Rob Astorino Says Its Time To Make The Board Of Regents Accountable To Voters

The Times-Union reports that GOP gubernatorial candidate Rob Astorino released a 15 point education plan yesterday, with Astorino's call for replacing the Common Core in New York coming at the top of the plan list.

But I found this part most interesting:

Astorino's plan also includes changing the process for selecting the leaders of the the state's educational system. He'd like to see the 13-member Board of Regents elected by voters in each region; the current board is elected by a majority vote of the Legislature, a system that hands power to the numerically dominant Assembly Democratic conference — a body that would be unlikely to approve the change.

Astorino would hand selection of the state education commissioner to the governor, with the final approval of the Board of Regents. The board currently selects the commissioner.

Currently NYSED Commissioner John King and Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch believe they are unaccountable to the public, which is why they continue to pursue an education reform agenda that is becoming more and more unpopular with both parents of school-age children and the public at large.

I think it is time to make the members of the Board of Regents accountable to the voters.

It's not as if the appointment process for Regents members is working.

The last member appointed knew little about the Common Core and other education issues but was fast-tracked through the legislature when Assembly leaders decided one member of the Board of Regents had to be sacrificed to assuage anger over the state's education reform agenda.

After news outlets reported the new Regents member was a "spiritual weight loss entrepreneur" with a website full of spelling errors touting her abilities, several Assembly members were heard to exclaim "What did we do? What did we do?"

Indeed, what did they do?

They followed the Assembly leadership who told them to vote "yes" on a candidate for the Board of Regents they knew nothing about.

It's time to change this corrupt Regents appointment process.

I would leave the appointment of the commissioner to the Board of Regents rather than hand that power to the governor.

But I agree with Astorino that it is time to make the members of the Board of Regents accountable to the voters of this state.

You'd see a vastly different reform process if Merryl Tisch knew she had a re-election to run and John King knew his low approval ratings meant he was going to be out of a job soon.

NY Post: NYC Prinicpals Rarely Held Accountable

Not a surprise to those of us in the system:

They dole out discipline to teachers and students, but city school principals rarely get a taste of their own medicine.

In the past three years, just two of 14 principals formally accused of misconduct have been fired — and not a single boss in the city’s 1,600 schools was charged with incompetence, officials told The Post.

The disciplinary deficiency raises questions when 217 elementary and middle schools received grades of F, D or consecutive C’s on the city’s latest report cards, and 31 high schools rated D or F.

“The numbers don’t add up to the Bloomberg administration’s goal to hold everybody accountable,” a veteran teacher said.

The DOE offers excuses for why principals at "failing" schools should stay in place:

“Some administrators worked at schools that weren’t doing so well, but that doesn’t mean they’re not highly effective administrators,” said Deputy Chancellor David Weiner. “It just means they’re in a school that’s struggling.”

Ah, but the DOE wants teachers in "failing" schools removed and tried to do just that with the turnaround mess last year.

And just how bad are some of the principals in this system?

Pretty bad:

Some principals stay in place despite serious problems.

Darlene Miller, chief of the NYC Museum School in Chelsea, was busted in December 2011 on DWI charges in Rockland County, when her speeding Hyundai smashed into the rear of a parked police car. She failed to report the arrest as required.

But the DOE will not discipline Miller until her criminal case is resolved, if at all. She has won delays in the DWI case, which remains open.

Anissa Chalmers of PS 32 in Morrisania, the target of staff and parent complaints, has been under DOE investigation for an undisclosed matter for more than a year. Last June, an 8-year-old pupil slashed a 9-year-old classmate’s neck with a razor at the school. Chalmers is also an actress and starred in a bloody B-flick, “Gang Girl,” as a killer thug, but did not tell the DOE about the content.

...

In a case of wrongdoing rewarded, Janet Saraceno, then-principal of Lehman HS in The Bronx, improperly changed student grades and gave credits to students who failed classes, a probe concluded. She quit Lehman in August 2011, but the DOE kept her on to advise principals and teachers on curriculum and other matters as an “achievement coach.”

 The DOE issues some jive for why they refuse to hold these kinds of administrators accountable:

The DOE denies it lets principals slide. “There are many ways we hold principals accountable,” said spokesman David Pena. “Not only are bonuses based on their school’s progress report cards, but tenure decisions are also based on performance. We work with struggling principals, and where the problems persist many of those principals opt to resign.”

Sure they do.

We learned earlier in the article that there's nobody to go after these principals because the DOE doesn't really care to put anybody in place to monitor them:

The principals union agrees that the Department of Education fails to adequately monitor principals, who are paid up to $150,000 a year, to either help or weed out poor performers.

“They haven’t been in the schools observing,” said Robert Reich, director of grievances for the Council of Supervisors and Administrators.

The superintendents, stripped of real authority, often “rubber-stamp” decisions from above, he said. “If no one’s ever told a principal that he or she isn’t doing something right, how can you justify removing them?”

All of this expended energy and rewritten law and policy to hold "bad teachers" accountable, but the "Gang Girl" principal with numerous staff and parent complaints against her at P.S. 32 is still in place.

Just another example of how there are two standards in the system - one for administrators and Tweedies, one for everybody else.

Where's The Accountability For The New York Post?

The people running the NY Post are very big on holding teachers accountable for so-called performance, but just can't seem to hold themselves accountable for their own.

