Democrats For Education Reform Hiring For COO, Communications Director

Dust off those resumes:

Director of Communications

Job posted by: Democrats for Education Reform

About Us: We are Democrats leading a political reform organization that cultivates and supports leaders in our party who champion America's public schoolchildren.
Our Vision: To make the Democratic Party the champion of high quality public education.
Director of Communication Job Purpose: The Director of Communications is responsible for the creation and implementation of a strategic, progressive communications program designed to expand the organization's brand and to advance the organization's mission concerning bold school reform for kids. This position will require the candidate to craft and oversee creative communication projects to further advance the national message of the organization. The position accomplishes this through a strategic, progressive and bold style, guided by the core values of the organization, and fully aligned with its mission. Reporting to the National President, the Director of Communications will serve as the voice of the organization, bringing to light the need to improve the country's public schools.
Major Job Duties:

• Support and spread the national message of the organization
• Develop effective communication and social media strategies
• Serve as support for national team and each of our 11 state chapters
• Establish and advance long-term working relationships with various entities including elected, the media, members of the community, public offices and partner organizations.
• Identify opportunities to support national initiatives and develop associated communications materials and programs
• Respond to media requests for information and facilitate media interviews with elected officials, community members, journalists, etc.
• Possess strategic communication skills

The ideal candidate will possess the following qualifications:

• 7-10 years of relevant experience
• Branding experience
• Political/policy experience preferred but not required

Skills/Qualifications: developing standards, communicating cross team, strong writing, branding and presentation skills, humility, dedication to mission, analyzing information, dealing with complexity, thinking quantitatively about results, high attention to detail, confidentiality, time management, flexibility.

How to apply

Please submit resume and cover letter to: employment@dfer.org

And even better:

Chief Operating Officer

Job posted by: Democrats for Education Reform

About Us: We are Democrats leading a political reform organization that cultivates and supports leaders in our party who champion America's public schoolchildren.
Our Vision: To make the Democratic Party the champion of high quality public education.
Chief Operating Officer Job Purpose: The Chief Operating Officer position will oversee the daily implementation of the organization's strategic goals of supporting leaders throughout the country who champion America's schoolchildren. The COO is charged with ensuring the financial and operational integrity of the organization and with working with the leadership team to ensure the organization executes its goals at a high level. The COO will oversee the day-to-day implementation of the organization's strategic objectives and ensure that all team leaders are aligned and coordinated in achieving each of their respective objectives and acting in a complementary way to achieve organization-wide goals. The COO, specifically, will partner with the organization's communications, operations, policy, political, and development units to ensure high-level implementation that supports the leaders and associated policies that will achieve substantial improvements, nationwide, in outcomes for kids
Major Job Duties:

• Work with the National President to ensure the organization implements its strategic vision, each day, in a complementary and effective way
• Manage daily operations across the organization's several units
• Motivate and lead a highly talented team of professionals
• Possess strategic decision making skills to develop effective systems and processes
• Leading teams in a way that builds trust and buy-in, while maintaining the discipline around performance-based accountability for results

The ideal candidate will possess the following qualifications:

• 7-10 years of relevant experience
• Management experience
• Finance/operations experience
• Experience with advocacy or political organizations – preferred but not required

Skills/Qualifications: developing standards and holding teammates accountable for meeting them, communicating cross team, humility, dedication to mission, analyzing information, dealing with complexity, reporting research results, high attention to detail, strong writing, confidentiality, flexibility.

How to apply

Please send resume and cover letter to: employment@dfer.org

 Ability to do evil a must.

Cuomo To De Blasio: "F--- You!"

As part of his feud with Bill de Blasio, Governor Andrew Cuomo gave the middle finger to New York City in his proposed budget yesterday:

ALBANY — The ongoing war between Gov. Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio is getting costly for the city.

Cuomo in his new $145 billion state budget plan unveiled Wednesday called on the city to pay significantly more toward CUNY and Medicaid.

One source said the city could be on the hook for about $800 million in new costs, which would amount to a large portion of the savings Cuomo has in his budget.

“It’s a big (slap) at the mayor,” the source said of Cuomo’s plan.

“This is a bad budget for New York City,” added a city official.

 The changes mean the state is reneging on its pledge to support CUNY and is passing the cost for soaring Medicaid expenses on to city taxpayers.

A Politico NY piece calculated the cost to NYC in Cuomo's proposed budget as a $1 billion dollars.

Cuomo's aiming to harm de Blasio and make him one term mayor by causing budget problems - and he's harming New York City residents in the crossfire.

Alas that Preetmas didn't come earlier in the week.

With Cuomo let off the hook by the US attorney for Moreland tampering, he is free to do all the evil he wants - and he is taking advantage.

Cuomo Budget Will Cost NYC $1 Billion

The evil man in Albany just keeps going and going, doing more and more damage:

ALBANY — The budget Gov. Andrew Cuomo unveiled on Wednesday will likely deal serious damage to New York City's bottom line for years to come, budget analysts said.

Cuomo is proposing to shift the way the City University of New York is funded, to end the state’s assumption of the local share of New York City’s Medicaid costs, and to change the way the state handles the city’s STAR Personal Income Tax rebate. Those changes will likely cut close to $1 billion from the city’s budget starting in fiscal year 2017, which begins on April 1.

“For New York City, I think this is one of the worst budgets that it’s seen in a long time,” said Maria Doulis, a budget analyst at the Citizens’ Budget Commission.

That budget surplus the city had?

Just been wiped away by Cuomo in one fell stroke.

NY Post Editorial Calls For Pension Cuts To New York And New Jersey Retirees

I missed this in the days after Christmas, but the AFL-CIO didn't.

The Rupert Murdoch-owned NY Post says there's no money for government worker pensions and cuts must be instituted to "save" them:

Some promises are made to be broken. As 2014 draws to a close, it’s looking more and more likely that among them will soon be those made to retired public workers.

We don’t say this lightly. When governments make promises, they should keep them.

Here’s the problem: The same pols who made these promises looked the other way when it came time to funding them.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re a public worker for a city such as New York, which can go bankrupt, or a state such as New Jersey, which cannot. Fact is, even though more and more tax dollars are swallowed up by these pensions, the gap between what taxpayers will owe future retirees and the funding for them continues to widen.

That’s true in New Jersey, notwithstanding reforms in 2011. These were solid reforms — but nowhere near the fix both Democrats and Republicans pretended they were.

Now the pension gap is back with a vengeance, and Gov. Chris Christie is cutting payments into the system, because he says the state simply cannot afford them.

New York City is not as desperate, but it faces the same squeeze. Since 2000, the amount of money this city has been pumping in to pay for its pension promises has increased 12 times, to more than $8 billion. And it’s still not enough.

The government-worker unions and the pols in their pocket know this. For decades, they’ve played a game of deliberately underestimating the problem and fighting even modest cuts.

But they have played the game too long. It’s now starting to backfire, because the shortfalls can’t be made up with more taxes or contributions alone. Painful cuts will have to be part of the medicine.

For decades the public unions have assumed agreed-to benefits are sacrosanct. But if there is really no money in the till, all bets are off.

