Taco Bell Supports The Common Core

Full page ad taken out by corporate criminals like Joel Klein and Jeff "Taxes?  I Don't Pay No Stinking Taxes" Immelt in the NY Times today in support of the Common Core.

70 corporate criminals signed the letter.

My personal favorite?

The dude from Taco Bell.

Uh, huh - the CEO of Taco Bell thinks kids had better be able to read informational texts and use a rich, complex vocabulary or they just won't be able to serve the "food" Taco Bell is famous for - genetically modified corn tortillas with the pink slime "beef" in them - to drunken frat boys at 3 AM.

As for Jeff Immelt of GE, this is a guy who specializes in outsourcing American jobs overseas to cut costs.

He doesn't care about the skill sets of American workers.

He cares about squeezing labor costs.

In fact, that's what most of these corporate criminals care about - squeezing labor and enriching themselves off the public dime through tax breaks and corporate welfare.

I will say one thing though - given that these fellows felt the need to explain how the Common Core Federal Standards are not a national curriculum or federally mandated (both deceptions, btw), the criticism that's been leveled at the Common Core Federal Standards must be working.

Bloomberg Helps Goldman Sachs Profit From NYC Prison Scheme

Always be privatizing:

Mike Bloomberg, still the mayor of New York after all these years, has announced a new four-year program to keep prisoners from reoffending after their sentences, funded by $9.6m from Goldman Sachs. When we said we wanted to see the bankers in the clink, this is not what we meant.

It may sound like a nice philanthropic gesture, but that $9.6m sum isn't a donation; it's a loan. As City Hall explained, Goldman is being incentivized to produce results – if recidivism drops by 10%, Goldman gets the money back, and if it drops further then the GS boys will turn a small profit.

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New York's foray into cash-for-results social services is part of the voguish infatuation with "social impact bonds", in which a private investor invests in a public service and makes a positive return only if things improve. They are currently all the rage in Britain, whose coalition government espouses a hazy ideology called "the big society" to obscure a much clearer ideology of across-the-board cuts. And they've begun to seduce US policymakers. The Goldman-Rikers deal is the first social impact bond in America, though governments from Massachusetts to Ohio are preparing to jump on board.

You might wonder why, since reducing crime and offering better lives to past offenders are obvious social pluses, the government doesn't just pay for such a program itself. (The usual cries about public sector inefficiency don't apply. The ex-offender education scheme isn't a state program; it's administered by a nongovernmental social enterprise.) Alas, this is the nature of Bloombergism. There is no social problem that can't be reduced to metrics, no public function that an unaccountable private undertaking can't perform better, and no incentive like the profit motive.

How much does Bloomberg believe in this new plan? So much so that he is personally guaranteeing to make Goldman whole if the program doesn't work. Our billionaire mayor's own philanthropic foundation will cut a $7.2m check to the social service provider with which Goldman is contracting if the bank needs to be repaid. Say what you like about risk and reward; the plan announced Thursday is an exceedingly safe bet for the bank but a giant gamble for us.

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If this goes well, the Bloomberg team has said, it'll be the model for all sorts of for-profit social initiatives. Corporations could make money if an adoption agency finds a home for a child, or if you survive a heart attack, or if your kid's reading scores on one of his five thousand exams increase by such and such percent. This latest neoliberal swindle is the stuff of a million MBA case studies, and the wet dream of a new crop of young, pseudo-beneficent capitalists who think their guilt at profiting from inequality can be assuaged by "humanizing" their businesses.

Jason Farrago really gets Bloombergism:

There is no social problem that can't be reduced to metrics, no public function that an unaccountable private undertaking can't perform better, and no incentive like the profit motive.

That's it, in a nutshell.

And of course Goldman Sachs, one of Bloomberg LP's biggest clients, is on the other end of this deal.

Not So Great Googa Mooga

There was lots of hype about a food and drink festival called The Great Googa Mooga that was taking place in Prospect Park this weekend.

It was a "free" festival, though you could pay $250 for what they called the Extra Mooga experience.

The company that runs Bonnaroo, Superfly, was running it.

I know somebody who worked with one of the "experiences" at Googa Mooga.

The whole event was a disorganized mess from beginning to end.

Given how Bonnaroo is run (and how many people have died at the festival), that shouldn't be a surprise.

