much in demand:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, burnishing his legacy in all five boroughs this week as he prepares to leave office, shed a sliver of light today on the new consulting firm he’s planning to found once he leaves office, aimed at helping cities across the world.


Mr. Bloomberg, who was in Brooklyn to herald the opening of a new ice skating center in Prospect Park, told reporters that many other cities want to replicate the “wonderful things” New York has accomplished in his tenure.

“We’ve got enormous demand and we’ve had for years now from other cities around the world, not just around the country of, ‘How do you do these wonderful things?’” Mr. Bloomberg said. “We are, no matter we may whip ourselves, but we are the poster child for most of the good things that have happened in big cities.”

And what are some of those good things he's brought to NYC that he now wants to bring to the rest of the world?

Why despair, hopelessness and abject poverty of course!

Wonkette has the story:

So we have all read the New York Times story about homelessness in New York, yes? And we have all cried for the smart, tough little girl named Dasani, who lives in a “520-square-foot room with her parents and seven siblings” in a most wretched shelter, where life is most wretched, and we have all said, “Goddamn, this is unacceptable and something must be done.” Yes?

No. Apparently, some of us think, ‘Meh, that’s just God for ya.’ Some of us who happen to be bazillionaires and soon-to-be-ex-mayors of New York.

Asked today if he was similarly moved by the story, current Mayor Michael Bloomberg told Politicker he’d had a different reaction.

While calling her life story “really quite extraordinary,” Mr. Bloomberg insisted Dasani’s situation was not representative of the city’s broader homeless population. 

Well, actually, Mr. Mayor, the point of the story is that actually, Dasani is not “really quite extraordinary.”

Yet Dasani is among 280 children at the shelter. Beyond its walls, she belongs to a vast and invisible tribe of more than 22,000 homeless children in New York, the highest number since the Great Depression, in the most unequal metropolis in America. 

But hey, don’t blame the city or its mayor for that. Nope, blame God.

“This kid was dealt a bad hand. I don’t know quite why. That’s just the way God works. Sometimes some of us are lucky and some of us are not,” he said. 

Yes, God sure does work in mysterious ways, arbitrarily dealing bad hands like that. Sometimes he hands out lots of money, like to Mayor Bloomberg, who is just lucky that way, and sometimes he does not. Shrug, we guess. Whatcha gonna do? Hey, maybe you can fight the scourge of extra-large sodas! Sure, God invented the Big Gulp, but that’s, like, a Serious Problem, the kind of problem that a mayor should do his very best to do something about. Unlike homeless children living in filth and squalor and where guards sexually assault their moms, because that’s just bad luck. Sorry, Dasani and the thousands of children like you, but if you wanted to be not poor and homeless in one of the wealthiest cities in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, you should have asked God for better luck.

Yeah, NYC surely is the poster child for most of the good things that have happened in big cities and I'm sure many other cities can't wait to have Bloomberg and his consultant group bring them what he's brought to NYC.

NYSED Commissioner John King: Elementary School Teachers To Blame For Common Core Opposition

First, he said there is no turning back:

State Education Commissioner John King defended the Common Core curriculum during a tour of the Binghamton region on Monday while acknowledging some difficulty in rolling out the standards.

“Any time you try to raise standards across 45 states, it’s going to be a complicated process,” King said.



King is traveling throughout the state to explain the initiative that supporters say is designed to raise the performance level of students statewide. But the common core has come under harsh criticism in some sectors as too rigid and too test intensive.

Throughout the state, some teachers are scrambling to teach to the new standards. Many teachers didn’t receive instructional materials on how to use the new curricula until mid-summer, leaving them little time to prepare lesson plans before school started. Two months into the school year, some instructional aids remained unavailable.



King said the state would remain committed to the standard.


“It would be a mistake to retreat from higher standards and from the idea of college and career readiness for all students,” King said. “That said, there are adjustments we will make along the way. We already have in the last four years.”

He then blamed elementary school teachers for some of the furor over the new Common Core:

King said some of the resistance to common core concepts comes at the teacher preparation level.“Historically, in New York, you could pass the elementary teacher certification exam and fail the math section,” King said. “You could compensate with your scores in other areas.”

