They're smearing him as an "ACORN project," calling him "Sandanista Bill" for doing humanitarian work in Nicaragua in his youth, and comparing him to Raul Castro in the newspapers.
Will this kind of right wing smear campaign work in NYC?
It would work elsewhere in the country, of course, where corporatist president Barack Obama has been called a "socialist" by idiots like Sarah Palin and many on the right believe that as truth.
Still, NYC is not the rest of America, so while it might work in the rest of the country, I wonder how effective it will be here.
What do you think out there?
Perdido 03
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
Bloomberg's DOE Manipulates Graduation Rates
The Mayor of Money has hailed graduation rate increases as another piece of proof that is education reforms have worked.
But just as the test scores were jive, just as the crime stats are jive, just as the emergency response times are jive - the graduation rates are jive too:
As I've written before, if there were ever a true independent auditing of the Bloomberg Years, they would find so much manipulation of data and out-and-out fraud from these people that they would be frog-marching Bloomberg administration officials out for months in handcuffs.
The have phonied up everything, put in place policies that forces phonied up data ("Improve or you're fired!" tends to do that sort of thing), but the press has largely ignored the manipulation.
Certainly they have not blamed Bloomberg himself for any of this.
You can bet if de Blasio is elected in November, that will change.
In any case, no wonder Bloomberg is planning on having all the emails and other data from his administration erased before he goes.
That's a great way to ensure his fraudulent legacy never sees the light of day with the public.
But just as the test scores were jive, just as the crime stats are jive, just as the emergency response times are jive - the graduation rates are jive too:
Dozens of struggling city high schools allowed students to use a mishmash of makeup assignments — sometimes requiring little or no work — to earn credits for classes they initially flunked, sources say and data show.
For the first time, the Department of Education has made credit-recovery data publicly available by school — and it shows nearly 40 schools awarded between 5 percent and 31 percent of their credits to kids through makeup work in 2011-12, while close to three dozen gave between 5 percent and 46 percent of their credits that way the previous school year.
Most credit-recovery programs occur over the summer, when students try to learn the course work that eluded them during the year.
But many shortcut programs also cropped up after the department started using credit accumulation as a factor in grading schools in 2007 — putting pressure on them to come up with quick fixes for credit shortages.
“It’s a big issue at the school . . . the reason the principal does this is to make our school look good on our progress report,” said a former teacher at the Academy for Language and Technology in The Bronx, where 13 percent of credits came from makeup work in 2011-12.
The ex-teacher said that students would use an online program called Apex to read passages and answer simple questions — but that no one would prevent them from looking up the answers.
“They just accumulate easy credits rather than learn anything,” the former teacher said.
As I've written before, if there were ever a true independent auditing of the Bloomberg Years, they would find so much manipulation of data and out-and-out fraud from these people that they would be frog-marching Bloomberg administration officials out for months in handcuffs.
The have phonied up everything, put in place policies that forces phonied up data ("Improve or you're fired!" tends to do that sort of thing), but the press has largely ignored the manipulation.
Certainly they have not blamed Bloomberg himself for any of this.
You can bet if de Blasio is elected in November, that will change.
In any case, no wonder Bloomberg is planning on having all the emails and other data from his administration erased before he goes.
That's a great way to ensure his fraudulent legacy never sees the light of day with the public.
There Must Be NO CONCESSIONS In The Next UFT Contract
NYC Educator and I had a discussion about pattern bargaining for the UFT contract.
When the last UFT contract expired, the pattern for municipal contracts at the time was 8% over two years without concessions.
Mayor Bloomberg decided that the city would not negotiate that contract with the UFT because of the recession, claiming the city no longer had the money, and the comptroller at the time, Bill Thompson, agreed.
And so, here we are, without the 8% raise that we were due as part of the pattern, which, as NYC Educator notes in his latest post, is a sacrosanct pattern, at least when the salary increases are negligible or in the favor of the city.
I am of the opinion that the UFT will completely forget about the old pattern when a new mayor is elected.
I'm a bit cynical around these guys and my feeling is, they'll look to screw us and hope that most of us don't remember the old pattern (or weren't even in the system when the old pattern was the pattern.)
I suspect that after all the givebacks and concessions we teachers have made as part of the new teacher evaluation system - the lost tenure protections (two "ineffectives" and you are fired is lost tenure protections), the extra paperwork, the extra meetings, the mandated lesson plan formatting for Danielson (yes, I know they say it is not mandated, but if you don't do it the way Ms. Charlotte wants it done, you will be "i-rated") - they will STILL negotiate a pattern-breaking new contract with the next mayor that includes concessions on time, days and/or health care.
NYC Educator said he hoped I was wrong.
I said I hoped I was wrong too, but like him, I remember the "scrapes the skies" contract of 2005 when they gave on seniority rights, bathroom duty, extra time, extra days and a host of other things and told us the contract was the best thing since the Empire State Building.
I have been telling everybody at my school that there must be NO CONCESSIONS in this next contract - not on work protections, not on time or days, not on health care costs.
We have ALREADY given our concessions in the form of the Danielson rubric jive, all the extra work and extra meetings and extra time we have to put in as part of the APPR teacher evaluation system.
If the UFT leadership comes back to us with a "scrapes the skies" contract proposal that offers any concessions at all, I will make sure everybody at my school and everybody who reads this blog on the Internet knows what happened with the old pattern, how much work we have taken on already with the new APPR system, and why we should not make any concessions at all to get the raises we were due as part of the old contract bargaining pattern.
I will call it the "scrap the dogcrap off your shoe" contract.
That has a ring to it, doesn't it?
And it will be a perfect characterization of any contract they negotiate that has concessions in it after all the concessions we have given the city and the state for free.
When the last UFT contract expired, the pattern for municipal contracts at the time was 8% over two years without concessions.
Mayor Bloomberg decided that the city would not negotiate that contract with the UFT because of the recession, claiming the city no longer had the money, and the comptroller at the time, Bill Thompson, agreed.
And so, here we are, without the 8% raise that we were due as part of the pattern, which, as NYC Educator notes in his latest post, is a sacrosanct pattern, at least when the salary increases are negligible or in the favor of the city.
I am of the opinion that the UFT will completely forget about the old pattern when a new mayor is elected.
I'm a bit cynical around these guys and my feeling is, they'll look to screw us and hope that most of us don't remember the old pattern (or weren't even in the system when the old pattern was the pattern.)