In this light, the recent deal in Washington on multi-employer plans was instructive. Though the deal involved pensions for private-sector retirees, the terms were illuminating. In the interest of keeping the program solvent for all, some retirees will get less benefits than promised. And there’s no congressional bailout.

Some version of this is likely to come to the public sector if we continue to kick the can down the road. The multi-employer deal looks more and more like the canary in the coal mine, and it’s hard not to imagine some judge approving cutbacks on the grounds that this is simple reality.

Those who hold such pensions will scream this is unfair. They will be right. But what should really worry them is that, if there’s really no money in the till, it won’t matter.

Mario Cilento, President of the New York State AFL-CIO, responded to the Post editorial:

It’s telling that during the same week the Dow Jones hits 18,000, a historic and once unthought of high, The Post calls for reductions to the pensions of current employees and retirees  (Pensions and Promises, Dec. 28).  

In the past, The Post’s advocacy for reducing worker wages and benefits would be hidden behind cries of economic crisis; now, there is no attempt to even mask that agenda.

New York continues to have some of the strongest public-pension systems in the country, and contrary to the assertions of the editorial, employer contribution rates are set to begin declining.  

The problem of income inequality is troubling and well-documented.  Gains in the economy have been enjoyed nearly exclusively by those at the top of the income ladder.  

It’s unconscionable to advocate for cutting one of the few ways workers directly benefit from growth in the market – pensions.

New employees have already had to eat two new pension tiers with reduced benefits in New York, but apparently that’s not enough.  Now, current employees and retirees are on the menu.

The NY Post editorial came five days before Governor Cuomo issued this threat in his "second" inauguration speech on January 1 in Buffalo, NY:

Albany has been too concerned with protecting the pension rights of teachers and not enough with the future of students. #NYGov2015
— Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) January 1, 2015

Yesterday I surmised that Cuomo wouldn't have the political muscle to push through pension reform this time around, given the relative weakness of his political position to his first term.

But if he does push pension reform, it seems he will have the NY Post to provide political cover for him, even though as Mario Cilento points out in his response to the Posties, the economy is on the rebound, the Dow is at an all-time high, and two new pension tiers were added in recent years that reduce benefits for future retirees in New York.

But that's not enough for the plutocratic functionaries at the NY Post - they say there's no money for pensions for current employees and retirees and cuts must be instituted immediately.

Will Governor Cuomo agree with that false prescription for a fake crisis?

He just might.

But if he does, he's going to have a hell of a fight on his hands.

This isn't 2011 with the state still reeling from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

This is 2015, with the Dow at an all-time high and the job market creating 200,000+ jobs a month again (albeit, not enough and not good ones - but a far cry from 2011 when the state and private sector were shedding workers.)

Cuomo and his fellow pension haters do not have an economic argument to use to try and cut pension promises to current employees and benefits to retirees.

Instead it would just be a naked money and power grab.

Is that what Governor Cuomo plans for his second term?

Cuomo Shuts Down Free Health Care For Uninsured, Saying NYers Have All The Health Care They Need

The "liberal" Governor Andrew Cuomo at work:

On the morning of November 28, the day after Thanksgiving, while Americans across the country line up for Black Friday deals, a queue of a different kind was scheduled to form in New York City. At 5 a.m., the doors of Manhattan's massive Javits Center were to open, not for a tech expo or sneaker convention but to provide free health care to thousands of uninsured patients, courtesy of the organization Remote Area Medical.

RAM was founded in 1985 to bring health care to the developing world, but its leadership realized just a few years into its existence that a lack of access has made large swaths of our country as "remote" as Haiti or Guyana in terms of the needs of the American people. Because of this, they now do over 80 percent of their work in the U.S., creating three-to-five-day pop-up clinics that offer medical, dental, and vision services at no cost to the patient.

...

The clinic was cavalierly canceled a mere two weeks before its scheduled date. The doors won't open at 5 a.m. or any other hour. The 500 dentists and 2,500 non-medical volunteers lined up months in advance can take their good will elsewhere. And, tragically, the estimated 7,000 patients from New York City, greater New York, New Jersey, and beyond who were expecting to receive much needed free treatment will just have to make other plans for their failing vision and rotting teeth. The clinic was cancelled so recently that it left RAM without ample time to pull together a backup plan. Who to thank for this disturbing display of good stopped cold? The office of Governor Cuomo.

Across the country there are many laws that prevent doctors from crossing state lines to practice medicine, even if the care is free. RAM has overturned these laws in a number of states (as RAM founder Stan Brock often says, "A tooth in Detroit is a tooth in Baltimore is a tooth in Seattle"), allowing them to expand their mission into a number of areas, but to provide all the free care they had hoped to in New York would have required a special waiver from the Governor's office of provisions contained in Article 28 of the health code, which pertain to the operation of stationary health facilities. RAM is mobile, but builds into spaces, and so falls between the cracks of the law.

Waiving this provision was entirely at the Governor's discretion. The offices of Senators Harry Reid, Tim Kaine (both of whom who have seen RAM clinics firsthand), and Chuck Schumer called Cuomo and the NY Public Health Department directly to petition for the clinic to go forward. The reason provided to RAM for the clinic being scuttled: New Yorkers have all the health care they need.

New Yorkers have all the health care they need. More likely New Yorkers have a governor with presidential aspirations that are, of late, more than a little bruised, and who is willing to make this ludicrous statement in order avoid publicly presenting the image of several thousand uninsured standing in a parking lot in the Big Apple.

I would think Schumer's calling Cuomo personally to waive the provision didn't help the RAM cause.

Cuomo hates Schumer.

In any case, Cuomo decided before Schumer called him that New York doesn't nee RAM because he doesn't need the bad publicity that will come from it.

So @#$% you, uninsured.

So says "liberal" Governor Andrew Cuomo.

More evidence what an evil scum Andrew Cuomo is.

Carmen Farina Should Be Honored To Be Criticized By A Criminal Like Jack Welch

The NY Post reports that former General Electric CEO Jack Welch criticized Chancellor Farina for hiring superintendents from "failing schools":

Former GE chief Jack Welch lit into Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña’s management skills on Monday, questioning why she hired superintendents who had run struggling schools.

“She just appointed 15 superintendents — seven from failing schools, five from disasters, 10 percent passing tests, et cetera — as superintendents,” Welch said on CNBC.

“When you have a philosophy of putting people in place without a meritocracy, without differentiation, you get bad performance.”

Welch argued that major corporations would never promote “flunkies” and “hacks” the way the Department of Education did.

“You couldn’t run CNBC, you couldn’t run GE, you couldn’t run Apple, you couldn’t run Google, you couldn’t run any company if you took of your 15 appointments of division managers and made them flunkies, hacks, and stuck them in the schools,” Welch said.

“[In] that system of no meritocracy, of no differentiation, we’re all equal, you don’t get performance. You can’t do it. You just can’t do it.”

We're going to get to a personal critique of Welch in a minute, so hang on tight.

Before we do, let's deal with Welch's assertion that there's a meritocracy in business.

Because there isn't.

What there often is in business is an old boy's network that rewards people - mostly arrogant white men like Welch - over everybody else.