Case in point - the interview with a fake "Ryan Lanza" they ran in yesterday's Sunday New York Post:

The brother of the Connecticut school shooter, Adam Lanza, said through a spokesman Sunday that he never conducted a Facebook interview with the New York Post and that any statements or postings attributed to him were fabricated.

“This is a complete hoax,” said the Lanza family in a statement issued through the spokesman, Errol Cockfield of the public relations firm Edelman.

In the story, Ryan Lanza, who works for the major accounting firm Ernst & Young in Manhattan, purportedly told a New York Post reporter in a Facebook chat, “I am a victim. I loss [sic] my mom and brother.”

The spokesman said that Lanza, 24, shut his Facebook account shortly after the shooting and it has not been reactivated. A fake Facebook page that at first glance appeared to be Lanza’s was subsequently created and used to deceive the New York Post reporter. It is not known who orchestrated the deception.

Cockfield described the New York Post story as the “unfortunate result of a poor editorial process.”

The New York Post acknowledged Sunday that it had been deceived. An “update” added to the top of the original story on the newspaper’s Web site read: “A spokesman for the Lanza family says an imposter is behind Ryan Lanza’s Facebook page and that Ryan did not post the messages in this story.”

A spokeswoman for the Post said the paper did not have an immediate comment.

Oh, and of course the Post deflected blame onto the imposter who ran the fake Facebook page rather than their own reporter or editorial process:

An imposter created a fake Facebook page in the name of Sandy Hook school shooter Adam Lanza’s brother, a family spokesman said yesterday.

“It appears to be a hoax by someone. Ryan [Lanza] shut down his page shortly after the shooting.

This mock-up is atrocious,” said Errol Cockfield, a spokesman for Ryan and his father, Peter Lanza.

The family will ask Facebook to remove the page, Cockfield added.

The page included images of Adam, Ryan and their mom, Nancy, that had already been published online.

The bogus posts and instant-message chats were reported by news outlets, including The Post.

New York Magazine reports that the "Ryan Lanza" Facebook page looked pretty phony from the outset:

The Facebook page itself looks pretty suspicious: All eight of the eight pages it "likes" have to do with Newtown, and four of them, liked within minutes on the same day, call for Ryan Lanza's name to be cleared. There's no friends list visible, only two photos, and no activity prior to last Thursday. Of course that's just what we're seeing now. The Post's story makes reference to photos and comments not visible, which suggests they're either private or have been taken down since the original report.

The real Ryan Lanza's Facebook page became its own story when he was briefly named as the suspect on the day of the shooting (it turned out Adam was carrying his brother's ID). Lanza used his page to deny the reports, then deleted it. So yeah, it would be possible that he started a new one, but seeing as how he's a regular person with interests and friends and whatnot, and that he's already had to disentangle himself from media attention once, it's hard to believe his new page would focus exclusively on the tragedy and his unfortunate association with it.

Those apparent red flags didn't stop The Post from running the item, and they didn't stop others from picking it up. Yahoo News, The Telegraph, Gothamist, MSN, Huffington Post, The Australian, and others posted the news, then had to update their reports with word of the hoax.

 The Posties are still running the original story on the Post website, albeit with a disclaimer:

UPDATE: A spokesman for the Lanza family says an imposter is behind Ryan Lanza's Facebook page and that Ryan did not post the messages in this story.

Gotta love when some piece of "journalism" is proven to be fraudulent, but the newspaper refuses to take the piece down and instead runs a disclaimer.

Also gotta love how the Post makes it sound as if other journalistic outlets got caught up in the hoax:

 The bogus posts and instant-message chats were reported by news outlets, including The Post.

No - the Post conducted an interview with the fake "Ryan Lanza" and that interview and other information from the Post story got picked up by other news outlets.

That's a whole lot different than a bunch of other news outlets getting caught up in the same hoax.

It isn't the job of the other news outlets to check the news stories of supposed legitimate news organizations like the NY Post for validity.

It is the job of the NY Post reporter to make sure the "Ryan Lanza" he is interviewing is actually Ryan Lanza and the job of the NY Post editors to smell out a hoax when they see it.

Especially if the Facebook page of this "Ryan Lanza" looks suspicious as soon as you see it.

Both the reporter and the editors failed in their jobs, but even worse, they refuse to be held accountable for this and instead are deflecting the blame onto the imposter and then making it sound like other news outlets got caught up in the same hoax.

While it is true that in the hours right after the Newtown shootings, many news outlets reported erroneous information, the only "Ryan Lanza" hoax the other news outlets got caught up today in was reprinting a story from the imposter new outlet called the NY Post.

As usual with the people at a Rupert Murdoch organization, accountability is never for themselves - it's always for other people.

When Are The Problems In NYC Schools Bloomberg's Fault?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't Michael Bloomberg been in charge of the NYC school system for ten years now?

At what point does he own the problems in the system?

When are the plummeting school report card grades his problem?

When are the stagnant test scores his fault?

When is the phonied up grad rate his?

These flunkies at the NYCDOE like to skirt accountability even as they push it on teachers, administrators and schools.

But the person who likes to skirt accountability the most while pointing fingers at others is the Mayor of Money himself.

The corporate media and the corporate shills who work as "journalists" in it help this along by refusing to call him on this.

Perhaps they worry they may have to work for him some day when he buys up the rest of New York's print media.

Perhaps they just don't want to challenge him.

Whatever the case, few in the media ask the question: Why Aren't The Problems In NYC Schools Bloomberg's Fault?

After all, he has had autocratic control now for a decade.