I suspect that after all the givebacks and concessions we teachers have made as part of the new teacher evaluation system - the lost tenure protections (two "ineffectives" and you are fired is lost tenure protections), the extra paperwork, the extra meetings, the mandated lesson plan formatting for Danielson (yes, I know they say it is not mandated, but if you don't do it the way Ms. Charlotte wants it done, you will be "i-rated") - they will STILL negotiate a pattern-breaking new contract with the next mayor that includes concessions on time, days and/or health care.
NYC Educator said he hoped I was wrong.
I said I hoped I was wrong too, but like him, I remember the "scrapes the skies" contract of 2005 when they gave on seniority rights, bathroom duty, extra time, extra days and a host of other things and told us the contract was the best thing since the Empire State Building.
I have been telling everybody at my school that there must be NO CONCESSIONS in this next contract - not on work protections, not on time or days, not on health care costs.
We have ALREADY given our concessions in the form of the Danielson rubric jive, all the extra work and extra meetings and extra time we have to put in as part of the APPR teacher evaluation system.
If the UFT leadership comes back to us with a "scrapes the skies" contract proposal that offers any concessions at all, I will make sure everybody at my school and everybody who reads this blog on the Internet knows what happened with the old pattern, how much work we have taken on already with the new APPR system, and why we should not make any concessions at all to get the raises we were due as part of the old contract bargaining pattern.
I will call it the "scrap the dogcrap off your shoe" contract.
That has a ring to it, doesn't it?
And it will be a perfect characterization of any contract they negotiate that has concessions in it after all the concessions we have given the city and the state for free.
Cory Booker May Have A Senate Race On His Hands
DFER favorite-Cory Booker is supposed to win this New Jersey Senate race hands down.
But Quinnipiac finds the race has narrowed with a little more than six weeks to go before election day:
Booker is still over 50% in the race, which means Lonegan has an uphill battle to win.
But there have been some negative stories about Booker out in the press lately, which could be contributing to some support going to Lonegan.
In the end, I think Booker still wins the race,
But it will be interesting to see if he wins in a double digit blowout or if Lonegan can close the gap even more and make it a real race.
But Quinnipiac finds the race has narrowed with a little more than six weeks to go before election day:
A new Quinnipiac poll in New Jersey finds Cory Booker (D) leading Steve Lonegan by 12 points in the U.S. Senate race among likely voters, 53% to 41%.
Said pollster Maurice Carroll: "Maybe that 'show horse vs. work horse' charge from Lonegan is having an impact. While we can't make a direct comparison between registered voters and likely voters, Booker did have a 54% to 29% registered voter lead over Lonegan in Quinnipiac's August 7 pre-primary survey."
Booker is still over 50% in the race, which means Lonegan has an uphill battle to win.
But there have been some negative stories about Booker out in the press lately, which could be contributing to some support going to Lonegan.
In the end, I think Booker still wins the race,
But it will be interesting to see if he wins in a double digit blowout or if Lonegan can close the gap even more and make it a real race.
A Few Reasons To Vote For Tish James
9 days til runoff, here's a few reasons 2 #voteOct1 for #LetitiaJames #letswinthis pic.twitter.com/J5cPAqcM1D
— Letitia James (@TishJames) September 23, 2013
She's gotten a lot of political endorsements.
She's got the unions.
She has the Working Families Party.
Her opponent, Dan Squadron, has the Wall Street crooks and the Democrats for Education Reform and Chuck Schumer.
You should vote Tish James next Tuesday.
The turnout will be low because there is no mayoral or comptroller runoff election.
So whichever candidate turns out their voters most will win this thing.
Let's try and make that candidate Tish James.
She has a real shot to win this election.
She got 36% of the vote in the primary to Dan Squadron's 33%.
But it's a whole new race now.
Every vote matters.
Vote Tish James for Public Advocate.
Monday, September 23, 2013
NY Times Hit Piece On Bill De Blasio
Read Alex Pareene's take on the NY Times hit piece on de Blasio as a closet Sandanista.
Here's a bit:
I'm surprised the Times didn't launch this against de Blasio in the primaries.
It is clearly a hit piece meant to damage him, as they deploy unnamed critics and some anonymous sources to tar de Blasio as a commie pinko.
But I'm with Pareene here - the story makes me like de Blasio even better.
Frankly, I always assumed he was some DLC Clinton-type just talking the progressive talk to get elected.
He may be doing that anyway, but it's good to know that he once did humanitarian work down in Nicaragua and stood against Apartheid and Reagan's illegal Contra war.
Also, as Pareene points out, there are plenty of Republicans out there who supported apartheid, Pinochet, and a host of other evil things back in the day and that stuff never gets reported as "So and so supported racist Apartheid policies and CIA assassination squads."
It's interesting how having a "lefty" past is a crime to the Times but flirting with fascism back in the day just warrants a yawn.
Here's a bit:
The New York Times dropped a bombshell last night: As a young man, Democratic nominee for mayor of New York Bill de Blasio was… pretty left-wing. And he supported the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. And he once was in favor of democratic socialism. The Times presents this information as something they uncovered, as if de Blasio had somehow hidden it.
In fact, de Blasio has spoken publicly about his time in Nicaragua as recently as last December. But the story of de Blasio’s youthful activism is interesting and not that widely known — I didn’t know about it, and I have actually been paying a decent amount of attention to this race — making it great material for a brief biographical sketch of the candidate as an idealistic young man.
This brief biographical sketch, though, sounds a bit like opposition research, or at least like an attempt to “shake up” the race and force the candidate to answer questions about his Commie past. It’s got hints of that very sober but slightly inflammatory tone that the Times puts on when it’s causing trouble. De Blasio, we’re told, “went to Nicaragua to help distribute food and medicine in the middle of a war between left and right. But he returned with something else entirely: a vision of the possibilities of an unfettered leftist government.” Unfettered! I don’t like the sound of that.
The Times says “[de Blasio's] time as a young activist was more influential in shaping his ideology than previously known” (this is the declaration that the information in this article is relevant news and not just old stories) “and far more political than typical humanitarian work.” Yes, because it was… activism? I mean what is “typical humanitarian work” here, exactly? De Blasio was working with the Quixote Center, a Catholic social justice group that fights poverty and economic inequality and that is inspired by liberation theology. This is actually very typical humanitarian work, and Catholic groups in particular have been doing it for years.
I'm surprised the Times didn't launch this against de Blasio in the primaries.
It is clearly a hit piece meant to damage him, as they deploy unnamed critics and some anonymous sources to tar de Blasio as a commie pinko.
But I'm with Pareene here - the story makes me like de Blasio even better.
Frankly, I always assumed he was some DLC Clinton-type just talking the progressive talk to get elected.
He may be doing that anyway, but it's good to know that he once did humanitarian work down in Nicaragua and stood against Apartheid and Reagan's illegal Contra war.