Take a look at the guys at the top of nearly every major company, look at their boards - see many women there?

See many people of color?

Can't be a true meritocracy when all you see are white men everywhere, with a very few brown and black men thrown in to keep the whole thing from looking like a Klan meeting.

The gender disparity in business is quite striking, since women are more than half of the population and have been training for top positions for decades now, as this factsheet by the Center For American Progress shows:

Women make up a majority of the U.S. population

Women are 50.8 percent of the U.S. population.

• They earn almost 60 percent of undergraduate degrees, and 60 percent of all master’s degrees.
• They earn 47 percent of all law degrees, and 48 percent of all medical degrees.
• They earn more than 44 percent of master’s degrees in business and management, including 37 percent of MBAs.
• They are 47 percent of the U.S. labor force, and 59 percent of the college-educated, entry-level workforce.

And yet…

Although they hold almost 52 percent of all professional-level jobs, American women lag substantially behind men when it comes to their representation in leadership positions:

• They are only 14.6 percent of executive officers, 8.1 percent of top earners, and 4.6 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs.
• They hold just 16.9 percent of Fortune 500 board seats.
• In the financial services industry, they make up 54.2 percent of the labor force, but are only 12.4 percent of executive officers, and 18.3 percent of board directors. None are CEOs.
• They account for 78.4 percent of the labor force in health care and social assistance but only 14.6 percent of executive officers and 12.4 percent of board directors. None, again, are CEOs.
• In the legal field, they are 45.4 percent of associates—but only 25 percent of nonequity partners and 15 percent of equity partners.
• In medicine, they comprise 34.3 percent of all physicians and surgeons but only 15.9 percent of medical school deans.
• In information technology, they hold only 9 percent of management positions and account for only 14 percent of senior management positions at Silicon Valley startups.

Furthermore…

• Although women control 80 percent of consumer spending in the United States, they are only 3 percent of creative directors in advertising.
• Their image onscreen is still created, overwhelmingly, by men.
• Women accounted for just 16 percent of all the directors, executive producers, producers, writers, cinematographers, and editors who worked on the top-grossing 250 domestic films of 2013, and were just 28 percent of all offscreen talent on broadcast television programs during the 2012-13 primetime season.

Further putting a dent in Welch's "businesses are meritocratic unlike schools under Farina" assertion is the history of how the collapse of '08 came about.

A lot of it was brought about by arrogant white men, with a token man of color or two - and a lot of these guys were known to be not too bright before the whole mess came down.

Like Stan O'Neal at Merrill Lynch, who brought about the financial collapse of the firm and his replacement, John Thain, who spent $1 million remodeling his office with federal bailout money.

Or Jimmy Cayne at Bear Stearns, who famously played bridge and smoked dope as his firm collapsed. 

Or Chuck Prince at Citibank, who claimed his firm was "still dancing" even as its risky loans and bad bets were taking it to the brink of collapse.

The Peter Principle certainly seemed at work with these guys. 

Lots of inept guys are running or have run companies not associated with the '08 financial collapse of the country.

Let's look at just one - Eddie Lampert, the Ayn Rand fan, who has nearly destroyed Sears by trying to run the company the way Ayn Rand would.

Here's his record:

• Sears has amassed a mountain of debt; its debt to equity ratio was 8.406% in July 2014.
• Sears’ TTM revenue fell by $3.68 billion between July 2013 and July 2014.
• Sears CEO Eddie Lampert is trying to protect the chain’s real estate assets by transferring them to a REIT.
• Sears is closing stores so fast that observers are having a hard time keeping count.
• Sears is actually planning to close dozens of stores during the critical holiday shopping season. 

How's that for meritocratic?

Lampert's still making calls on Sears even though he has brought the once-proud company to near collapse by bad call after bad call.

OK so the "Business Is Meritocratic" argument Welch uses is obviously untrue.

Now let's deal with Jack Welch the man.

Because that matter's too.

This is a guy whose company knowingly polluted the Hudson River for decades.

Welch did the best he could to a) hide his company's actions b) shield his company from having to clean up the mess it made and c) claim PCB's aren't a health hazard or cancer-causing, citing jive studies from 30 years that were rigged to give GE the results it wanted.

The Times-Union published a piece on General Electric, PCB's and Welch back in March - it is unflinching in its depiction of Welch as a apologist for GE:

For years, as it fought against being forced to clean up the Hudson River, General Electric Co. argued that an oil-like insulating fluid that had seeped into the river from its Washington County capacitor plants wasn't harmful to humans.

Besides, GE officials said, the river was cleaning itself.

Yet newly uncovered documents reveal that as early as the 1960s — decades before the government ordered GE to undertake the river dredging that is scheduled to resume this spring — company officials were warned of the potential serious health threats of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), which their engineers described in confidential memos as "hazardous waste."

The documents also indicate that GE flushed far more PCBs into the river than government regulators have estimated, and that nearly a million pounds a year of additional PCBs were carted away by scavenger crews, dumped with an attitude characterized by a GE engineer in 1970 as "out of sight, out of mind."

...

Jack Welch also doesn't believe PCBs have harmful health effects, despite scientific evidence that they may. Much of his position on that, he said, comes from studies that GE commissioned as early as 1976, in which the health trends of its factory workers were studied by scientists.

Last spring, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, which first warned of PCBs' adverse health effects in 1978, declared that certain PCBs, including the type flushed into the river by GE, "have reproductive, toxic, and carcinogenic consequences." The EPA, based on past practice, is expected to adopt that finding once the World Health Organization adopts it.

"EPA," Welch scoffed, waving his hand dismissively during his deposition last year. "I was completely satisfied as to the safety of PCBs. In my time I studied it. I looked at it. I made my judgment and I was completely satisfied. ... I haven't seen any PCB studies that convince me there was another side to it."

But the studies that Welch cites have drawn scientists' questions. In one study commissioned by GE, scientists examined the health patterns of workers at the Washington County capacitor plants and determined that they had a lower rate of cancer than the general population.

"It followed people for only five years ... (and) included all the secretaries, all the people that weren't anywhere near where the PCBs were," said Dr. David O. Carpenter, who has studied PCBs for decades.

"The point about those studies is they were included in the review by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, along with all of the other studies, many of them occupational, and they were found to be unconvincing," said Carpenter, director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University at Albany. "The issue is that in addition to cancer, we now have such strong evidence that PCBs alter a large number of other organ systems. PCBs affect the brain and reduce learning ability. This has been demonstrated repeatedly in children exposed to PCBs, often exposed even before birth where they get PCBs from their mother's body and from breast milk."

Learning and memory functions also diminish for adults exposed to PCBs, Carpenter said. He added that some scientists suspect PCBs cause adverse effects to the thyroid glands and health risks that include diabetes, high blood pressure and effects on human reproductive systems.

"PCBs are very dangerous chemicals and anybody that says they are not dangerous simply is not telling the truth, or just does not know what studies have been done," Carpenter said.

Ah, but not to Jack Welch they're not.

And he's studied this issue, so he assures us we should take him at his word, even though the study he cites to back up his claim was rigged by limiting the length of it and by putting people who were nowhere near the PCB's into it.