If anybody should be held "accountable" for the problems in the system, it ought to be the guy with total control of it.

NYCDOE Made Mistakes On The Spanish, Italian, Chinese and Japanese Language Exams (UPDATED)

The NYCDOE is acknowledging more errors on the high stakes foreign language exams the city has given to replace the old Regents foreign language exams that the state no longer offers.

As I noted earlier, the NYCDOE issued a Spanish exam that was missing the last page of the booklet.

That page contained the third prompt to an essay question as well as a rubric for students to use to check over their essay writing before handing in the test.

Midway through the exam, the DOE informed schools they should make copies of the rubric and hand them out to all students taking the exam.

Most schools undoubtedly were unable to get the copies made and distributed in time before the test ended or students completed the exam and left the testing room.

After all, they didn't inform schools of the mistakes until well after the Spanish test started.

In addition, there was a scoring key error on the Italian exam.

Now the NYCDOE is acknowledging there are more problems with the foreign language exams.

The Chinese language exam has a question with two correct answers and another question that has a scoring key error.

And the Japanese language exam has a question that is so ambiguous that all four answer choices are considered correct.

The NYCDOE has made mistakes on at least four of the foreign language exams they have given this June, one of which was a major screw-up that compromises the legitimacy of the Spanish exam.

And yet, as of 5:25 PM this evening, a full day after the foreign language exams were given by the city, I have still not seen any media coverage of these testing miscues and errors.

There has been plenty of coverage of the lack of an agreement on teacher evaluation disclosures, however.

Apparently the disclosure of teacher evaluations based upon test scores is a much more important news story than the fact that the NYCDOE can't put out error-free high stakes standardized tests any more than the geniuses at the Regents, the NYSED or Pearson can.

Oh, and one more thing:

The same geniuses who forgot the last page of the Spanish exam booklet, the same ones who added a question on the Chinese language exam with two correct answers and a question on the Japanese exam that is so ambiguous that every answer choice is correct, are the same people in charge of the "local assessments" we're going to see as part of Governor Cuomo's vaunted new teacher evaluation system next year.

Since they can't handle putting out a few foreign language exams once a year, you can imagine the bang-up job these people are going to do putting out tests twice a year in every subject - from math to ELA to science to social studies to art to music to physical education to health to foreign language.

But so long as the news media ignores the problems, I guess it doesn't really matter how many mistakes the NYCDOE makes, does it?

UPDATE - 8:08 PM: Gotham Schools covers the DOE foreign language test mess.

Silly Michael Winerip - Accountability Is Only For Teachers

Winerip takes apart the New York City and State education establishment in today's Times.

It's so good, I wanted to post it in full - to save for posterity.

Here it is:

On Education

10 Years of Assessing Students With Scientific Exactitude

By MICHAEL WINERIP

DECEMBER 2002 The state’s education commissioner, Richard P. Mills, reports to the state Regents: “Students are learning more than ever. Student achievement has improved in relation to the standards over recent years and continues to do so.”

JANUARY 2003 New York becomes one of the first five states to have its testing system approved by federal officials under the new No Child Left Behind law. The Princeton Review rates New York’s assessment program No. 1 in the country.

SPRING 2003 Teachers from around New York complain that the state’s scoring of newly developed high school tests is out of whack, with biology and earth science tests being too easy and the physics test too hard. The state Council of School Superintendents finds the physics scores so unreliable, it sends a letter to colleges for the first time in its history urging them to disregard the test result. Dr. Mills does not flinch, calling the tests “statistically sound” and “in accordance with nationally accepted standards.”

JUNE 2003 Scores on the state algebra test are so poorly calibrated that 70 percent of seniors fail. After a statewide outcry, officials agree to throw out the results. The Princeton Review says that ranking New York first was a mistake. “We’re going to have to come up with a fiasco index for a state like New York that messes up a lot of people’s lives,” a spokesman says.

OCTOBER 2003 A special panel appointed to investigate the state math fiasco concludes that the test “can’t accurately predict performance,” was created “on the cheap” and was full of exam questions that were “poorly worded” and “confusing.”

DECEMBER 2003 The director of state testing resigns. It was his idea to leave, a spokesman says.

MAY 2004 For the fourth year in a row, scores have risen on elementary and middle school state reading and math tests. Dr. Mills urges the Regents: “Look at the data that shows steadily rising achievement of the standards in school districts of all wealth and categories. More children are learning more now than ever before.”

FEBRUARY 2005 Dr. Mills rebukes those who question whether state scores are inflated. “The exams are not the problem,” he said in a report to the Regents. “It’s past time to turn from obsessive criticism of the exam and solve the real problems — the students who are not educated to the standards.”

SPRING 2005 New York City fourth graders make record gains on the state English test, with 59 percent scoring as proficient, compared with 49 percent the year before. “Amazing results” that “should put a smile on the face of everybody in the city,” says Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who happily recites the numbers on his way to re-election.

FALL 2005 The federal tests (the National Assessment of Educational Progress), which are considered more rigorous than the state tests, show a drop in New York City reading scores. On the eighth-grade test, 19 percent are proficient in 2005, compared with 22 percent in 2003. Asked if city and state officials had hyped the state test results, Merryl H. Tisch, a Regent, says, “They have never, ever, ever exaggerated.”

SEPTEMBER 2007 New York’s national assessment test results are again dismal; eighth-grade reading scores are lower than they were in 1998.