Also, as Pareene points out, there are plenty of Republicans out there who supported apartheid, Pinochet, and a host of other evil things back in the day and that stuff never gets reported as "So and so supported racist Apartheid policies and CIA assassination squads."
It's interesting how having a "lefty" past is a crime to the Times but flirting with fascism back in the day just warrants a yawn.
Lhota Criticizes De Blasio As A Socialist
Well, if you can't run on issues, you can always red bait:
Bill de Blasio’s not ready to overthrow capitalism just yet.
Asked to respond to Republican mayoral rival Joe Lhota’s “Democratic socialist” hit, Mr. de Blasio wasted no time firing back, accusing Mr. Lhota of running a typical right-wing smear campaign.
“I am not surprised that my opponents will throw labels and call names. That’s a Republican tactic. That’s a right-wing tactic. We’ve all seen it plenty of times,” said Mr. de Blasio, flanked by Queens Democrats at an endorsement event this afternoon.
“I’m very proud to be a progressive,” he added. “I’m very proud to be a Democrat.”
Mr. Lhota’s charge stemmed from today’s front-page New York Times story, in which one of Mr. de Blasio’s former associates recalled that the public advocate once described his political views as “Democratic socialist.” Mr. Lhota called Mr. de Blasio’s alleged views “really unfortunate” and criticized him for supporting Nicaraguan revolutionaries and traveling to Cuba.
Lhota also criticized de Blasio for enjoying The Clash's Sandanista album over London Calling or Combat Rock, stating "Everybody knows Sandanista was bloated. It should have been a single album, but they made it into a triple album. I mean, for God sakes, having the roadie's kid sing "Career Opportunities? What the hell is that?"
The de Blasio campaign had no comment.
Bloomberg So Sad He Has To Go
"Bloomberg prepares to depart with all the reluctance of a 6-year-old leaving Great Adventure" http://t.co/rbGXAigLoo cc: @jenchung
— Azi Paybarah (@Azi) September 23, 2013
How About NYSED Commissioner John King PROVES He Consults With Parents Over His Education Reform Agenda?
From the Buffalo News:
Do we want Buffalo district to abide by the rues and consult with the parent's council before making high impact decisions?
Absolutely.
But we also want the New York State Education Department, and in particular its imperious commissioner, to consult with parents before it makes high impact decisions too.
Of course the education reformers at the NYSED do not do this because they think they are above that sort of thing.
They think you, the parent, work for them rather than they, the bureaucrats, work for you.
We teach our children this sham in school that they live in a representative democracy where, when they grow up, they will have some say in how their country, state, and municipality or local community is run.
Te truth is, we live in a fake democracy run by plutocrats where their political functionaries impose whatever the hell they want to impose on us and we are rendered powerless to stop them.
Unless we take to the streets, take to the airwaves, take the Internet, and take to corridors of power and make them stop.
We must take back our representative democracy from authoritarians like John King and Andrew Cuomo who seek to impose their own will on the state without any recourse from the public.
The state Education Department wants Buffalo School District leaders to prove that they offered meaningful opportunities for parents to weigh in on the district’s comprehensive improvement plan and the consolidated application that enables the district to qualify for more than $20 million in federal grant funding.
Samuel L. Radford III, president of the District Parent Coordinating Council, said Sunday that he’s confident there’s no way the district will be able to provide such evidence, which will result in the district being sent back to the drawing board to redraft both documents.
“In this particular case, I believe they’re going to do what they should have done in the first place,” Radford said. “They should have just included us in the first place, and we wouldn’t have had to go through any of this.”
The latest letter from the state is part of a continuing pattern in which the parent council, or DPCC, warns the district and the Board of Education that they are about to take action that violates state rules, but administrators and board members move ahead without the parent council’s agreement.
So far, these actions have resulted in the state investigating the parent council’s complaints, siding with the parents and requiring the district to start over. That was most recently the case with the district’s student transfer plan, which was ordered to undergo further revision because of the lack of parent involvement.
In a letter Friday, Roberto Reyes, a director in the state Education Department’s Office of Accountability, said the state says it can “find no evidence that the DPCC was consulted” in the creation of the district’s comprehensive improvement plan or individual school improvement plans.
He added that he is also concerned about allegations by Radford that the district did not collaborate meaningfully with the parent council in the submission of the federal grant application that is subject to approval by the state.
Do we want Buffalo district to abide by the rues and consult with the parent's council before making high impact decisions?
Absolutely.
But we also want the New York State Education Department, and in particular its imperious commissioner, to consult with parents before it makes high impact decisions too.
Of course the education reformers at the NYSED do not do this because they think they are above that sort of thing.
They think you, the parent, work for them rather than they, the bureaucrats, work for you.
We teach our children this sham in school that they live in a representative democracy where, when they grow up, they will have some say in how their country, state, and municipality or local community is run.
Te truth is, we live in a fake democracy run by plutocrats where their political functionaries impose whatever the hell they want to impose on us and we are rendered powerless to stop them.
Unless we take to the streets, take to the airwaves, take the Internet, and take to corridors of power and make them stop.
We must take back our representative democracy from authoritarians like John King and Andrew Cuomo who seek to impose their own will on the state without any recourse from the public.
Daily Data Tracking
The above photo and text appeared with a NY Post editorial touting the wonders of Teach For America teachers over traditional public school teachers.
I want you to take a very close look at the photo.
The bulletin board says "Data is not the destination, it's part of the journey."
Between those words at the top and bottom of the bulletin board, the TFA teacher is updating her students daily data on Daily Data Wall.
I want you to think about the kind of classroom this woman runs, where daily data is tracked on every student and put up on a wall outside the classroom.
She must focus an awful lot on the kinds of things that can be quantified and tracked.
But what about the lessons in life that children need to learn that cannot be simplified and quantified, cannot be tracked, cannot be updated on the Daily Data Wall?
And how about the slogan "Data is not the destination, it's part of the journey"?
Can that slogan be true when data is tracked on every student every day and put up publicly on a wall outside the classroom?
Doesn't this Daily Data Wall equate students solely with their daily data record?
Doesn't this so Daily Data Wall send the message to students that they are their data?
Isn't this Daily Data Wall tantamount to child abuse?
Someday in the future, when the current crop of meritocrats and sociopaths running the country in positions of power in politics, business, public education and non-profits are graveyard data themselves, people are going to say "Did those people in the 21st century really believe that everything that mattered in life can be quantified and tracked? Did they really believe the data they tracked and used to make decisions - from the BLS jobs report to the inflation numbers to the value added's on teachers - was accurate and gave them enough information to make good and wise decisions?"