Jack Welch is quite literally one of the most evil men on the planet.

His company polluted the Hudson for decades with PCB's, but in order to save his company money, he argues PCB's aren't harmful despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, then cites a rigged study to back up his claims.

Who the hell cares about anything a criminal like this says about anything?

How many cancers, how many deaths is the guy responsible for because he refused to take responsibility for the damage his company did to the river?

I'm not here to defend Farina and her choice of superintendents.

I am here to call Welch out for his horseshit.

His "Business Is Meritocratic" argument is horseshit and any rudimentary look at the quality and track records of some of the people running businesses show that.

On top of that, Welch's own track record places him squarely as one of the worst human beings on the planet.

Quite frankly, Farina should consider it an honor to be criticized by someone like Welch.

College For All Once Again Exposed As Myth

The NY Times shows what's happened to the "American Dream" since 1989 - even for the college-educated:

YOUNG families are better educated than ever before, but they are earning lower real incomes.

The Federal Reserve Board’s newly released 2013 Survey of Consumer Finances indicates that the median family headed by someone under 35 years of age earned $35,509 in 2013 dollars. Adjusted for inflation, that is 6 percent less than similar families reported in the first such survey, in 1989.

Since 1989, the Fed has conducted extensive interviews of consumers every three years. Respondents are asked about their family’s income in the previous year, as well as about wealth, debt, education and attitudes toward financial issues. The results are released by family, not by individual, so the median family income may include the income of both spouses. Single-person households are included in the family calculations.

As can be seen in the charts, younger families have fallen further and further behind older families as time has passed. Nearly a quarter-century after the first survey was taken, families headed by people over 55 generally have higher incomes, after adjusting for inflation, than their predecessors did. But those in groups under 55 generally earn less than their predecessors.

In the first survey, the younger group included families headed by people born after 1954, and so was dominated by baby boomers. The latest group includes families headed by people born after 1984, and they seem not to have done nearly as well early in their careers. The earlier group came of age in a stronger economy and its members were generally not burdened by education loans as many of the latter group are.

The largest declines have come since the 2007 survey — the last one in which participants discussed their income in a year before the Great Recession began. The following survey covered income earned during the recession, and it was not easy to know how much of the falloff was a cyclical phenomenon that would disappear when the economy recovered.

But the newest survey covered income in 2012, three years after the recession ended, and shows that most of the lost ground has not been recovered. In fact, the real median income for all of the age groups except those in the 35-to-44 group declined from 2010 to 2013.

And you know that jive about how education is the issue, that those with higher educational attainment do better than those with lower?

It's jive:

Among families of all ages, those with more education tend to earn more than those with less. But that differential appears to be shrinking. at least for younger families. In 1989, the median income of families headed by young college graduates was twice that of similar families headed by high school graduates who never attended college. Now, the difference is only 52 percent. There are more college graduates in the group, but those graduates have a lower real median income than their predecessors.

They're still pushing college for everyone in schools, selling kids on the myth that people who go to college make more money than those who don't.

It's of course much more complicated than that, as can be seen by the diminishing gap between those with college degrees and those without in the recent surveys.

I know that the NYCDOE is pushing so-called "college readiness" as one of the school metrics for whether a schools is "good" or not.

That means there is pressure on administrations to push as many students into college DIRECTLY after graduation as they can.

Here's a lesson you won't hear much in schools these days, but one that needs to be given:

If students are not careful, going to college can harm them irrevocably for life.

Taking on tens of thousands of dollars in debt at the start of their adult lives for a piece of paper that doesn't do much for them is irrevocable harm, whether the NYSED, the NYCDOE or the USDOE want to use that piece of paper as an emblem for college readiness or not.

Yesterday, Fred Klonsky linked to a Huffington Post piece about senior citizens swamped with student debt who are having their Social Security checks garnished:

The Education Department is demanding so much money from seniors with defaulted student loans that it's forcing tens of thousands of them into poverty, according to a government audit.

At least 22,000 Americans aged 65 and older had a part of their Social Security benefits garnished last year to the point that their monthly benefits were below federal poverty thresholds, according to the Government Accountability Office.

Education Department-initiated collections on defaulted federal student loans left at least another 83,000 Americans aged 64 and younger with poverty-level Social Security payments, GAO data show. Federal auditors cautioned that the number of Americans forced to accept poverty-level benefits because of past defaults on federal student loans are surely higher.

More than half, or 54 percent, of federal student loans held by borrowers at least 75 years old are in default, according to the federal watchdog. About 27 percent of loans held by borrowers aged 65 to 74 are in default. Among borrowers aged 50 to 64, 19 percent of their loans are in default. The Education Department generally defines a default as being at least 360 days past due.

As unpaid student debt approaches $1.3 trillion, the federal watchdog's findings underscore the consequences of increased student debt burdens and the risk they'll wreak havoc on households in the coming years if U.S. workers continue to see little increase in their paychecks, the economy barely grows, and the Education Department's contractors keep borrowers in the dark on repayment options.

22,000 senior citizens having their Social Security benefits garnished now.

Just wait and see what those numbers look like when the younger generations surveyed by the Federal Reserve start getting older and are still swamped by student debt.

This is where we're at these days - the American Dream, circa 2014.

As Carlin said, it's called the "American Dream" because you have to be asleep to believe it.

Guard Violence At Rikers Grew Under Mayor Bloomberg

Does this get added to Mayor Bloomberg's "legacy"?

The portrait that emerged from the report on Rikers Island by the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan last week was of a place with almost medieval levels of violence, meted out with startling ferocity by guards and their superiors. 

The two-and-a-half-year investigation, which focused on the abuse of teenage inmates by correction staff, was exhaustive in cataloging the brutality. But a critical question that went unaddressed is how conditions were allowed to get to this point.

Rikers has been a place of violent excess for decades. And the growing ranks of inmates with mental illnesses, reaching nearly 40 percent of the jail population today, have added to the challenges for correction officials. 

But conditions worsened substantially under the administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, which reduced jail staff and failed to curb escalating violence by guards, according to former correction officials, inmates’ advocates and others intimately familiar with the jail.

“There was very little interest in expending political capital and financial capital on the jails,” said Martin F. Horn, who was correction commissioner during Mr. Bloomberg’s first two terms.

As mayor, Mr. Bloomberg earned a reputation for being a consummate manager who leveraged his private sector experience to tackle municipal problems. But he never made Rikers a high priority, at a time when conditions were drastically deteriorating, according to people familiar with its problems.

During Mr. Bloomberg’s last term, use of force by officers on inmates jumped by 90 percent, according to Correction Department data. Inmates’ advocates and public officials charged with overseeing the jails said they pleaded for the administration to address the issue.

“We met with the Department of Correction and the Bloomberg administration about the prevalence of violence directed by correctional staff towards prisoners, and they didn’t respond,” said Dr. Robert Cohen, a member of the New York City Board of Correction, a watchdog agency.

In short, they didn't give a shit about the violence at Rikers, the worsening conditions, what is termed in the Times story "almost medieval levels of violence."

I ask again, does the "almost medieval levels of violence meted out with startling ferocity by guards and their superiors" at Rikers to teenage prisoners get added to his "legacy"?