But I just wanted to capture some of the flavor of the event with some comments from The Great Googa Mooga's own Facebook page:

Went yesterday to the ExtraMooga section (yes, I fell for the ads telling me it was a better alternative to the pesky lines in general admission). Restaurants ran out of food by 3pm. Cops had to be called to break up a fight over FRIED CHICKEN. FRIED CHICKEN! When food did appear, it was sad, like watching UN peacekeepers show up with bags of rice at a refugee camp (sorry, no offense, but it really was every man for himself and I felt embarrassed for everyone. No reason to act like this in NYC in 2012!). Ridiculous. I want a refund. The most frequently asked question was, "Where'd you get that food?"

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This was the worst event I've ever been to EVER. I know as New Yorkers we'll wait in line for food and beer, but this was a total nightmare. The idiots who ran this event should be ashamed of themselves. Not only were the wristbands, googa moula and layout epic fails, but the fact that you ran out of beer is embarrassing. You told food vendors to bring 2000 portions to an event with 40,000 people??!? Are you nuts? And why on earth would you have a summer event with no water options other than waiting in an hour-long line? We left hungry and thirsty and annoyed. Not only did it seem like the organizers had never organized a big event before, it seemed like they'd never even BEEN to a big event before. You guys should apologize to everyone who had the misfortune of trying to go to this event instead of spinning a pathetically-transparent positive PR campaign to pretend like it wasn't so bad. You should just bow your heads and apologize. I mean, you ran out of wristbands and beer 3 hours into a two day event!? It was the definition of an Epic Fail!

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I had to leave the festival after advancing 5 feet in 25 minutes on line to buy water.I felt like I was gonna pass out and didn't have much confidence in medical aid reaching me..I love the idea of this fest and would hope lessons were learned..but if I had paid $250 and experienced what has been posted..for sure I would be on the phone to my CC company..as soon as I got out of there and got some cell service..


Please Prospect Park Alliance, if you are reading this: DO NOT APPROVE THIS EVENT FOR NEXT YEAR! I have donated money to you this year and in the past and love Celebrate Brooklyn. But after spending a few hours there today I can assure you, Superfly have no idea WTF they are doing.

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Absolute shit show. To post that there were some problems and give yourself a pat in the back is Indicative that this show was run by a gang of idiots. Whoever posted this please go home don't pass go. Don't collect $200 go straight to jail and ram a splintery broom up your ass and keep it there for 9 hours and then we will be even.

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1) Not sure why you had two southern entrances so close to each other but it was very confusing to try and meet friends when I'm at one and they are the other with none of the volunteers able to explain how to get from one to the other.
2) Great app. Too bad it crashed EVERY time I clicked on the map at the event.
3) No wi-fi is understandable but with spotty to no 3G, good luck ever finding your friends if they wander off for a second. My fully-charged phone went dead by 3PM from finding the network and I left after giving up trying to find any of my group.
4) To the person above who said the wine tent lines were short: They were short because the Googa Moola money card system was so horribly broken that most people couldn't get one and the wine people didn't take cash. We were lucky to get one AND to get the card to work so that led to our next problem.
5) It was an hour wait to get a drink of water or soft drink but only a few minutes for our group to get wine so the only liquid we had all day was wine. Heat plus wine is a terrible combination. Where was my bottle of water? Your friendly staff made me throw away my reusable water container since it was already open. Where would I have refilled it? No where as there were no fountains.
6) The only horrible lines while I was there (left at 6) were for water, soda, wine, and beer. Who was the genius who thought to combine these and have no other options for getting the first two? Sure, you could get lemonade or some other nonalcoholic drinks at food lines but they were often sugary sweet and as bad as wine for rehydration.
7) I still don't get why I could get unlimited packs of free gum but not water!?!

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here's what to do if you had extra mooga tickets yesterday. call your CC company and dispute the charge for service not delivered. it was 250$ per person after all. GM please don't delete this, apologize for the mess and let the CC companies do their job in refunding the money. no hassle. hope you learned from your mistakes.

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faillllllllllllll. terrible execution... We left within 20 minutes of it being a total bomb... if you enjoy being in line for hours plus minutes, then good luck. Epic failure.

I want my afternoon back.

On a plus note, nobody who attended the event has died from dehydration or sun poisoning yet.

But skin cancer takes a long time to develop.

Boy, these folks at Superfly are really tops.

Maybe Superfly can run the Philadelphia school system?