This fetishization of data will end when people begin to realize data-driven decisions are only as good as the data itself and more often than not in our world, data is manipulated, simplified, erroneous, or essentially useless because it doesn't give the whole picture.
Bloomberg Plans Final Destruction Of Zoned High Schools Before He Goes
From the Daily News:
Clearly the move here is to stop guaranteeing admissions in zoned high schools so that they can shove more small schools and charter schools into these zoned school spaces.
The Bloomberg administration only has 100 days left in its Reign of Error, but they plan on doing as much damage as they can before they head out the door.
The idea is to disrupt and dislocate as much as possible so what existed before the Bloomberg administration took over cannot be reconstructed once it is gone.
In a push that is alarming parents, the Bloomberg administration plans to stop guaranteeing eighth-graders a spot in the city’s remaining neighborhood high schools.
“It’s ridiculous to think that children are not able to go to their zoned school automatically,” said Kim Alvarez, who wants the option of sending her daughter Amber, 11, to the local school, Long Island City High School.
"The thought that she could end up in Brooklyn or Staten Island or wherever they put her is a little alarming."
The city still guarantees students a spot in high school — just not nearby.
The admissions change, which could affect five schools by next year, will allow “zoned” high schools to offer priority rather than a guarantee to local kids.
In the longer term, the rule could have a significant impact in Queens, Staten Island and Brooklyn. Thousands of city high school students still attend one of the 28 neighborhood high schools.
Next fall, Lehman High School in the Bronx and Flushing and Newtown High Schools in Queens, which are cutting enrollment, will no longer guarantee admission, officials said.
At Long Island City and Martin Van Buren High Schools in Queens, the city has proposed adding new schools to the building — wiping out sufficient space to guarantee admissions to local kids, according to documents posted on the agency website. A vote is scheduled for the same Oct. 30 Panel for Educational Policy meeting where the rule change will be decided.
“Across the city, we want to create new high-performing options in areas where we see low demand, be it for a zoned school or otherwise,” said schools spokesman Devon Puglia.
The process of applying to high school is stressful for parents and students — and the rule change will only make it more so, admissions experts said.
"I would be worried if I were a parent that I might be closed out of the school," said Pamela Wheaton, of InsideSchools.org at the New School. "A good zoned school offers something for everybody — for low achievers, for special needs, for high achievers."
Clearly the move here is to stop guaranteeing admissions in zoned high schools so that they can shove more small schools and charter schools into these zoned school spaces.
The Bloomberg administration only has 100 days left in its Reign of Error, but they plan on doing as much damage as they can before they head out the door.
The idea is to disrupt and dislocate as much as possible so what existed before the Bloomberg administration took over cannot be reconstructed once it is gone.
Cuomo's Commission On Government Transparency And Ethics Hides Its Own Expenditures
This is called transparency and ethics, Cuomo-style:
Hiding their own expenditures even as they try and force legislators to be transparent with theirs - strike one.
Paying commission members through executive branch agencies but declaring them "independent" from the executive branch and governor - strike two.
Commission Executive Director Regina Calcaterra - tasked in part to look into election and campaign finance violations - has been sued 17 times in her own career for election and campaign finance violations.
Strike three.
Governor Cuomo actually put five people in total on the anti-corruption Moreland Comission who have broken election and campaign finance laws.
Strike four.
So far, Cuomo's lack of transparency and ethics hasn't hurt him (at least not since the Carl McCall debacle), but this kind of thing will come back to bite him if he runs for president.
There is so much this guy hides and doesn't want people to know - from his donor list to his Moreland Commission budgeting.
But that stuff will come out if he goes bigger than Albany.
I'm hoping he does run for president.
I think he could use some of the scrutiny that career move would bring him.
New York's latest anti-corruption commission created by Gov. Andrew Cuomo two months ago to root out wrongdoing and promote transparency has no public budget and none of its spending is subject to taxpayer review.
But state records and interviews by The Associated Press show taxpayer costs associated with the Commission to Investigate Public Corruption are already piling up, including $270,000 allocated for its operation so far, the six-figure salaries of at least five staffers and an estimated $150,000 spent by the Legislature to hire three top law firms to confront the panel's authority.
"The public has every right to know how the commission's money is spent," said Blair Horner of the New York Public Interest Research Group. "It really is up to the governor because the only way the commission can build public support for its ultimate recommendations is by not being the focus of controversy."
Commission spokeswoman Michelle Duffy said the commission will continue to operate to "root out public corruption and make recommendations for systemic change." She wouldn't comment on the $270,000 allocation or say whether there would be additional spending.
She noted that commission staff was hired on pre-existing, vacant positions in the executive branch under Cuomo or is on loan from the attorney general's office and relevant state agencies.
The salaries include Executive Director Regina Calcaterra, who is paid $175,000, and Chief of Investigations Elizabeth Danya Perry, who is paid $140,000, according to payroll data filed with the state.
Horner said paying commission members through executive branch agencies also raises questions about the officials' independence, since the commission is also supposed to investigate the executive branch. Senate Republicans are calling for a "full accounting" of the commission's spending.
Hiding their own expenditures even as they try and force legislators to be transparent with theirs - strike one.
Paying commission members through executive branch agencies but declaring them "independent" from the executive branch and governor - strike two.
Commission Executive Director Regina Calcaterra - tasked in part to look into election and campaign finance violations - has been sued 17 times in her own career for election and campaign finance violations.
Strike three.
Governor Cuomo actually put five people in total on the anti-corruption Moreland Comission who have broken election and campaign finance laws.
Strike four.
So far, Cuomo's lack of transparency and ethics hasn't hurt him (at least not since the Carl McCall debacle), but this kind of thing will come back to bite him if he runs for president.
There is so much this guy hides and doesn't want people to know - from his donor list to his Moreland Commission budgeting.
But that stuff will come out if he goes bigger than Albany.
I'm hoping he does run for president.
I think he could use some of the scrutiny that career move would bring him.
Sunday, September 22, 2013
A Reminder About The MORE Petition On Teacher Evaluations
While Michael Mulgrew sends out emails to members defending the ADVANCE teacher evaluation system (see here and here), the MORE caucus has put together a petition calling for a moratorium on the New York City Teacher Evaluation System.
If you haven't signed it yet, do so now.
And when you get back to work tomorrow, tell your colleagues about the petition and ask them to sign it as well.
I know tomorrow we will be grading the so-called performance assessments that will make up 20% of the ADVANCE system in my school.
I bet this petition calling for a moratorium will go over well.
Education Nation Should Invite Carrianne Howard To Talk About How Wonderful Lloyd Blankfein's Art Institutes Are
Raging Horse does an excellent job of pointing out who NBC should have invited for their corporate education reform-slanted Education Nation propaganda-fest this year.