 He recalled the dean of a teacher prep program telling him that candidates said they were going into elementary education “because they don’t like math.”

“That’s a problem,” King said. “We need elementary school teachers who have a strong background in math.”

In short, it's the elementary school teachers who can't understand the vaunted Common Core math standards that are the problem here.

Never mind that the Common Core math standards are considered developmentally inappropriate for young children and even parents are finding them confusing or just plain useless.

Yeah, never mind that - all this hub-bub over Common Core is the fault of the elementary school teachers.

King displacing blame onto others once again - special interests have fooled the parents into opposing Common Core, elementary school teachers who don't understand the math standards are driving the opposition to the Core.

The more he tries to defend his indefensible positions, the deeper he digs himself into a hole.

It's A Hard Luck Life Having To Live In A 1,200 Square Foot Brownstone Apt. Without A Dishwasher

More from the sob story piece in Bloomberg Businessweek about tough times on Wall Street:

Sonnenfeldt describes a widespread feeling of “malaise” and a “paralysis that doesn’t allow one to believe that generally things are going to get better” among his members, who pay $30,000 a year to be part of the group. That malaise is shared by Andrew Schiff, marketing director for Euro Pacific Capital, where his brother is CEO. With a lower bonus, he earned $350,000 last year. While that’s enough to put him in the country’s top 1 percent by income, and he “wouldn’t want to whine,” he says it doesn’t cover his family’s private-school tuition, Kent (Conn.) summer rental, and the upgrade they would like from their 1,200-square-foot Brooklyn apartment. “I feel stuck,” Schiff says. “The New York that I wanted to have is still just beyond my reach.”

His family rents the lower duplex of a brownstone in Cobble Hill, where his two children share a room. His 10-year-old daughter is a student at $32,000-a-year Poly Prep Country Day School in Brooklyn. His 7-year-old son will apply in a few years. “I can’t imagine what I’m going to do,” Schiff says. “I’m crammed into 1,200 square feet. I don’t have a dishwasher.” What he wants: “The stuff that I always thought, growing up, that successful parents had.”

How horrible - can't afford bigger than 1200 square feet, doesn't even have a dishwasher.

Yet even with a lower bonus, he took home $350,000 last year.

Yeah, that sounds just like that "malaise" Jimmy Carter talked about back in the 70's.

But it gets even better:

Hans Kullberg, 27, a trader at Wyckoff (N.J.) hedge fund Falcon Management who says he earns about $150,000 a year, also is adjusting his expectations. After graduating from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 2006, he spent a $10,000 signing bonus from Citigroup (C) on a six-week trip to South America. Last May he vacationed in India for 10 days. In August he went to a bachelor party in Ibiza, spending $3,000 on the three-day trip. In January he was in Las Vegas for another bachelor party. Lately, however, he’s been cutting back. Last month a friend invited him on a trip to Mardi Gras in New Orleans. The friend was going to be a judge in a wet T-shirt contest, Kullberg says. He turned down the offer. It was “the most financially prudent thing to do,” he says. “I’m not totally sure now about what I’m going to get paid this year.”

So sad - he couldn't go watch his friend judge a wet t-shirt contest at Mardi Gras in New Orleans.

Just what is this world coming too!

I mean, here is a hard working Master of the Universe who puts in a hard day's work stealing millions for his bosses and they don't even piece him off enough to be able to afford a few days in The Big Easy pouring water over silicon implants.

What a sense of entitlement these Wall Street criminals have.

Clueless Mayor

It seems the mayor cannot help but say something insensitive these days:

“We all buy our coffee at the same Starbucks.”

– Mayor Bloomberg, speaking to graduates of LaGuardia Community College’s small business program, on the diversity of New York City.

Uh, huh - except for the homeless woman who huddles in a corner of a building near the Starbucks by my job.

She doesn't buy anything at Starbucks, though I think she might use their bathroom for hygiene purposes.

I guess that's sort of like a shared experience with Bloomberg and the members of the LaGuardia Community College small business program.