DECEMBER 2007 In his report to the Regents, Dr. Mills notes, “A rich, scholarly literature has challenged NAEP validity since the early 1990s.” He announces a plan to develop the first new state learning standards since 1996, to further spur academic excellence.

JUNE 2008 Newly released state test scores show another record year for New York children. Math scores for grades three through eight indicate that 80.7 percent are proficient, up from 72.7 in 2007. “Can we trust these results?” Dr. Mills asks. “Yes, we can. New York’s testing system, including grades three through eight tests, passed a rigorous peer review last year by the U.S. Department of Education. State Education Department assessment experts commission independent parallel analyses to double- and sometimes triple-check the work of our test vendor.”

JUNE 2009 In the previous decade, New York students’ average SAT verbal score has dropped to 484 from 494; the math SAT score has dropped to 499 from 506. The national assessment’s fourth-grade reading scores have been stagnant for four years, and the eighth-grade scores are their lowest in a decade.

But somehow, state test scores again soar to record levels. In New York City, 81 percent of students are deemed proficient in math, and 68.8 percent are proficient in English. “This is a big victory for the city,” the schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein, says, “and we should bask in it.” In November the mayor is elected to a third term, again riding the coattails of sweet city scores.

JULY 2010 Finally someone — Dr. Tisch, the chancellor of the Board of Regents — has the sense to stand up at a news conference and say that the state test scores are so ridiculously inflated that only a fool would take them seriously, thereby unmasking the mayor, the chancellor and the former state commissioner. State scores are to be scaled down immediately, so that the 68.8 percent English proficiency rate at the start of the news conference becomes a 42.4 proficiency rate by the end of the news conference. Shael Polakow-Suransky, chief accountability officer for the city, offers the new party line: “We know there has been significant progress, and we know we have a long way to go.” Whether there has been any progress at all during the Bloomberg years is questionable. The city’s fourth-grade English proficiency rate for 2010 is no better than it was in February 2001, nine months before the mayor was first elected.

Mr. Polakow-Suransky says that even if city test scores were inflated, he is not aware of any credible research calling the city’s 64 percent graduation rate into question.

FEBRUARY 2011 The city’s 64 percent graduation rate is called into question. The state announces a new accountability measure: the percentage of high school seniors graduating who are ready for college or a career. By this standard, the graduation rate for New York City in 2009 was 23 percent.

MAY 2011 Embracing the latest new tool in the accountability universe, the governor, state chancellor and education commissioner ramrod a measure through the Board of Regents, mandating that up to 40 percent of teachers’ and principals’ evaluations be based on student test scores.

AUGUST 2011 With new, more rigorous state tests, city scores rise slightly. “We are certainly going in the right direction,” the mayor says.

NOVEMBER 2011 New York is one of two states in the nation to post statistically significant declines on the National Assessment tests. John B. King, the education commissioner, says the state is certainly going in the wrong direction, but has a plan to spur students’ achievement. “The new Common Core Learning Standards will help get them there,” he says.

DEC. 19, 2011 Nearly a quarter of the state’s principals — 1,046 — have signed an online letter protesting the plan to evaluate teachers and principals by test scores. Among the reasons cited is New York’s long tradition of creating tests that have little to do with reality.

Walcott: "Accountability" Is Key To Improving Schools

Just in case people are fooled by the new chancellor making waffles with schoolchildren on NY1, let me remind them that this guy is right with the Gates/Broad/Bloomberg ed deform program:

Newly-appointed Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott is calling for cooperation in order to solve problems that are plaguing city schools.

During a lecture Saturday at Columbia University, Walcott stressed the importance of accountability in the school system. He mentioned the closure of failing schools and the removal of ineffective teachers as examples.

He also said while poverty is a serious issue for many students, it is not the excuse for poor performance among some.

Walcott said he's not afraid to make the tough decisions needed to create better schools.

"You look at the faces of the students, you see the parents in there, you see the principal or the AP's moving around, you see the artwork on the wall, you listen to the tone of the individuals who are talking, and you know that is a great school. I want to see those types of schools throughout the five boroughs in every ZIP code, in every neighborhood on behalf of our children," Walcott said.

Walcott also supports ending the controversial "Last In, First Out" policy for teachers facing layoffs.

Ah, yes - accountability.

When men like Walcott talk about "accountability", they mean accountability for others.

They don't mean that the public school system heads should be held accountable for the test score fiasco of last year when the Bloomberg education miracle was exposed as a fraud.

They don't mean that the public school heads should be held accountable for phonied up graduation rates or credit recovery programs that push students through to graduation by reading Spiderman comic books and writing book reports on the stories.

They don't mean that the public school heads should be held accountable for a school system that is infested with bedbugs or rife with PCB's and asbestos that poison the air and kill children and staff.

They don't mean that the public school heads should be held accountable for the no-bid contracts they hand out that waste billions on technology upgrades that are so inferior that it takes fifteen minutes to check your email at work and forget about running the "data systems" they want you to run - that shit crashes the system like a bad burrito from Taco Bell.

Oh, no - they mean accountability for teachers for test scores and accountability for administrators for test scores and grad rates.

Never mind that the tools we need to achieve better educational outcomes for children - safe school environments free from bedbugs and PCB's and other toxins, with smaller classes and recent educational materials outside of the McGraw-Hill testing stuff - are not available for us.

Never mind that we must battle a culture of fear every day that has us looking in the papers to see if we've been put on a list of "bad teachers" or to see if we've been laid off.