Alas, NBC isn't much interested in having anybody on that stage who won't carry water for the corporate education reform agenda, so they only invited deformers like Michael Bloomberg, Jeb Bush, Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee, et al. to this year's Education Nation.
Even Diane Ravitch was only invited to sit in the audience, an outrageous insult to not only Ravitch but to every teacher in this country who has been slammed and smeared by corporate reforms like Klein, Rhee, et al.
But of all the corporate education reform-friendly guests NBC did invite, I find Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein the most outrageous.
You see, Goldman Sachs, in addition to being the most evil corporate entity on the planet, owns 41% of the parent company of the notorious for-profit swindle college, the Art Institutes.
Bloomberg News published a devastating expose of the Art Institutes and Goldman Sachs back in 2010 that found degrees from the Art Institutes essentially worthless, debt levels incurred by students at the schools extremely high.
They use the story of Carrianne Howard, a young woman who graduated from the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale and now makes her living as a stripper, to show just what a scam the school is (that's Howard pictured above, with her Art Institute diploma):
Carrianne Howard dreamed of designing video games, so she enrolled in a program at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, a for-profit college part-owned by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Her bachelor’s degree in game art and design cost $70,000 in tuition and fees. After she graduated in December 2007, she found a job that paid $12 an hour recruiting employees for video game companies. She lost that job a year later when her department was shuttered.
These days, Howard, 26, makes her living in a way that doesn’t require a college diploma: by stripping at the Lido Cabaret, a topless club in Cocoa Beach, Florida. “I didn’t know what else to do,” she says. “I’ve got a worthless degree. It’s like I didn’t attend school at all.”
...
Carrianne Howard, the Florida student, didn’t borrow for her education. Instead her parents paid roughly $70,000 in tuition bills. Her mother, an airline data analyst, and her father, a computer engineer, sold their California home and moved to Virginia after her father lost his job and her mother retired. They used money from the sale to pay for tuition, and her parents are now struggling financially, Howard and her mother say.
Howard grew up in Valencia, California, a suburb of Los Angeles, and became drawn to video gaming during high school. One afternoon in 2004, an Art Institute ad popped up on her PC.
“I was as excited as can be,” she says. “I thought it was a dream come true.”
She and her mother toured the Fort Lauderdale campus, a bright, modern three-story building flanked by reflecting pools and palm trees. Her tour guide “just made it sound really exciting and a lot of fun, like I was going to make hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Howard says.
EDMC schools train representatives to make “no promise, implication, or guarantee” about employment, Muller says.
A couple of years into her studies, Howard says she grew disenchanted. Some classes consisted largely of playing video games, she says. She wanted to drop out but her mother insisted she finish because the family had spent so much already. She graduated in December 2007; in March 2009 she lost her first job, at GameRecruiter, a Fort Lauderdale-based gaming industry employment agency where she was making $12 an hour. Marc Mencher, GameRecruiter’s president and CEO, says she was let go only because he closed down her entire department, and calls her “an exceptional performer.”
She may be struggling to find work in part because of inadequate preparation from the Art Institute’s gaming department, Mencher says.
“It’s a weak program because it’s understaffed,” says Mencher, who serves on the Art Institute’s national advisory board for gaming programs. “I personally feel the students aren’t getting their money’s worth.”
After Bloomberg Businessweek asked EDMC for comment, Mencher sent a follow-up e-mail, saying that although the Art Institute is “not perfect and they have issues like any organization,” it is “an excellent program built on input from respected industry professionals along with local employers.” It has an “outstanding placement” record for graduates, he said.
Lido Cabaret
Howard applied for dozens of jobs, not only in gaming but also in grocery stores and nursing homes, mostly for minimum wage, she says. In October 2009, Howard turned to adult entertainment by doing paid Web chats. In March she started dancing at Lido Cabaret, earning $400 to $1,000 a week, she says.
She now hopes to save enough to go back to college and get a business degree. As she considers returning to school, Howard also helps run an anti-Art Institute website, where she has collected more than 70 names in a petition to send to the U.S. Education Dept.
The private, nonprofit Florida Institute of Technology, where Howard would like to enroll, won’t accept any of her credits from EDMC, according to spokeswoman Karen Rhine, because the Art Institute doesn’t have the kind of accreditation the traditional college requires. In its school catalog and other documents, the Art Institute “does not imply or guarantee” that credits will transfer to other universities, says EDMC’s Muller.
At 1 a.m. on a recent weeknight, Howard finished a shift at Lido. “This is what I do,” she says. “When I’m in here, I try not to think about the Art Institute.”
NBC ought to add Carrianne Howard or any of the other students who graduated from Art Institutes with a worthless degree and tens of thousands in debt to talk up the school.
But instead they invite banker criminal Blankfein instead.
In the past, they have had the CEO and head criminal of the University of Phoenix at Education Nation.
This year, the executive VP from Apollo Group, the owner of the University of Phoenix, will be there.
So every year, NBC doesn't miss a trick to not only invite every corporate deformer they can think of to sell the corporate deform agenda, but there's always a for-profit college criminal shill on the panel as well.
But no Diane Ravitch, no Anthony Cody, no Karen Lewis, no Susan Ohanian, no Lois Weiner, no actual working teachers who don't carry the ed deform message
And no students from one of these for-profit scam schools like Art Institutes or University of Phoenix to tell the audience how much debt they carry as they work at Starbucks or Applebees or, like Carrianne Howard, a strip club.
NBC's Education Nation ought to come with a scammer alert on the bottom of the screen.
The entire "symposium" is nothing but propaganda for the corporate education deform movement and for the criminal for-profit school industry.
Bloomberg Propaganda-Meisters All Over The Internet
You see these Bloomberg shills, paid press whores like Howard Wolfson or Andrew Kirtzman, flacking their Bloomberg propaganda all over the place these days as the mayor's Reign of Error sunsets and Bloomberg's anxiety over his legacy heightens.
Here's a recent example from Kevin Sheekey, former deputy mayor and current Bloomberg LP executive (because there is always a gig for you in a BLOOMBERG enterprise if you are a loyal servant to Bloomberg the man):
Of course it's easy to debunk this jive Sheekey is spewing and somebody quickly does:
Expect the amount of pro-Bloomberg propaganda to increase exponentially as the end of the year nears.
Bloomberg has a ton of press shills and p.r. people on his payroll and tons more who are dying to get on that payroll as their own journalism jobs and outlets die.
Bloomberg is going to have his shills mount a Bloomberg Legacy propaganda-fest that will put Bush's Iraq war propaganda-fest to shame.