Sort of.

Project Cougar - Maybe She Should Run The NYCDOE?

The arrest of the tech consultant that the NYCDOE had hired to provide Internet access to schools is the scandal that just keeps on giving.

Bloomberg claims he needs to lay off 6,166 teachers in order to save $300 million dollars so that he can spend $550 million in the next fiscal year to upgrade technology in schools.

Meanwhile he has spent over $1 billion on technology in the past few years and what do schools have to show for it?

An ARIS data tracking system school staff hate and don't use.

Internet access that doesn't provide any access at all (takes fifteen minutes to check your email sometimes, depending upon time of day.)

But of course the outside consultants hired by Bloomberg to provide all this technology have done very well.

Take the one who was arrested this week for stealing $3.6 million from the city from 2002-2008 on top of the six figure salary the DOE was already paying him.

Willard "Ross" Lanham was really living it up on the mayor's largesse.

He bought three luxuries home and built his own real estate subdivision on Long Island - even took the neighbors on vacation trips.

And his wife - now estranged - well, what can we say about her that the Daily News hasn't:

Red-spiked Steve Madden heels with a barely-there sundress, a fire-engine red shade of lipstick and green eyeshadow.

Self-proclaimed cougar Laura Lanham is ready for a typical Saturday night out - although she makes it clear her provocative outfit isn't hunting gear.

"I don't prowl - they find me," the lithe, hazel-eyed housewife said Saturday. "The young guys love hanging out with me and my friends because we're not demanding."

Lanham, 42, met with the Daily News at Four - a trendy Melville, L.I., spot that bills itself as a "Food Studio/Cocktail Salon" - to describe an ordinary day in her unusual life.

The mother of three said she never set out to be a cougar. She was 23 when she married now-estranged hubby Willard (Ross) Lanham - a Department of Education computer consultant accused of stealing millions in public money - and led a typically sedate suburban existence.

The couple has a 15-year-old daughter, and Lanham is stepmother to a 24-year-old son and a 21-year-old daughter.

But when she filed for divorce in April 2008, Lanham soon found herself looking at men her son's age in a different light.

"Yes, I'm attracted to them," she said. "But you know, at first I thought it was weird, because I'm a mother. My friends said it's much more common than I thought."

The "yummy mommy," as Lanham was billed in one of her blog postings, acknowledges there's an attraction to the 20-somethings in Long Island dance clubs that was missing with her 57-year-old husband - with whom she still shares a home.

"I'm not going to say there isn't a sexual compatibility there, because there certainly is," she said. "Let's put it this way: I get along with these kids."

In a strange twist of fate, Lanham's 15 minutes of recent fame is all because of her estranged spouse.

His arrest for allegedly swiping $3.6 million in city school funds propelled her into media attention. The one-time aspiring Playboy centerfold has handled it well, and even expressed her desire for a reality show.

Her friends say she should aim higher.

"They said, 'Look at Demi Moore. You could be the Demi Moore of Long Island!'" Lanham said.

Now this woman I like - living it up on the city's largesse, unapologetic about it all and just looking for the next cocktail and next co--, er, young buck to make those nights go by faster.

Hell, judging by the articles about her, I'm surprised that Bloomberg hasn't offered her a job as schools chancellor to replace the now defunct "cougar" Cathie Black.

I think because Laura Lanham doesn't go to the same UES parties as Bloomberg, she hasn't been offered the position yet.

But now that she's getting some press and getting the mayor's attention, maybe now he'll put her in her rightful place in the Bloomberg worldview - a position of power and prestige.

After all, Laura Lanham has lived off the largesse of others, has stolen everything she has, is a bloodsucker extraordinaire and seems clueless about every important aspect of life - just like Cathie Black.

Why not have one predatory cougar replace the last one?