Never mind that the country is in the middle of a recession that is making life difficult for those of us who do not attend Bloomberg/Black soirees.

Never mind all those things, Walcott is going to hold us accountable.

Well, you know what, Dennis?

Johnny Cash has the same message for you that he's had for Joel Klein, Cathie Black and the Mayor of Money himself:



I got your accountability right here, Chancellor Walcott.

The Hypocrisy Of Corporate Education Reformers

Valerie Strauss points out in the Washington Post today how Bloomberg and Black both blamed "outside forces" for Black's inability to handle the chancellorship of NYC and Michelle Rhee blamed "enemies of reform" for the testing scandal in Washington D.C. that has exposed her "education miracle" as fraudulent.

She notes:

But here’s the hypocritical part of this blame game: While reformers like to blame outside forces for their own problems, they still want to hold teachers responsible for outside forces that contribute to a student’s lousy performance on a standardized test.

Today’s school reform is all about using standardized tests to grade schools, students and teachers. It started with former president George Bush’s No Child Left Behind, and has continued with President Obama’s Race to the Top. States are changing laws to make sure that a good part of a teacher’s evaluation and pay is linked directly to how well their students do on the tests, even if the kids come in hungry, or sick, or exhausted, or mentally ill.

What are the chances that reformers might see the hypocrisy in their positions?

As my kids like to say when I ask about the chances that they will clean their rooms: Slim and none.

The accountability movement is all about accountability for other people, not themselves.

Bloomberg Continues Doing Business With CityTime Crooks

The NY Times finds Bloomberg isn't all that upset that a crooked company will continue to run the CityTime payroll system, though City Controller John Liu is:

An independent report warns that New York City could be too reliant for the foreseeable future on the company that has built the troubled and expensive CityTime automated payroll system.

The report, dated Jan. 12 and prepared by the KPMG consulting firm, says that unless the company, Science Applications International Corporation, known as SAIC, provides detailed instructions and other critical plans explaining how to operate the complex and highly customized payroll system, no other company will be able to run it. A copy of the report was made available to The New York Times through a Freedom of Information request to the office of John C. Liu, the city comptroller.

The city had been preparing to solicit bids in the next couple of weeks for a contract to operate CityTime, for an estimated $30 million a year, once SAIC completes installation of the system, now scheduled to be finished by June 30.

And while SAIC may well be one of the bidders, city officials wanted to inject some competition into a bedeviled project that, at a cost of more than $700 million and running, had become the focus of an $80 million federal corruption case.

The system’s cost and the criminal investigation have been a major embarrassment for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

In a statement released Thursday, Mr. Liu, who has been critical of CityTime since taking office a year ago, warned that SAIC could hold “an indefinite monopoly” on the system.

“The emerging product holds the client — the City of New York — hostage to one company, the project’s developer,” Mr. Liu said. “Proprietary systems like this require a relationship in perpetuity, which stifles competition, fails to ensure superior goods and services, and is a poor business practice that the city simply cannot afford.”

SAIC has been subpoenaed in the corruption case, but it is not believed to be a target of any investigation.

Instead, the federal inquiry, in which six people have been charged, has centered on people working for Spherion, a quality-assurance subcontractor for SAIC.

Last month, Joel Bondy, the executive director of the Office of Payroll Administration, which oversaw CityTime, was suspended without pay and then resigned.

SAIC has been criticized, repeatedly, for the cost of the project.

...

When asked about the KPMG report, Marc La Vorgna, a spokesman for Mr. Bloomberg, did not echo Mr. Liu’s outrage.

“The report confirms that once we address some outstanding issues — issues that are being addressed — the system can be transferred to another entity for operation,” Mr. La Vorgna said. “Our goal is to have a system primarily operated by city employees. The comptroller is well aware of all of this.”

So much for accountability.

Bloomberg Failed Miserably During The Storm

The value-added criticism is pouring in for the Little Mayor Who Couldn't During The Snowstorm:

Hours after the snow stopped, countless streets around the city were unplowed - causing a dangerous backlog in emergency responses and drawing outrage.

The 911 system was overwhelmed and sources said it took nearly an hour at the height of the storm for ambulances respond to strokes and heart attacks. A Brooklyn woman in labor waited four hours for help.

The FDNY said that as of late Monday afternoon, it had a backlog of 1,300 less urgent requests that weren't answered due to a deluge of calls and impassable roads.

Still, Mayor Bloomberg insisted the city had it all under control.

"There's no reason for everybody to panic," he said as criticism poured in. "Our city is doing exactly what you'd want it do."

Across the city, buses and cars were sidelined in drifts and even snowplows were frozen into place. The mayor said only Mother Nature was to blame.

"Snow removal is being handled by the best professionals in the business," he said defensively.

"Snow fell at a furious rate of 2 or 3 inches an hour and that really presents a serious challenge to snow plowing efforts."

His excuses didn't fly where plows seemed as rare as spaceships, mainly the outer boroughs.

"Obviously something went astray this time," Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz said. "Our side streets in every part of Brooklyn are frankly not touched. Many of our main streets haven't been plowed and salted."

By afternoon, the condemnation was mounting.

State Sen. Carl Kruger (D-Brooklyn) who slammed the removal effort as a "colossal failure" that put "countless lives at risk."

He compared the blizzard to the 1969 storm that nearly destroyed the career of Mayor John Lindsay. Bloomberg may have had that kind of political fallout in mind as he hastily scheduled photo ops in Staten Island, Brooklyn and Queens.