Here's a recent example from Kevin Sheekey, former deputy mayor and current Bloomberg LP executive (because there is always a gig for you in a BLOOMBERG enterprise if you are a loyal servant to Bloomberg the man):
Is the Progressive the retiring Mayor? Will successor create largest affordable housing plan in nation's history? http://t.co/pVYYQdFGzf
— Kevin Sheekey (@ksheekey) September 18, 2013
Of course it's easy to debunk this jive Sheekey is spewing and somebody quickly does:
.@ksheekey I hope so cuz Bloomberg's 50,000 homeless could use a place to sleep!
— Tom Scocca (@tomscocca) September 21, 2013
Expect the amount of pro-Bloomberg propaganda to increase exponentially as the end of the year nears.
Bloomberg has a ton of press shills and p.r. people on his payroll and tons more who are dying to get on that payroll as their own journalism jobs and outlets die.
Bloomberg is going to have his shills mount a Bloomberg Legacy propaganda-fest that will put Bush's Iraq war propaganda-fest to shame.
When I'm President
We take a break from the political and education rants for the following music post:
My wife took me to see Ian Hunter and the Rant Band at City Winery last night for my birthday - fifth time we've seen Ian together.
If you're unfamiliar with Hunter, he was the lead singer of the very influential Mott the Hoople in the 70's, a band that managed to influence both punker rockers like The Clash and New Wave Of British Heavy Metal artists like Def Leppard.
Fans were literally part of the band - people who couldn't afford to come in through the front door, the band used to let in the back door for the shows. People would join the band onstage and sing along (or just break stuff), a phenomenon best captured by Mott's "Saturday Gig."
If there was a historical time period I could go back to and be a part of that I wasn't around for originally, it would have been the Saturday gigs/Mott era.
In any case, Hunter called it quits with Mott in 1975 and recorded his first solo album with Mick Ronson, Bowie's Ziggy-era guitarist, a partnership that lasted, off and on, for the rest of Ronson's life.
Hunter's recorded with all kinds of artists since, from Mick Jones of The Clash to a string orchestra from Norway, but since 2001 has been playing with a band he dubbed "Rant."
Every few years Ian Hunter and the Rant Band put out a new album, the most recent being 2012's When I'm President.
If you haven't heard the cd, I highly recommend it - especially the title track and "Ta Shunka Witco" a song about Crazy Horse.
"When I'm President" has been particularly sticking with me these days, especially with all this economic news about the working and middle classes getting squeezed out:
When I'm President Lyrics Well mother, I'm a stranger in a strange land
Feel like an alien
It's like I'm on the outside looking in
I don't seem to fit in
Maybe I'm Aladdin with a rusty lamp
A genie never stood a chance
To make all our wishes come true
Well, here's what I want to do
I'm going to lean on the one percent
When I'm president
I want a twenty-eighth amendment
When I'm president
Like thieves on the holy road
Digging up the mother lode
Like pirates on the open sea
Like highway robbery
Still whining about your horse
Man up you're ridiculous
You know you can't take it with you
So, give a little extra
I'm going to lean on the one percent
When I'm president
No more bargains in the basement
When I'm president
Washington, Jefferson
Watch out baby because here I come
Abraham, Theodore
You're going to see my ugly mug on Mount Rushmore, yeah
You go in with the right intent
When you become president
You hold those truths to be self-evident
When you become president
But something happens to you up on the Hill
There's business as usual
How do you want to buck the system
Welcome to the pit and the pendulum
I'm going to lean on the one percent
When I'm president
No more twenty-eighth amendment
When I'm president
No more bargains in the basement
When I'm president
Everything's going to be different
When I'm president
Be all this
Be all that
When I'm president
I'll stick it to the fat cats
Cross my heart
Hope to die
When I'm president
Pigs are going to fly
Look at ‘em
Buy the album - it's worth it.
And check out one of his shows the next time he comes around - I guarantee you'll remember it.
My wife took me to see Ian Hunter and the Rant Band at City Winery last night for my birthday - fifth time we've seen Ian together.
If you're unfamiliar with Hunter, he was the lead singer of the very influential Mott the Hoople in the 70's, a band that managed to influence both punker rockers like The Clash and New Wave Of British Heavy Metal artists like Def Leppard.
Fans were literally part of the band - people who couldn't afford to come in through the front door, the band used to let in the back door for the shows. People would join the band onstage and sing along (or just break stuff), a phenomenon best captured by Mott's "Saturday Gig."
If there was a historical time period I could go back to and be a part of that I wasn't around for originally, it would have been the Saturday gigs/Mott era.
In any case, Hunter called it quits with Mott in 1975 and recorded his first solo album with Mick Ronson, Bowie's Ziggy-era guitarist, a partnership that lasted, off and on, for the rest of Ronson's life.
Hunter's recorded with all kinds of artists since, from Mick Jones of The Clash to a string orchestra from Norway, but since 2001 has been playing with a band he dubbed "Rant."
Every few years Ian Hunter and the Rant Band put out a new album, the most recent being 2012's When I'm President.
If you haven't heard the cd, I highly recommend it - especially the title track and "Ta Shunka Witco" a song about Crazy Horse.
"When I'm President" has been particularly sticking with me these days, especially with all this economic news about the working and middle classes getting squeezed out:
IAN HUNTER
When I'm President Lyrics Well mother, I'm a stranger in a strange land
Feel like an alien
It's like I'm on the outside looking in
I don't seem to fit in
Maybe I'm Aladdin with a rusty lamp
A genie never stood a chance
To make all our wishes come true
Well, here's what I want to do
I'm going to lean on the one percent
When I'm president
I want a twenty-eighth amendment
When I'm president
Like thieves on the holy road
Digging up the mother lode
Like pirates on the open sea
Like highway robbery
Still whining about your horse
Man up you're ridiculous
You know you can't take it with you
So, give a little extra
I'm going to lean on the one percent
When I'm president
No more bargains in the basement
When I'm president
Washington, Jefferson
Watch out baby because here I come
Abraham, Theodore
You're going to see my ugly mug on Mount Rushmore, yeah
You go in with the right intent
When you become president
You hold those truths to be self-evident
When you become president
But something happens to you up on the Hill
There's business as usual
How do you want to buck the system
Welcome to the pit and the pendulum
I'm going to lean on the one percent
When I'm president
No more twenty-eighth amendment
When I'm president
No more bargains in the basement
When I'm president
Everything's going to be different
When I'm president
Be all this
Be all that
When I'm president
I'll stick it to the fat cats
Cross my heart
Hope to die
When I'm president
Pigs are going to fly
Look at ‘em
Buy the album - it's worth it.