Rupert Murdoch Looks To Buy More Stuff

It seems the hacking scandal mess has not deterred Rupert Murdoch from owning much more of the world than he already does:

The New York Times today is reporting that News Corp NWSA -0.22%. head Rupert Murdoch recently made a friendly bid to buy fellow media giant Time Warner TWX +17.07% for $80 billion. Time Warner’s Jeff Bewkes reportedly rejected the deal. News Corp. confirmed that it made the offer but the companies are not in discussion right now.

Murdoch is a mogul who is not easily deterred. This probably won’t be the end of his attempts to buy the company. We’ve seen a ton of media consolidation lately with Comcast CMCSA +0.29% buying Time Warner Cable TWC -0.02% (a spin-off of Time Warner) and AT&T T +0.58% buying DirecTV. A combined News Corp. Time Warner would mean a massive combination of the people who make the content that goes down the pipes being bought and sold in the other big deals. It would cut the number of major Hollywood studios down from six to five.

None of these deals have yet been approved of by regulators in Washington concerned with anti-trust issues. But Murdoch must feel very sure that a Time Warner purchase would be approved or he wouldn’t have made the offer. According to the NYT article, under the terms of the proposed deal, Time Warner would sell off CNN since the station competes directly with News Corp’s Fox News

The Telegraph says this caps a "remarkable turnaround" for Murdoch:

Time Warner has rejected Rupert Murdoch’s $80bn takeover approach, but the octogenarian has a longstanding record of getting what he wants in the end.

It would cap a remarkable turnaround for the man and for his businesses. This time three years ago, the Murdoch media empire had just been plunged in a crisis by revelations that the News of the World had hacked into Milly Dowler’s voicemail.

The British newspaper was a tiny part of a vast global business covering television, film, books, satellite broadcasting, business data and digital media assets, but its misdeeds were grave enough the reaction to them strong enough for commentators to claim Mr Murdoch reign as the world’s top media owner was at an end.

The key decision on the road to recovery was made less than a year after the Milly Dowler scandal broke. In June 2012, News Corp announced it would split. One company, ‘new’ News Corp would be the holding company for Mr Murdoch’s publishing assets, including his British tabloids, which were still toxic at the time.

The other new company, 21st Century Fox, would safeguard the more profitable television and film assets.

It seems evil just lives on and on and on...

Eva Moskowitz Wants To Take School Building From Autistic Children

In all the "De Blasio is harming poor minority children by shutting down charter schools that don't exist yet" stories, we fail to find out that Success Academy edu-entrepreneur Eva Moskowitz wants to subsume space from a school for autistic and emotionally disturbed children to expand her charter empire.

Juan Gonzalez writes:

No one is happier about her policy change than the parents and staff at the Mickey Mantle school, a program for autistic and emotionally disturbed children that was slated to lose space and seats to the proposed expansion of Success Academy.

“Our school already lost a music, a theater arts and an art room the past few years,” said Barry Daub, principal at Mickey Mantle. Those losses happened to make room for Harlem Success 1, launched in the same building in 2006.

Mickey Mantle would have lost enrollment and even more space if Fariña had approved the Success Academy expansion.

“We would be doing physical and occupational therapy in the halls,” Daub said.

Yvette Santana, whose grandson Aaron Cruz is a fourth-grader at Mickey Mantle, is furious at the way parents and children are being pitted against each other.

“We don’t want to throw anybody out, but it’s not right to take away the programs our children have,” Santana said.

Gonzalez writes that Chancellor Farina has a fix for Eva's problem:

Fariña’s people say the four middle schools in the 22-school charter network Moskowitz already operates have enough empty seats to absorb the 194 students from Success Academy.

No child is being denied an education. It’s just that one charter network is no longer getting everything it demands.

Too bad de Blasio and Farina weren't ready to go with this message as soon as last week when they announced they were overturning three of the eight Success/Bloomberg co-locations.

Because this could have been a very different media story than the one they got - de Blasio harms poor black minority children by shutting down charter schools.

That story emanated straight from Moskowitz's P.R. office and it's pure propaganda.

At least know we're starting to see the truth come out.

Alas, it may be too late.

NYCDOE Chancellor Announcement Not Coming This Week - But De Blasio Did Appoint Former Goldman Sachs Employee To Administration Post

De Blasio: "Very likely" to announce Chancellor next week. "There will be some interim leadership... until new chancellor fully on board"
— Beth Fertig (@bethfertig) December 23, 2013

No chancellor announcement, but de Blasio did appoint a former employee of Goldman Sachs, the Vampire Squid of Wall Street, as a deputy mayor for urban affairs:

For all his campaign bluster against the two cities New York has become, Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio isn't exactly shying away from some of the people who helped make it that way. This morning, the mayor-elect announced that Alicia Glen will serve as Deputy Mayor for Housing and Economic Development, a newly created position that will aim to make housing more affordable, as well create living-wage jobs for New Yorkers.

"We need to invest in key emerging industries and affordable housing so New Yorkers have a better shot at working their way into the middle class. Alicia has the record, fresh ideas and bold outlook to make that vision a reality,” said de Blasio at this morning's press conference.

De Blasio discussed Glen's vast experience, but mostly skirted the topic of Glen's last position, as the head of Goldman Sachs's Urban Investment Group.

While at Goldman, Glen worked with the Bloomberg administration on the public-private partnerships that Bloomberg championed throughout his reign. In her speech this morning, Glen told the crowd that "we can’t remain the greatest city in the world when half of New Yorkers are living in or near poverty. We can do so much more to lift people up by investing in our neighborhoods—especially in the outer boroughs."

Here is a description of one high profile piece of Alicia Glen's previous work at Goldman:

Goldman Sachs is making its second foray into an experimental method of financing social services, lending up to $4.6 million for a childhood education program in Salt Lake City.

This “social impact bond,” in which Goldman stands to make money if the program is successful but will lose its investment if it fails, will support a preschool program intended to reduce the need for special education and remedial services. The upshot, in theory, is that taxpayers will not have to bear the upfront cost of the program.

Goldman is being joined in this effort by the Chicago investor J.B. Pritzker, who is providing a subordinate loan of up to $2.4 million, bringing the total financing to $7 million. The loans will be announced at an event in Chicago on Thursday.

“Social impact bonds are an entirely new way of financing things that have traditionally been paid for either through philanthropy or by taxpayer dollars,” said Alicia Glen, head of Goldman’s urban investment group.

Though the effectiveness of this type of financing remains unproved, it has gained a prominent adherent in New York City, which allowed Goldman to invest nearly $10 million in a jail program last year. The city was the first in the United States to test social impact bonds.

For Goldman, which could gain a public-relations benefit from the investment, Salt Lake City has become an important business center. The city is home to Goldman’s second-largest office in the United States, and the Wall Street firm held its annual meeting there in May.

The loans are going to the United Way of Salt Lake, which oversees the Utah High Quality Preschool Program. The investment’s success will be measured by the level of cost savings when children do not need to use special education services, which are financed by the state.

The loans carry an interest rate of 5 percent, which is paid along with the principal if the program is successful. In the best case, Goldman and Mr. Pritzker would make additional “success fees.”