TIME Magazine's Joe Klein Libels Teachers As Criminals, Misfits And Incompetents

Here is the oh so "liberal" Joe Klein from TIME taking on the the evils of public employees unions and libeling teachers as criminal and protesters as anti-democratic in the process:

Revolutions everywhere--in the middle east, in the middle west. But there is a difference: in the middle east, the protesters are marching for democracy; in the middle west, they're protesting against it. I mean, Isn't it, well, a bit ironic that the protesters in Madison, blocking the state senate chamber, are chanting "Freedom, Democracy, Union" while trying to prevent a vote? Isn't it ironic that the Democratic Senators have fled the democratic process? Isn't it interesting that some of those who--rightly--protest the assorted Republican efforts to stymie majority rule in the U.S. Senate are celebrating the Democratic efforts to stymie the same in the Wisconsin Senate?

An election was held in Wisconsin last November. The Republicans won. In a democracy, there are consequences to elections and no one, not even the public employees unions, are exempt from that. There are no guarantees that labor contracts, including contracts governing the most basic rights of unions, can't be renegotiated, or terminated for that matter. We hold elections to decide those basic parameters. And it seems to me that Governor Scott Walker's basic requests are modest ones--asking public employees to contribute more to their pension and health care plans, though still far less than most private sector employees do. He is also trying to limit the unions' abilities to negotiate work rules--and this is crucial when it comes to the more efficient operation of government in a difficult time. When I covered local government in New York 30 years ago, the school janitors (then paid a robust $60,000 plus per year) had negotiated the "right" to mop the cafeteria floors only once a week. And we all know about the near-impossibility of getting criminal and morally questionable--to say nothing of less than competent--teachers fired. The negotiation of such contracts were acts of collusion rather than of mediation. Government officials were, in effect, bribing their most activist constituents.

Public employees unions are an interesting hybrid. Industrial unions are organized against the might and greed of ownership. Public employees unions are organized against the might and greed...of the public? Despite their questionable provenance, public unions can serve an important social justice role, guaranteeing that a great many underpaid workers--school bus drivers, janitors (outside of New York City), home health care workers--won't be too severely underpaid. That role will be kept intact in Wisconsin. In any given negotiation, I'm rooting for the union to win the highest base rates of pay possible...and for management to win the least restrictive work rules and guidelines governing how much truly creative public employees can be paid.

But we've had far too many state legislatures, of both parties, that have been cowed by the political power of the unions and enacted contracts that force state and city governments to be run for the benefit of their employees, rather than for their citizens. This situation is most egregious in far too many school districts across the nation. The events in Wisconsin are a rebalancing of power that, after decades of flush times and lax negotiating, had become imbalanced. That is also something that, from time to time, happens in a democracy.

Wow - to demonstrate against a governor and a legislature that are dismantling 50+ years of labor rights in one week is anti-democratic!

Who knew?

Oh, and getting criminal teachers fired is the most difficult thing in the world to do - and Klein knows because he once covered local government 30 YEARS AGO!!!

Oh, and industrial unions are fine in Klein's eyes but public employees unions are not because industrial unions fight against the greed of the factory owner while public employees unions exploit the public.

Good god, can you believe somebody as narrow-minded and bigoted as Klein - the man who is sure because janitors supposedly negotiated some contract with ridiculous work rules 30 years ALL public employees unions are evil and should be put out of business or somebody who smears ALL teachers as criminals, incompetents, and morally misfits - has a column in a major American news magazine and gets to go on TV and pontificate about his views?

Here is the TIME Magazine contact page - let's let TIME and the rest of the country know what we think about Joe Klein's libeling of teachers as criminals, moral misfits and incompetents:

letters@time.com

Klein has more jive about teachers here after he received some criticism for tarring ALL teachers as moral misfits and criminals.

He says teachers must give up work protections, seniority, and the like in order to be considered "professionals".

You can leave comments about his take on teachers there.

What a vitriolic, clueless, doddering old man.

Unfortunately, he still has a podium to pontificate from.

Cathie's Choice: Clueless Cathie Black Puts Her Foot In Her Mouth Again

Cathie Black might possibly be one of the most clueless people in the education reform world today - and given who inhabits this world, that's really saying something:

Schools Chancellor Cathie Black joked that there's a simple solution to overcrowding in lower Manhattan - birth control.

"Could we just have some birth control for a while?" Black said Thursday night. "It would really help us."