City Council Sanitation Committee Chairwoman Letitia James (D-Brooklyn) said she will hold hearings on the mess, saying, "It appears there are not enough men and women representing sanitation and ... EMS on the ground."

It looks like most people do not think Bloomberg added too much value to the city yesterday.

But I dunno what people are complaining about - look how well Mayor Bloomberg's street looked this morning.

Everybody else, especially people in the outer boroughs, are frankly not as important as people who live in Bloomberg's UES neighborhood.

If people want to be better taken care of in this city, they need to move to Mayor Bloomberg's neighborhood and become friend's with Cathie Black.

Otherwise, as the Mayor of Accountability likes to say, "Deal With it!"

Bloomberg Passes Buck On CityTime Scandal Once Again

IT'S NOT HIS FAULT!!!!!!!! STOP BLAMING HIM!!!!!!

Mayor Mike Bloomberg said today that he only heard about fraudulent activities connected with city's payroll system last week, when Department of Investigations head Rose Gill Hearn charged four consultants with using bilking the city for $80 million, even though a letter unearthed yesterday revealed concerns about the project dating back to 2003.

"We have certainly known that there is a problem with this for a long time in terms of being over budget and delayed," the mayor said. "The first time I have heard about [any criminal wrongdoing] was the other day the day [when] Rose Gill Hearn arrested a bunch of people."

When pressed about the letter written by Richard R. Valcich, executive director of the city's Office of Payroll Administration, which accused SAIC, the company in charge of City Time, of "having a commitment to quality [that] is almost non-existent," the mayor said: "That's one of the things we are looking at. Why did somebody write a letter and why did it not raise the appropriate level of interest?"

CityTime was designed to replace paper time sheets with hand scanners for city employees. It was supposed to cost $68 million, but costs have ballooned to over $700 million. In March of this year Mayor Bloomberg called the project "a disaster."

So ironic that the Mayor of Accountability refuses to take any responsibility for this mess despite the fact that

a) the city knew there was problems with CityTime as far back as 2003
b) the former Office of Payroll Administration director wrote a six page letter laying those problems out
c) the City Council held hearings on the CityTime debacle last December
d) Juan Gonzalez began covering this mess back in December of 2009 as well

The accountability should stop right at the mayor's desk.

But he refuses to be held accountable.

He's the classic bully.

It's time for the Bloomberg the Bully to get his own "accountability moment."

Quote of the Day

It's a long one:

The predominant attribute of American elites is a refusal to take responsibility for any failures. The favored tactic for accomplishing this evasion is the "nobody-could-have-known" excuse. Each time something awful occurs -- the 9/11 attack, the Iraq War, the financial crisis, the breaking of levees in New Orleans, the general ineptitude and lawlessness of the Bush administration -- one is subjected to an endless stream of excuse-making from those responsible, insisting that there was no way they "could have known" what was to happen: "I don't think anybody could have predicted that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile," Condoleezza Rice infamously said on May 16, 2002, despite multiple FBI and intelligence documents warning of exactly that. One finds identical excuses for each contemporary American disaster. Robert Gibbs just invoked the same false excuse: that "nobody" knew the depth of the financial and unemployment crisis early last year. --Glenn Greenwald

Silly Glenn Greenwald.

Accountability isn't for presidents and policymakers.

It's for teachers!

So Much For Rigorous Financial Reform

Back in July:

Hailing the new Wall Street reform bill as one that will "empower consumers and investors, bring the shadowy deals that caused this crisis into the light of day, and put a stop to taxpayer bailouts once and for all," President Barack Obama on Wednesday signed into law the nation's broadest financial regulations since the Great Depression.

...

Following months of contentious debate, Wednesday's signing provided a moment for the White House to bask in another major legislative victory as the president announced, "The fact is, every American -- from Main Street to Wall Street -- has a stake in our financial system. . . . That's why we all stand to gain from these reforms. We all win when investors around the world have confidence in our markets. We all win when shareholders have more power and information. We all win when consumers are protected against abuse. And we all win when folks are rewarded based on how well they perform, not how well they evade accountability."

Ah, yes, "accountability."

That's President Accountability's favorite word.

How's that accountability thing going for the financial industry, President Obama?

Have you held accountable the "folks" who nearly brought down the economy back in 2008?

Are the new financial regulations and "reforms" you promoted and signed into law going to keep those same "folks" from bringing the economy down again?

Judging by the front page Times article that relates how the same "folks" who nearly brought the economy to collapse in 2008 are STILL engaging in risky Big Casino Wall Street bets, it doesn't look like much has changed:

When Congress passed a new financial regulation bill last month, it sought to prevent federally insured banks from making speculative bets using their own money. But that will not stop banks from making bets that some critics deem risky, even as the rules go into effect over the next few years.

That is because many such bets — on the direction of the stock market or the price of coal, for example — are done on behalf of clients. So, the banks say, they will continue to be allowable despite the new restrictions.

Indeed, several trades that were made on behalf of clients went bad for the banks even as the new rules were being debated in Washington this year. JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, for example, each lost more than $100 million on transactions handled for customers in the period from April to July.

Blowups like these, only larger, contributed to the financial crisis and forced the federal government to spend billions of dollars to bail out financial institutions. Yet analysts are quick to point out that many of those transactions were handled by the banks, ostensibly to serve clients.

“You can use client activity as a cover for basically anything you are doing,” said Janet Tavakoli, who runs her own structured finance consulting firm. “It’s very problematic that losses like this are showing up. It’s a prime example of what the financial reform bill doesn’t address.”