“We’re creating something sustainable that has a focus on returns,” Mr. Pritzker said. “This titillates my interest in business and engages me.”

This type of financing, which was first used in Britain in 2010, has raised eyebrows. Data on the New York investment, focused on men incarcerated at Rikers Island, is not yet available.

“I think it’s distressing the degree to which a new industry has been built around social impact bonds before it’s ever been proven viable,” said Mark Rosenman, a professor emeritus at Union Institute and University in Cincinnati. “We ought to work it to fruition in a couple places before we start promoting it.”

Ah yes - creating financial instruments so that Goldman can makes bets on students who need support services, giving the program the incentive to find ways to "demonstrate" the children do not need these services.

Boy, that sounds like there could be no down side there.

And who helped come up with this new scheme but Alicia Glen, Bill de Blasio's new Deputy Mayor for Housing and Economic Development.

Maybe I'm just cynical, but it sounds to me like de Blasio just appointed the scum of the earth to be a deputy mayor.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Why Student Information Should NOT Be Given To InBloom

Greedy Geoffrey Canada: Privatize Education AND Social Security Too!

Geoffrey Canada has been going around the country with some Wall Street criminals to talk to the youth of America about how they're getting screwed by old people.

It started earlier this year (as announced in this Wall Street Journal opinion piece co-written by Canada), but WNYC just picked up the story and Gotham Charter Schools ran with it last night on their "Remainders" list.

The gist is this:

Canada says rich people do not need Social Security and that money should be used for other things:

The country's existing entitlement programs are not just unaffordable, they are also profoundly unfair to those who are taking their first steps in search of opportunity. Social Security is one example. According to Social Security actuaries, the generational theft runs deep. Young people now entering the workforce will actually lose 4.2% of their total lifetime wages because of their participation in Social Security. A typical third-grader will get back (in present value terms) only 75 cents for every dollar he contributes to Social Security over his lifetime. Meanwhile, many seniors with greater means nearing retirement age will pocket a handsome profit. Health-care spending through Medicare represents an even less equitable story.

The government has an obligation, of course, to support needy seniors. But this pension system is ripe for common-sense reforms, including changing eligibility ages and benefit structures for those with greater means, ridding the Social Security disability program of pervasive fraud, and removing disincentives for those who would rather work in their later years.

Powerful, vested interests portray reformers as avowed enemies of seniors. But, the status quo is, in fact, tantamount to saddling school-age children with more debt, weaker economic growth, and fewer opportunities for jobs and advancement.

Canada calls his Social Security reforms "common sense reforms."

As soon as you hear the words "common sense" in anything a politician or a political hack like Canada says, you know you should hold your wallet because they're coming for it.

In this case, that's exactly what Canada is doing - by adding a means test to the program and by raising eligibility, he is looking to undercut the universality of Social Security and turn it into another poverty program like welfare or food stamps, one that many Americans will not feel any investment in because they won't be receiving any of the benefits from it.

That so-called common sense reform is actually a seed of destruction meant to rid of us of Social Security, not a "common sense reform" meant to help young people.

More than anything, young people these days are going to need Social Security when they get older because very few of them are going to have pensions or be able to save money for their own retirements.

Here is what two commenters say about Canada's scheme:

Very troubling that WNYC aired this opinion without asking the obvious question - why not make a simple adjustment of the social security tax upper limit? The only way Mr. Canada's logic makes any sense is with the false ssumption that taxes on the wealthy must always continue to go down, until they are contributing almost nothing to the society which supplies their luxuries.

Means testing of these programs is a poison pill. If social security and medicare are not part of the financial goods of the wealthy and the upper middle class, they become welfare programs. It is easy to to take away from the powerless - look at the recent efforts to gut the food stamp program, for example.

And:

Did I miss the part where Canada demands that the uber rich and corporations pay reasonable taxes to fund quality public services? Oops--forgot that he gets all his funding from "charity" of said same 1%, so makes more sense to demand that the 99% give up what little they have to fund his priorities.

If Geoffrey Canada wants older, rich people to help the younger generation, he can start by calling for a return to the tax rates of the Reagan Era on rich people or, better yet, he can call for a return to the tax rates of the Eisenhower Era on rich people.

Then that money can be used to fund college education, job programs, universal pre-K, etc. - all those things Canada says he's worried about.

The reality is, greedy Geoffrey Canada doesn't care one whit about young people or poor people.

He is simply doing the bidding of his billionaire benefactors, the same ones who fund his privatized charter schools and his real estate ventures.

As the commenter at the NYC story mentions, it's a shame that the public radio station gives this criminal air time to sell his poison pills.

But these days, the "public" radio station is being funded by the same Wall Street criminals that fund Canada and his charter operations, so it all makes sense.

Nothing more than free marketeer propaganda.

Bill Gates - No Tech Genius, Just A Ruthless Operator

Barry Ritholtz looks at why Microsoft is in such trouble and decides that it's because their monopoly status no longer holds.

He then looks at how they got their monopoly status in the first place:

Gates’s true genius was not as a tech visionary. It was his business acumen in leveraging a monopoly position in operating systems to become the dominant U.S. tech company. IBM gave the world its first PC in 1980. The mainframe giant looked down on the idea of a personal computer for home or even business use. It thought the PC insignificant — it could never replace the big iron it made. In 1981, it happily outsourced the operating system to Gates’s squad of geeks, who themselves outsourced the OS code writing. By 1982, MS-DOS was released.

Embedded within that original IBM deal was the seed of Microsoft’s vast fortunes. Microsoft’s true genius was in its license agreements of MS-DOS (and, eventually, Windows) with PC manufacturers. They offered a variety of licenses, but the version that charged the least per copy included a clever kicker: Microsoft had to be paid for every machine sold — regardless of whether MS-DOS was the operating system. This brilliant, if evil, agreement with computer makers effectively blocked all OS competition. Microsoft became the standard adopted by corporate America.

Microsoft had its deal with the devil: Its lightning in a bottle was not some awesome technology or brilliant breakthrough – it was a clause in a contract that led to an enormously profitable monopoly. It then pre-installed Office in new PCs, creating a second monopoly and billions more in profits. By then, Office had become the dominant productivity software suite. Eventually, Microsoft’s server and tools division — which includes Windows Server and Microsoft SQL Database — also became a de facto standard.

Google’s motto, “Don’t Be Evil,” was a not-so-subtle swipe at how Microsoft had achieved its dominance.

Worked for a while - a long while, in terms of tech companies - but not so much anymore:

Most monopolies, aside from baseball, eventually get broken. Microsoft was no exception. Once the Justice Department and the European Commission found the company in violation of antitrust laws, it was forced to compete fairly. It is no coincidence that as the company lost its vice grip on the desktop, its dominance faded. Revealed as a dinosaur, it was unable to compete with the smaller, more-nimble mammals.

And therein lay its current problems. In a fair and level playing field, the once-feared software giant has been revealed as a middling software writer and a mediocre competitor.

Ballmer oversaw a decade of missed opportunities, and he very well may have hastened Microsoft’s decline. But it might have been inevitable. The truth is that for all its claims of innovation, Microsoft never generated much in the way of profits by innovating. This then is a tale of the long, slow death of an enormous cash cow. 