And check out one of his shows the next time he comes around - I guarantee you'll remember it.
Stephanie Simon Takes On Some Education Reform Mythology
The Stephanie Simon article at Politico on why public schools may not be failing is up now and it is a good one.
She busts some cherished education reformer myths in it - including how the Chinese are kicking are asses in tests:
Hey - I have an idea.
Let''s take Scarsdale, Great Neck and Greenwich and stack them up against Shanghai, Macao and Hong Kong and see how the scores come out.
Every time Michelle Rhee or Joel Klein or some other ed deformer spouts the international test score jive, I want to say, "You do know they don't test everybody in China? More than half the kids in India don't go to school, so they're not included on the tests either? And Finland has a child poverty rate almost five times smaller than that of the United States? You do know these things right? And you know that they mean the international test score stats you are spouting are meaningless?"
The truth is, they know.
But they continue to spout this crap because, as they learned in the Bush administration, if you just keep parroting a lie over and over, the media will report it at face value and everybody will start to believe it.
It is good to see someone at Politico, one of the prime Beltway media outlets, run an article that dispenses with some cherished education reformer myths.
Here's another one Simon knocks down:
Read the rest of the article and marvel at the truth-telling Simon manages to do in prime Beltway media real estate.
You never see this kind of thing in the NY Times.
Nor in the Daily News or Post.
Nope - all three outlets are too busy telling lies about schools and teachers in order to sell their education reform agendas.
She busts some cherished education reformer myths in it - including how the Chinese are kicking are asses in tests:
A new video about the failures of public schools making the rounds on social media starts by introducing viewers to “the most important number in all of education…32!”
Why 32?
Well, that’s where the U.S. came out in the PISA international math test, given to 15-year-olds around the world in 2009. Only 32 percent of American kids scored proficient, which put us at 32nd in the world, miles behind perennial powerhouses like Shanghai, Singapore, Hong Kong and Korea — and also far behind nations less frequently thought of as academic superstars, including Estonia, Iceland and Slovenia.
Sounds grim. And Harvard education professor Paul Peterson argues that it is. “If we’re 32nd in the world, that’s a pretty serious matter,” said Peterson, a co-author of the new book “Endangering Prosperity: A Global View of the American School,” which the video was produced to promote.
Then again, we’re 32nd on just one test. American kids do better relative to the world — though they’re still far from elite — on the PISA science and reading exams.
And they do better as well on a different, equally respected, international math test known as TIMSS.
On the most recent TIMSS test, from 2011, American eighth-graders handily outscored seven nations that had the edge on the U.S. in the 2009 PISA exam, including Great Britain, Australia — and, yes, Slovenia. Fourth-graders rocked the TIMSS test even more: They came out ahead of a dozen countries that had beaten the U.S. on the PISA exam.
As for China, it doesn’t participate as an entire nation; only students from three relatively wealthy regions — Shanghai, Macao and Hong Kong — are tested. That’s important to note because income correlates with success on standardized tests. Finland, often at the top of the global rankings, has a child poverty rate of just 5 percent. In the U.S., it’s 23 percent.
One more point: Any test contains sampling error, so the precision of global rankings is an illusion. On the 2009 PISA reading assessment, for instance, the U.S. officially ranked 15th among the 34 member nations of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, which sponsors the exam. But an OECD official told POLITICO that the U.S. might actually have been as high as 8th — or as low as 20th.
Hey - I have an idea.
Let''s take Scarsdale, Great Neck and Greenwich and stack them up against Shanghai, Macao and Hong Kong and see how the scores come out.
Every time Michelle Rhee or Joel Klein or some other ed deformer spouts the international test score jive, I want to say, "You do know they don't test everybody in China? More than half the kids in India don't go to school, so they're not included on the tests either? And Finland has a child poverty rate almost five times smaller than that of the United States? You do know these things right? And you know that they mean the international test score stats you are spouting are meaningless?"
The truth is, they know.
But they continue to spout this crap because, as they learned in the Bush administration, if you just keep parroting a lie over and over, the media will report it at face value and everybody will start to believe it.
It is good to see someone at Politico, one of the prime Beltway media outlets, run an article that dispenses with some cherished education reformer myths.
Here's another one Simon knocks down:
We’re spending more, but schools are getting worse
Warnings on this theme are generally accompanied by graphs showing steep growth in per-pupil spending — juxtaposed against a flat line representing academic achievement.
That’s misleading, however, on two fronts.
Spending has certainly jumped. But a huge part of the increase — about half, according to economist Richard Rothstein — has been dedicated to serving students with disabilities who were not guaranteed (and often did not receive) a free public education until the 1970s. Schools are also serving far more immigrant students who come in speaking a dizzying array of languages.
As for the academic flat line: The percentage of kids scoring “below basic” on the National Assessment of Educational Progress — widely considered the most reliable measure — has plummeted in both reading and math in both fourth and eighth grade for every racial group except Native Americans. Average reading and math scores for each subgroup in the fourth and eighth grades have also climbed steadily over the past 20 years.
But demographic changes in U.S. schools mean that a greater percentage of test takers now come from groups that traditionally score lower on the NAEP tests, such as Hispanic students. So when test scores are aggregated nationwide, it doesn’t look like there’s been much progress — even though taken individually, each group of students has dramatically improved.
The NAEP tests do show one clear trouble spot: high-school students. NAEP reading and math scores for 17-year-olds haven’t budged much since the 1970s. Ravitch suggests that’s because it’s hard to get older teens to take a no-stakes test seriously; she points to other gains, such as improvement in the high-school graduation rate, to show progress.
Read the rest of the article and marvel at the truth-telling Simon manages to do in prime Beltway media real estate.
You never see this kind of thing in the NY Times.
Nor in the Daily News or Post.
Nope - all three outlets are too busy telling lies about schools and teachers in order to sell their education reform agendas.
Saturday, September 21, 2013
Joe Lhota Says Bill De Blasio Wants To "Annihilate" Charter Schools
From the Wall Street Journal:
Two things to say here:
First, making charter schools pay rent won't "annihilate" the sector.
It might make it a little more difficult for charter school operators like Eva Moskowitz to expand their franchises.
But it won't annihilate them.
Second, Bloomberg has done his best to "annihilate" traditional public schools, especially the large high schools.
How many have been destroyed since he took office?
Almost all of them, that's how many.
So if anybody is doing any "annihilation" around the public education, it's Mayor Bloomberg and the education reformers who ally with him.
But you know what might "annihilate" charter schools?
Making them play by the same rules as traditional public schools.
Making them take any student who applies.