That ambiguity could have broad consequences for the future of trading on Wall Street.

Given the size of the banks, these recent losses were relatively small. But they highlight how banks will continue to be able to make bets where their own money is at risk — a practice that has yielded huge profits on Wall Street in recent years.

Though these trades were made on behalf of clients, they subjected the banks to the kind of risk that Congress sought to curtail when it devised the Volcker Rule, which banned banks from speculating with their own money. That practice is known as proprietary trading.

Even before the new rules were passed, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan began dismantling their stand-alone “prop desks” and shifting those traders into client-related businesses. Goldman is considering changes that could turn some of its star proprietary traders into asset managers who rely on capital from outside investors.

But for all the talk of shutting down trading desks and reassigning employees to prepare for the Volcker Rule, proprietary-style trading will probably survive, if under a different name.

The administration told us yesterday, through Arne Duncan's "Naming Names" speech, that

"The truth is always hard to swallow, but it can only make us better, stronger and smarter," according to remarks he plans to deliver in Little Rock, Ark. "That's what accountability is all about — facing the truth and taking responsibility."

Fair enough, Arne.

Here's some truth for the "folks" in the Obama administration.

The financial "reform" bill does NOTHING to keep the same "folks" who stole billions then came to the federal government for billions more in bailouts to CONTINUE TO STEAL BILLIONS and come back to the federal government or the Federal Reserve for more free money when the deals go sour again.

Which means what happened in 2008-2009 will happen AGAIN.

Maybe soon.

Hell, the Times says it is ALREADY happening.

And rather than actually hold the "folks" who brought the economy either to the brink of or to complete collapse, Obama will blame the education system and say public schools just aren't educating people with the 21st century skills they need to succeed.

Righhhhttt...

You want to hold somebody accountable, Mr. President?

Take a look around at your economic advisers - Treasury Timmeh and Leisure Suit Larry.

Then take a look at the hedge fundies and other Wall Street criminals you're vacationing with on Marthas's Vineyard.

Finally, take a look in the mirror.

Those are the people they need to be held accountable for the economic mess we are in.

Instead you blame teachers and send your secretary of education out to give speeches about how names need to be named and teachers need to be fired.

Yeah, that'll keep the next market plunge and economic collapse from happening.

Geithner Implicated In Lehman Mess: Where's The Accountablity?

President Accountability is very big on holding teachers accountable and firing as many as possible under his Race to the Top initiative, bur he surely doesn't plan on holding his Treasury Secretary accountable for anything - not paying AIG's counterparties 100 cents to the dollar for the toxic crap on AIG's books that was worth at best 15 cents to the dollar, and not for Lehman's collapse.

And that is so even though the NY Fed under Geithner KNEW Lehman Brothers was falsifying its books and lying to investors about it:

Quite a few observers, including this blogger, have been stunned and frustrated at the refusal to investigate what was almost certain accounting fraud at Lehman. Despite the bankruptcy administrator’s effort to blame the gaping hole in Lehman’s balance sheet on its disorderly collapse, the idea that the firm, which was by its own accounts solvent, would suddenly spring a roughly $130+ billion hole in its $660 balance sheet, is simply implausible on its face. Indeed, it was such common knowledge in the Lehman flailing about period that Lehman’s accounts were sus that Hank Paulson’s recent book mentions repeatedly that Lehman’s valuations were phony as if it were no big deal.

Well, it is folks, as a newly-released examiner’s report by Anton Valukas in connection with the Lehman bankruptcy makes clear. The unraveling isn’t merely implicating Fuld and his recent succession of CFOs, or its accounting firm, Ernst & Young, as might be expected. It also emerges that the NY Fed, and thus Timothy Geithner, were at a minimum massively derelict in the performance of their duties, and may well be culpable in aiding and abetting Lehman in accounting fraud and Sarbox violations.

We need to demand an immediate release of the e-mails, phone records, and meeting notes from the NY Fed and key Lehman principals regarding the NY Fed’s review of Lehman’s solvency. If, as things appear now, Lehman was allowed by the Fed’s inaction to remain in business, when the Fed should have insisted on a wind-down (and the failed Barclay’s said this was not infeasible: even an orderly bankruptcy would have been preferrable, as Harvey Miller, who handled the Lehman BK filing has made clear; a good bank/bad bank structure, with a Fed backstop of the bad bank, would have been an option if the Fed’s justification for inaction was systemic risk), the NY Fed at a minimum helped perpetuate a fraud on investors and counterparties.

This pattern further suggests the Fed, which by its charter is tasked to promote the safety and soundness of the banking system, instead, via its collusion with Lehman management, operated to protect particular actors to the detriment of the public at large.

And most important, it says that the NY Fed, and likely Geithner himself, undermined, perhaps even violated, laws designed to protect investors and markets. If so, he is not fit to be Treasury secretary or hold any office related to financial supervision and should resign immediately.

There's more - read it all.

And the point stands - Geithner was derelict and incompetent in his duty as NY Fed head at best; at worst, he was an out-and-out crook who helped Lehman commit fraud.

And yet we hear nothing from President Accountability about Geithner's actions as head of the NY Fed.

Not one thing.

Just another example of hypocrisy from this most hypocritical of presidents.

I can't wait to see how many seats Dems lose in November.

And I can't wait to see President Accountability held accountable himself in 2012.

And if things don't change soon, he will be.