The next time you hear somebody say or read somebody write that Gates is a genius and an innovator, remember Ritholtz's Washington Post column and this quote:

In a fair and level playing field, the once-feared software giant has been revealed as a middling software writer and a mediocre competitor.

Gates and Microsoft thrived through ruthlessness - that's all.

Nothing innovative about either Gates the man or Microsoft the company.

One might say the same about his education reforms and philanthropy.

Gates, Bloomberg, Buffet, Oprah And Jeb Bush Meet At Gates Foundation Conference In South Carolina

From a local affiliate in South Carolina:

CHARLESTON, SC -Bill Gates, Chairman of Microsoft and one of the richest people in the world, is spending time in the Lowcountry.

  WCBD  confirmed the American business magnate is at the Sanctuary on Kiawah Island.

Suspicion was raised when nearly 20 very expensive jets were seen lined up at the Charleston International Airport on Johns Island.

Officials with the Beach Company confirmed to WCBD that other big names such as New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, TV host Oprah Winfrey and Billionaire Warren Buffet flew into the Charleston Executive airport on Johns Island Wednesday night.

Other prominent people said to also be staying there this weekend are  Jeb Bush and Dan Gilbert, owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers.

 The famous guests were attending a two day long conference led by Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Officials say the meeting was about the foundation Gates and his wife Melinda run.

The meeting rented out the entire Sanctuary Hotel on the gated island. Security has been high throughout the entire week, keeping the public away from the hotel.

WCBD spoke to the Mayor of Kiawah by phone who said the town is happy to serve as host to the event.

"We wish them luck with what they're doing," Mayor Charles Lipuma said. "If they want to play golf, they couldn't have picked a better weekend. We are glad we could offer them great weather."

They weren't there to play golf, you can be sure of that.

They were there to continue destroying the public education system, among other policy goals

Shame they had to go to such lengths to try and keep their meeting secret.

Reminds me a little of these guys.

Or these guys.

At any rate, I love the line in the story about suspicion being raised that something was up when 20 "very expensive jets" were seen lined up at the Charleston Executive airport on Johns Island.

I wonder how that Save The World From Global Warming initiative Gates and Bloomberg are heading is going?

Private jets are good for the environment, yes?

Parents Fight The InBloom Inc. Plan

These were fighting words:

"I know that you're just a messenger, so I want to make sure you deliver this message properly to your supervisors," parent and City Council candidate Jelani Mashariki told the Department of Education's deputy chief academic officer, Adina Lopatin, at a Borough Hall town hall packed with families Monday night.

"You're not going to give out my child's information to a third-party corporation to do whatever it is they want to do," Makarishi continued over whistles and applause from the audience. "The people are not going to have it and we are going to fight back."

Several other audience members had similar things to say regarding inBloom Inc., the controversial data-sharing initiative that parents at Monday night's volatile forum believe violates the privacy and security of their children. The $100 million initiative, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, and federal grants, and built by News Corp's Wireless Generation, is responsible for designing something called an Education Data Portal in order to provide data tools to teachers and families.


As Lopatin later clarified, inBloom's EDP uses student data--including student demographics, parent contact information, dates of absence, suspensions, and state test scores--through an Amazon cloud-based service. That information is then shared with school-contracted vendors. The DOE maintains that this practice does not violate the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, and that vendors will not be able to even access the data without the school's permission, but there's also no provision for students and families to opt out.

"We live in 2013. Was anyone around last week when the AP was Twitter-hacked?" asked Natasha Capers, a parent and representative from the Alliance for a Quality Education. "It shut down New York City's Wall Street. We can only imagine what would happen when someone wants this information and knows how to utilize it properly."

InBloom Inc. representatives were invited to the forum, but declined the invitation.

Already you can see how dismissive of parents's concerns they are.

The powers that be in Albany - Silver, Tisch, King, Cuomo - do not seem overly concerned about parents concerns either.

There are two bills - one in the Assembly and one in the Senate - that prohibit "the release of personally identifiable student information where parental consent is not provided."

We'll see how far those bills go.

I cannot think of time in my nearly half century of life when politicians and their bureaucratic functionaries are less responsive to parents and their constituencies over these kinds of issues in education than they are now.

A parent at the forum put the whole mess in crystal form:

"We want to protect the privacy of our children," Lydia Bellahcene, a mother of five children in the public school system, told last night's town hall in one of the event's most impassioned speeches. "It is our God-given right. And I'm not signing that away because I put my daughter in public education."

Indeed.

Bloomberg Leaves Homeless Families Out In The Cold

This is indefensible:

Families seeking refuge on frigid winter nights were once guaranteed a place in the city’s shelters.

Not anymore.

Homeless advocates and elected officials are accusing the Bloomberg administration of turning families away from shelter when the temperature plunges below freezing.

Take Junior Clarke, 23, and his family. The dad said city workers told him to leave the Bronx PATH Center — an intake hub for families — during a cold snap last month.

“They tried to send us outside into the cold,” said Clarke, 23, who was with his his wife, Kaneesha, 23, and 4-year-old daughter, Janiah. “They threatened to have us thrown out by police.”

The city historically invoked “code blue” status when the temperature dipped below freezing, easing shelter restrictions to get people indoors.

It’s not clear when, exactly, the city altered its policy and started enforcing rules requiring some shelter residents to prove they have nowhere else to go — even on cold winter nights.

Homeless advocates first noticed the policy change this winter due to the long stretch of bitter cold.

Department of Homeless Services spokeswoman Barbara Brancaccio refused to answer questions about when the policy changed — or why. She failed to return multiple phone calls made over a week and refused to grant an interview with Homeless Services Commissioner Seth Diamond, who did not respond to emailed questions.

Instead, Brancaccio sent a vague statement that said all families applying for shelter for the first time are given a bed — but returning families have to meet city criteria. “For reapplications, we take into account weather conditions, and we work to ensure that applicants who have alternate living situations do not take up beds that are needed by those who truly have no recourse,” Brancaccio’s statement said.

Asked for clarification, she sent the statement again.

The Clarkes were considered reapplicants when they showed up at the center Jan. 22. They stayed in shelter for 10 days in 2008 after being thrown out of his mother-in-law’s Suffolk County home, Junior Clarke said. The family had returned to the center because they were kicked out of a rented room after falling behind on rent, Clarke said. He lost his job as an EMT in December.

At PATH, shelter workers told him to go back to his mother-in-law’s house. Clarke told them the family wasn’t welcome.

“They tried to make us leave and we refused,” Clarke said. “You know some people leave, walk away and go sleep on the train with their families.”

The temperature dropped to a low of 13 degrees that day, according to AccuWeather.com.

Clarke, who grew up in Queens, reached out to The Legal Aid Society and paralegal Christina Schrum-Herrera convinced intake workers to give the family a place to stay for the night.

“How many families did we not intervene for?” Schrum-Herrera asked. “There are a lot more families who weren’t placed because the city no longer has the code blue policy.”