Making them own their cohorts so that no matter how many students they try and dump or counsel out, those students remain in their stats until they age out.
Making them abide by the new teacher evaluation system with all the insanity it involves - the mandates, the extra testing, the data tracking, etc.
Because the charter operators don't do so well when they're playing on equal footing with the traditional public schools.
And why would they, given the 26 year old principals and 50% teacher attrition rates?
So Lhota can talk his charter school talking points all he wants.
De Blasio is not looking to annihilate charters by making them pay rent.
He's simply looking to make them pay for the space they have that they're taking away from the public schools.
Given the funding the charters get from the hedge fundies, they can afford it.
Eva can just hold another hedge fundie poker game and get Joel Klein to show up again.
I bet that could raise enough rent money for a while.
As for education, Mr. Lhota said one of the key differences between the two candidates is their stance on charter schools.
“He’s trying to do everything almost to eradicate the charter schools. He wants them to pay rent. He doesn’t want them co-located,” Mr. Lhota said. “Those two items alone will annihilate the charter schools in the City of New York, and that’s absolutely the wrong direction to go in.”
Two things to say here:
First, making charter schools pay rent won't "annihilate" the sector.
It might make it a little more difficult for charter school operators like Eva Moskowitz to expand their franchises.
But it won't annihilate them.
Second, Bloomberg has done his best to "annihilate" traditional public schools, especially the large high schools.
How many have been destroyed since he took office?
Almost all of them, that's how many.
So if anybody is doing any "annihilation" around the public education, it's Mayor Bloomberg and the education reformers who ally with him.
But you know what might "annihilate" charter schools?
Making them play by the same rules as traditional public schools.
Making them take any student who applies.
Making them own their cohorts so that no matter how many students they try and dump or counsel out, those students remain in their stats until they age out.
Making them abide by the new teacher evaluation system with all the insanity it involves - the mandates, the extra testing, the data tracking, etc.
Because the charter operators don't do so well when they're playing on equal footing with the traditional public schools.
And why would they, given the 26 year old principals and 50% teacher attrition rates?
So Lhota can talk his charter school talking points all he wants.
De Blasio is not looking to annihilate charters by making them pay rent.
He's simply looking to make them pay for the space they have that they're taking away from the public schools.
Given the funding the charters get from the hedge fundies, they can afford it.
Eva can just hold another hedge fundie poker game and get Joel Klein to show up again.
I bet that could raise enough rent money for a while.
The Class War Is Over - The Plutocrats Won
Andrew O'Hehir in Salon:
Read the rest of the O'Hehir piece and think about the role our union leadership has played in the class war, especially in the ceding of ideological ground to the free marketeers.
Of course, if you have union leaders who see themselves as part of the elite here to negotiate the terms of exploitation of their members rather than protectors of the rank and file, perhaps the ceding of ideological ground to the free marketeers on so many different issues has been purposeful and conscious.
I tend to think the union elites and the corporate elites all play fight in public for us, then go back to the dressing room and yuck it up over cocktails and cocktail weenies.
In other words, they're bought off and the whole game is rigged.
But 13 years watching Randi Weingarten spin her horse@#$% has made me cynical.
American conservatives love to attack anyone who raises the issue of worsening economic inequality for waging “class war.” Their compulsion to keep repeating that phrase is revealing in itself; it’s like the serial killer in a movie who can’t help returning to the scene of the crime. Because the only class war being waged in 21st-century America is the relentless, all-fronts struggle conducted by the rich against the poor.
Within the last week, we have learned that poverty remains at near-record levels in our supposedly affluent nation. Even amid a so-called economic recovery, nearly 22 percent of the nation’s children live in poverty, and the overall number of poor people reached an all-time high, at 46.5 million. Income inequality, meanwhile, is roughly twice as bad as it was in the 1970s, reaching a level never seen before in this country or any other industrialized nation. The top 1 percent of Americans now bring home almost 20 percent of the country’s annual income, and have seen their tax bills decline by almost half. Britain, which has pursued similar tax-cutting policies over the last 30-odd years, finds itself a distant second in inequality, with its top 1 percent of earners commanding about 10 percent of total income. So while we may be behind the Brits in public health, life expectancy and almost every other quality-of-life indicator, we still totally kick their asses when it comes to disgusting rich people.
Read the rest of the O'Hehir piece and think about the role our union leadership has played in the class war, especially in the ceding of ideological ground to the free marketeers.
Of course, if you have union leaders who see themselves as part of the elite here to negotiate the terms of exploitation of their members rather than protectors of the rank and file, perhaps the ceding of ideological ground to the free marketeers on so many different issues has been purposeful and conscious.
I tend to think the union elites and the corporate elites all play fight in public for us, then go back to the dressing room and yuck it up over cocktails and cocktail weenies.
In other words, they're bought off and the whole game is rigged.
But 13 years watching Randi Weingarten spin her horse@#$% has made me cynical.
The Fundraising Race Between Bill De Blasio And Joe Lhota
The NY Times reports that de Blasio has a slight lead over Lhota in fundraising since the primary ended.
De Blasio has $700,00 in funds, Lhota $500,000.
Both candidates have raised similar amounts since the primary ended - de Blasio $147,000, Lhota $144,000.
But de Blasio also has $500,000 in funds that were raised for a runoff that he cannot use until January.
So the fundraising totals skew how much de Blasio has raised compared to Lhota a bit.
As posted earlier this week, there's an outside PAC raising money for Lhota that has received just two donations from David Koch and his wife, amounting to a little over $290,000.
The Times reports that a spokesman for that PAC said
We'll see about that.
With two polls out this past week showing Lhota losing to de Blasio by 41 and 43 percentage points respectively, Joe Lhota is going to have to prove he can close that 40 point+ a gap a bit before many of the plutocrats start throwing a lot of cash his way.
De Blasio has $700,00 in funds, Lhota $500,000.
Both candidates have raised similar amounts since the primary ended - de Blasio $147,000, Lhota $144,000.
But de Blasio also has $500,000 in funds that were raised for a runoff that he cannot use until January.
So the fundraising totals skew how much de Blasio has raised compared to Lhota a bit.
As posted earlier this week, there's an outside PAC raising money for Lhota that has received just two donations from David Koch and his wife, amounting to a little over $290,000.
The Times reports that a spokesman for that PAC said
the group had seen “a significant pickup in interest, and that has started to translate into support,” and on Friday night it released a new television commercial praising Mr. Lhota.
We'll see about that.
With two polls out this past week showing Lhota losing to de Blasio by 41 and 43 percentage points respectively, Joe Lhota is going to have to prove he can close that 40 point+ a gap a bit before many of the plutocrats start throwing a lot of cash his way.
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