UPDATE: Cunning Realist points out how another architect of the financial crisis has just gotten rewarded by President Accountability.

That would be Janet Yellen of the San Francisco Fed who Obama just nominated to be Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve:

Yellen has her fans, but I'm not one of them. One of the most important issues in monetary policy right now is the debate about whether the Fed should short-circuit asset bubbles in real time or wait to clean up the expensive mess. Yellen's position was clear as early as 2005, an important year in the chronology of the bubble:

This brings me to the debate about how monetary policy should react to unusually high prices of houses -- or other assets, for that matter. ... In my view, the weight of a decision to deflate an asset price bubble rests on positive answers to three questions. First, if the bubble were to collapse on its own, would the effect on the economy be exceedingly large? Second, is it unlikely that the Fed could mitigate the consequences? Third, is monetary policy the best tool to use to deflate a house-price bubble? My answers to these questions in the shortest possible form are, "no," "no," and "no."

If there was any accountability for policymakers who played a role in the crash, Yellen's disastrous and date-critical underestimation of the bubble and its consequences would be enough to keep her in the Pacific time zone.

Yet one more example of Obama rewarding failure, short-sightedness and outright incompetence and yet one more example of how in Obama's America, only teachers are accountable.

To paraphrase Mel Brooks, it's good to be in high finance!

It's Only Teachers Who Are Accountable

The financial system nearly collapsed last year because people in the financial industry at "Too Big To Fail" institutions like AIG, Citigroup, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and others took too much risk and needed to be bailed out by hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars.

Many of those same people are being rewarded with seven and eight figure bonuses this year.

The financial policy makers who helped create this mess - like Ben Bernanke who voted yes on every Greenspan "moral hazard" policy decision and who has been printing money hand over fist to give to the "Too Big To Fail" institutions and Treasury Timmeh Geithner who oversaw the AIG bailout wherein he handed AIG counterparties 100 cents to the dollar on money owed to them for toxic assets they themselves had bought that were worth at best 20 cents and who asked one of those counterparties, Goldman Sachs, to keep this deal secret from the investigators at the SEC - continue to cheerfully make financial policy.

In fact, Obama renominated Bernanke for another four years and the administration said last week that Geithner has the full confidence of the president.

On December 25, 2009, a Nigerian man set his penis on fire trying to blow up a plane over Detroit. The man's father had warned the State Department that he had become radicalized and was a danger to the United States. In addition, the CIA knew he visited radical elements in Yemen and was a danger to the United States. Nonetheless the man bought a one way ticket with cash and bordered a plane in Nigeria without any luggage and flew to the United States with a visa that said he was coming for a "religious ceremony" (a jihadi euphemism for martyrdom.) The attack was only averted because passengers on the plane noticed his crotch was on fire and held him down until the plane landed.

Two days after the incident, Director of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano said "The system worked..." when talking about the incident. Widely ridiculed for that statement, the administration forced her to walk that back the next day when she said "The system actually didn't work..." and Obama himself said there had been systemic failures throughout the intelligence apparatus that kept the Feds from stopping this man before he got on the plane to Detroit.

Nonetheless, Obama said he was not going to be part of a blame game and point fingers at anybody, so nobody was fired, nobody was held accountable for any of this.

Essentially Obama said "Mistakes were made" and left it that.

Now compare the way Obama has treated the "Too Big To Fail" institutions, the people at those institutions who are pulling in seven and eight figure bonuses for 2009, the policymakers who helped create the mess and the people in his government who missed the very obvious signs of a incoming terrorist attack and then afterward brushed aside criticism by saying "The system worked..." with the way he treats teachers and schools that he considers "failing."

You work in a school that used to be a "good school" but had hundreds of ELL's, support service students and other at-risk students dropped on it in the last few years from other schools that were closed, but have received no extra resources to handle the new students - too bad, Obama says your school needs to be closed down, the teachers need to be fired and a non-unionized charter should be opened in its place. Remember, it's only the test scores that matter.

You work in a school that has few resources, an overpopulated building, overcrowded classrooms, and bathrooms being used to hold math classes in because a charter school has been placed on the first and second floors of your building - too bad, Obama says your school needs to be closed down, the teachers need to be fired and a non-unionized charter should be opened in its place. Remember, it's only the test scores that matter.

You're teaching students who come from impoverished families with generations of dysfunctional behavior, mental illness, alcoholism and other addictions, students themselves who are in great emotional pain and act out that pain through angry outbursts in school or by simply never coming to class and you don't have any way to reach them - too bad, it's your fault they're that way and Obama says you're school needs to be closed down, the teachers need to be fired and a non-unionized charter should be opened in its place. Remember, it's only the test scores that matter.

In Obama's America, like in Bush's America, nobody is accountable for anything except for the teachers and the public education system.

Everybody else, including the president who gave himself a B+ for his first year in office (record deficit, 10% unemployment, hundreds of billions in giveaways to the "Too Big To Fail" firms, no major legislation passed, health care reform turned into major giveaway for the health insurance industry, reneged promises on Card Check legislation and DaDT) gets a pass, a "Heckuva job, Janet" pat on the back, or an eight figure bonus for taking the economic system to the point of collpase and needing billions in bailout dollars and continued access to Federal Reserve 0% interest-free loans to survive.

I cannot wait to hold President Accountability accountable come November 2010 and November 2012.

It's time everybody hold President Accountability accountable for not holding all these other crooks and incompetents accountable.