The change also got the attention of City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Councilwoman Annabel Palma (D-Bronx) who sent a letter to Diamond last month. “We are deeply concerned about DHS’ current practice of denying some families overnight placement during extreme weather,” they wrote.

Patrick Markee, senior policy analyst with the Coalition for the Homeless, said his agency began noticing that families were being turned away this year. He said the city was evasive with his agency but eventually acknowledged the code blue policy was changed last winter. “The fact that city officials refuse to admit they changed their ‘code blue’ policy for families seeking shelter only underlines how misguided and dangerous it is to turn children and parents into the streets on freezing cold nights,” Markee said.

Jacqueline Barnett, 45, said she was also turned away on Jan. 22 when she and her 3-year-old daughter, Jeanai, showed up at the Bronx center.

Barnett, who said it was too cold to leave with her daughter, called the coalition for help and was placed in a Sheepshead Bay shelter. “It is really, really shameful that they would turn people away,” she said. “Even a dog is due respect.”

Actually in Bloomberg's New York, the respect you are due is in direct proportion to the money you have.

No money, no respect.

No money, no home.

And if you don't like it, you can go live in some Socialistic country where they actually take care of people and give families with children a warm place to stay when it's 13 degrees outside.

 

Michael Bloomberg is an evil, evil man.

Corporate Education Reformers Looking To Churn Out Obedient Workers And Compliant Consumers

This Alternet article on the connection between behavioralism and consumerism resonates in the day and age of corporate education reform:

Those who rise to power in the corporatocracy are control freaks, addicted to the buzz of power over other human beings, and so it is natural for such authorities to have become excited by behavior modification.

Alfie Kohn, in Punished by Rewards (1993), documents with copious research how behavior modification works best on dependent, powerless, infantilized, bored, and institutionalized people. And so for authorities who get a buzz from controlling others, this creates a terrifying incentive to construct a society that creates dependent, powerless, infantilized, bored, and institutionalized people.
Many of the most successful applications of behavior modification have involved laboratory animals, children, or institutionalized adults. According to management theorists Richard Hackman and Greg Oldham in Work Redesign (1980), “Individuals in each of these groups are necessarily dependent on powerful others for many of the things they most want and need, and their behavior usually can be shaped with relative ease.”

...

Behavior modification is fundamentally a means of controlling people and thus for Kohn, “by its nature inimical to democracy, critical questioning, and the free exchange of ideas among equal participants.”

For Skinner, all behavior is externally controlled, and we don’t truly have freedom and choice. Behaviorists see freedom, choice, and intrinsic motivations as illusory, or what Skinner called “phantoms.” Back in the 1970s, Noam Chomsky exposed Skinner’s unscientific view of science, specifically Skinner’s view that science should be prohibited from examining internal states and intrinsic forces.

In democracy, citizens are free to think for themselves and explore, and are motivated by very real—not phantom—intrinsic forces, including curiosity and a desire for justice, community, and solidarity.

What is also scary about behaviorists is that their external controls can destroy intrinsic forces of our humanity that are necessary for a democratic society. Researcher Mark Lepper was able to diminish young children’s intrinsic joy of drawing with Magic Markers by awarding them personalized certificates for coloring with a Magic Marker. Even a single, one-time reward for doing something enjoyable can kill interest in it for weeks.

Behavior modification can also destroy our intrinsic desire for compassion, which is necessary for a democratic society. Kohn offers several studies showing “children whose parents believe in using rewards to motivate them are less cooperative and generous [children] than their peers.” Children of mothers who relied on tangible rewards were less likely than other children to care and share at home. 

And that, of course, is the ultimate objective of the corporate education reform movement - to develop obedient, compliant, easily manipulated children who will acquiesce as adults to the capitalist punishment/rewards system they have been taught as children in public schools run by authoritarian control freaks like Andrew Cuomo, Michael Bloomberg, Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee, Eva Moskowitz, Geoffrey Canada, et al.

Evil - truly evil.

Bringing Back The Six Day Work Week

Ultimately the goal of our corporate masters is to reinstitute feudalism.

They've got a pretty good start going in Greece:

Greece's eurozone creditors are demanding that the government in Athens introduce a six-day working week as part of the stiff terms for the country's second bailout.

The demand is contained in a leaked letter from the "troika" of the country's lenders, the European commission, European Central Bank, and International Monetary Fund. In the letter, the officials policing Greece's compliance with the austerity package imposed in return for the bailout insist on radical labour market reforms, from minimum wages to overtime limits to flexible working hours, that are likely to worsen the standoff between the government and organised labour in Greece.

After a long delay caused by months of political paralysis in Greece, the troika inspectors return to Athens this week to scrutinise Greek observance of its bailout terms. They are expected to deliver a verdict next month that will determine whether Greece is ultimately allowed to remain in the single currency.

The letter, sent last week to the Greek finance and labour ministries, orders the government to extend the working week into the weekend.

"Measure: increase flexibility of work schedules: increase the number of maximum workdays to six days per week for all sectors.

"Increase flexibility of work schedules; set the minimum daily rest to 11 hours; delink the working hours of employees from the opening hours of the establishment; eliminate restrictions on minimum/maximum time between morning and afternoon shifts; allow the consecutive two-week leave to be taken anytime during the year in seasonal sectors."

The instructions focus on labour market reforms, calling for the national labour inspectorate to be radically reformed and put under European supervision.

The letter reveals the detail of eurozone intrusion into a national system and culture of work widely seen outside Greece as dysfunctional.

There should be a permanent "single-rate statutory minimum wage", seen as an incentive for getting people back to work in a country where unemployment has soared to around 30%.

"Unemployment is too high, and policies are needed to prevent it from becoming structural," the letter says.

Unemployment is really high, but if we force the people currently employed to work, say, 10 hours a day instead of, say, seven, we'll put more people back to work.

Sure.

Greece's "creditors" don't care about putting people back to work.

They care about getting their dough.

Somebody in The Guardian comments wrote the following:

Neoliberalism: soft slavery in which the slave pays for their own food and shelter.

Somebody else wrote:

Actually, fuck them, just don't pay your debts off. Seems to work for the banks.

Indeed, that does seem to work for the banks.

Gets you a pat on the head from President Obama, in fact.

Progressive Insurance Sucks

From an Associated Press article in The Guardian:

BALTIMORE (AP) — The Progressive Corp. insurance group is defending itself against an onslaught of negative publicity after it tried to avoid paying $75,000 to the family of a client killed in a car crash and tried to blame the wreck on her.

It began Monday with a blog post from 33-year-old Matt Fisher of Brooklyn, whose sister Katie Fisher had Progressive insurance and was killed in a June 2010 car crash in Baltimore. In order to avoid a $75,000 payment to Katie Fisher's family, Progressive interjected itself into a lawsuit Katie Fisher's family filed against the other driver.

Last week a jury found the other driver negligent, despite Progressive's efforts to persuade the jury that Katie Fisher was at fault.

Matt Fisher said Thursday that the deluge of online support his family has received is gratifying.

I'm not surprised that Progressive Insurance is an evil company happy to take your premiums but not so happy to pay out on claims.

But I do like to highlight when a company acts especially scummy.

Today Progressive Insurance qualifies.