Black earned chuckles for the joke at an overcrowding task force meeting, but downtown parents say the growing population of youngsters is no laughing matter.

"I always cringe when I hear that (joke)," said Public School 234 parent Tricia Joyce. "I understand the temptation to joke about it. But our situation isn't funny any more."

The problem, parents and advocates charge, is that the city offered incentives to developers to build without also increasing school seats.

Joyce was also upset that Black compared weighing the needs of different schools to the movie "Sophie's Choice."

"As we all know, one child dies (in the movie). This isn't optional," Joyce added. "We have a right to a public school seat."

A spokeswoman said Black didn't mean to make light of the important issue.

"Chancellor Black takes the issue of overcrowding very seriously, which is why she was engaged in a discussion with lower Manhattan parents on the subject," said spokeswoman Natalie Ravitz. "She regrets if she left a different impression by making an off-handed joke in the course of that conversation."

Amazing - joking about school overcrowding and telling people to "put a cap on it" as a solution.

That's one helluva manager of systems.

Not so good with people, but a helluva manager of systems.

Clearly Black does NOT take the problem very seriously, does NOT take parents very seriously, and does NOT take her job too seriously.

Which is great, because parents, students and teachers are quickly learning NOT to take her seriously either.

She is a joke - a very bad and very cruel joke.

They Have No Idea What To Do

Clearly our data-loving president is getting the idea that economic data isn't looking so hot and he just might have to fire himself, close down the White House and re-open it as a charter school:

VINEYARD HAVEN, Mass., Aug 25 (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama held a conference call with top economic advisers on Wednesday to discuss newly released grim data that has raised fears the economy is at risk of a new downturn.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and White House advisers Christy Romer and Larry Summers took part in the call with the president, who is vacationing on the Massachusetts island of Martha's Vineyard.

Government reports on Wednesday showed new single-family home sales slumped to the slowest pace on record in July and orders for costly durable goods were soft, heightening fears about the economy's direction. [N25121445]

"The discussion focused on recent data reports, global markets and economic growth," the White House said in a statement describing the call.

"The economic team provided an update on the next steps to keep the economy growing, including assistance to small businesses and the extension of tax cuts to the middle class," it said.

Yeah, they have not freaking clue what to do.

And maybe there is nothing that can be done to keep the economy from sliding back into recession and unemployment from hitting double digits again.

The time to do something was in 2009 when they could have REALLY done some stimulus - put people on the payroll, trained them for jobs, sent them out to rebuild roads, bridges, infrastructure, subways, light rail, high speed rail, and the electrical grid.

But instead we got Race to the Top.

And talk about deficit reduction.

So now here we are, with Obama breaking up Vacation # 6 for a call with his economic team to hear them all say "I dunno...what do you want to do?"

Heckuva job, Barack.

It's a good thing accountability is only for teachers.

If Arne Duncan was your boss, you'd be called out as a "bad president" in the LA Times and put on a list to be fired.

Tone Deaf Michelle Obama Loses Popularity

Going on a lavish overseas vacation with your kid and entourage will make people hate you:

Michelle Obama probably won't be vacationing in Spain again anytime soon.

The First Lady's approval rating has plummeted following her highly-criticized, luxurious Mediterranean vacation with her 9-year-old daughter, a new poll finds.

According to the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, just 50% have a positive impression of her — compared to 64% who answered favorably in a similar April 2009 poll.

Michelle Obama returned from the shopping and sightseeing trip on Sunday with daughter Sasha and a few close friends. She has been disparaged by critics and pundits for staying in the ritzy Costa del Sol in a hotel that has rooms costing up to $2,500 per night.

Even though White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said the Obamas paid for their personal expenses, Obama has been described as a "modern-day Marie Antoinette" for taking such an expensive trip while so many Americans are pinching pennies.

Indeed, as unemployment rises, GDP falls, and home foreclosures increase, you'd think Marie Antoinette Obama would go on a slightly less lavish vacation.

But that's the Obamas for you - fucking clueless about the pain and suffering the majority of Americans are going through.

But the accountability moment is coming.

Oh, yes - it is.