First Slave Labor, Now This

From the Post:

The billionaire widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs’ has reportedly hooked up with the divorcing, former mayor of Washington DC.

Laurene Powell Jobs, 49, and Adrian Fenty, 42, got their romance rolling in January when the former DC mayor announced his separation from wife Michelle, the Washington Post reported today.

The new power couple met in 2011 at an education conference.

Then in 2012, Fenty joined the board of College Track, a non-profit founded
  by Powell Jobs and dedicated to getting students from underserved high schools into college.

“Adrian Fenty is one of our country’s great advocates for education reform,” she said when Fenty joined the board. “His sense of urgency and record of accomplishment is unparalleled.”

Ugh.

Gates and Jobs' widow, both in the education reform game, both with more money than God to push their respective agendas.

And now Jobs' widow dating the man who brought Michelle Rhee to D.C.

I'm giving up computers and going back to the abacus and stylus.  

As far as I know, those technologies aren't owned by ed deformers, right?

John Liu To Compare Public, Private Employee Salaries

You know, the more I watch NYC Comptroller John Liu, the more I like him:

(Reuters) - Saying that public employees have become scapegoats for the fiscal problems of U.S. states, New York City Comptroller John Liu plans to release a report on Wednesday that compares public sector salaries with those in the private sector.

Speaking at a National Institute on Retirement Security conference on Tuesday, Liu said he will "battle rhetoric with research," with a further series of reports on public employee compensation and pensions.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has suggested the state close its budget gap with cuts to public employees' pay and benefits. He also has called for the end of public employees' collective bargaining rights, which has sparked demonstrations at the state capital.

"I'm happy about what they said in Wisconsin because I think it lays bare the ideological underpinnings of what's really happening," Liu said.

"A year ago it was about big corporate bonuses," said Liu about taxpayers' anger over the financial crisis and subsequent economic recession. "Now there seems to be a great deal of vitriol directed at public employees."

Liu, who manages the city's $113 billion pension funds, said eliminating collective bargaining "is rather extreme."

"Chipping away at the retirement security of public employees won't enhance the retirement security of private sector employees," he told Reuters on the sidelines of the conference.

No, it sure won't - but it WILL enhance the retirement security of the wealthiest 400 Americans (Gates, Broad, Bloomberg, Buffet, Koch Brothers, et al.), which is really what all this is about anyway.

Once again, John Liu is proving that some Democrats actually still represent working and middle class Americans as opposed to the corporate oligarch class so many Dems (think Obama) represent.

Compare Liu to the former Democratic darlings of the education reform movement - Adrian Fenty and Michelle Rhee - both of whom have come out in support of Scott Walker's union-busting proposals, and Liu just looks better and better to me for 2013 in NYC.

Wouldn't it be nice to have a politician elected who doesn't, you know, reflexively bash teachers and union members to make his/her corporate overlords happy?

Michelle Rhee Also Backs Scott Walker's Union-Busting

I must've missed this. E.D. Kain, posting about former D.C. mayor Adrian Fenty's support of Scott Walker's union-busting proposals in Wisconsin, notes that former D.C. chancellor Michelle Rhee also supports Walker in his efforts to destroy unions:

Well, I think that Wisconsin is an incredibly difficult situation and it’s very complicated. I think on the one hand, there are some things that the governor is proposing that go a little overboard, I think, trying to put in place a vote to decertify the union every year. On the other hand, I do think they are trying to address some issues that have to be taken on. So for example, the unfunded pension liabilities are significant and those pensions are no longer going to be sustainable. We’ve got to do something about them. And I think that unions can collectively bargain over basic things like salary, but they don’t have is a place getting involved in policies and so I think that the move to try to limit what they bargain over is an important one.

Make no mistake, her jive that she doesn't want to decertify the union is meaningless since the rest of the proposals she supports - like limiting collective bargaining to salary only - would essentially render the union powerless anyway.

Rhee's views on union-busting shouldn't come as a surprise.

After all, she is part of the education team of Florida's governor, Rick Scott - a certified member of the Tea Party who wants to privatize the entire public school system in the state of Florida.

But as I wrote earlier about Fenty's airing his anti-union views today, it's good to get Rhee on the record as an admitted union-buster.

And of course it's for the kids, right Michelle?

Adrian Fenty Supports Scott Walker's Union-Busting

Ah, yes, it's finally good to see one of the union-busting ed deform rats (i.e., Klein, Bloomberg, Rhee, Fenty, Obama, Duncan, Gates, Broad, DFER's, et al.) come out and say how they REALLY feel about Scott Walker's attempt to bust the unions in Wisconsin:

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker this morning got some rare Democratic support for his high-profile push to eliminate most state workers' collective barganing rights -- from former D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty.

Fenty made his comments as a guest on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," making an in-studio appearance in New York with takeover mogul and ex-"car czar" Steven Rattner and former Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan.

When discussion turned to Walker's anti-union push, Fenty jumped right in.

"This is kind of what I faced in four years as mayor," Fenty told hosts Mike Barnicle and Mika Brzezinski. "He's right on the substance, I think. I tend to agree with him on the need for collective bargaining reform. But he's also right on the politics. I just don't understand why the legislature has been given this pass to go to another state and not do what they were sworn to do, and that's to take a vote. Unfortunately for Gov. Walker, he hasn't been able to get that out. He needs to point the finger a little bit more at them and say. 'Listen, they should take a vote. All I want is for them to vote up or down, and I will be fine with whatever they decide.'"

Brzezinski asked Fenty if he agreed with what Walker is doing.

"The substance of it, I do," Fenty said. "Most governors and mayors would love to be able to manage their team without the interference of collective bargaining. ... I believe that managers have the ability to set fair wages, and to set fair hours, and to reward people or hold them accountable. I think it's a new day. I think a lot of these collective bargaining agreements are completely outdated."

Fenty was often at odds with city employee unions during his four years as mayor -- not least of which the city's teachers union. Organized labor fought hard to defeat Fenty and elect Vincent C. Gray instead. Today was not the first time Fenty's been critical of unions -- he said in October that teachers unions "are going to have to explain why when every tough decision is made to reform the school system they are at the lead in opposing it" -- but it was by far his most sweeping public indictment of organized labor.

For the record, Fenty's "tough decision" reforms in D.C. weren't the slam dunk Fenty likes to say they were:

Rising standardized test scores, often cited by D.C. officials as evidence of an improving school system, are of limited value in determining whether students are actually learning more, according to the first major independent study of D.C. school reform.

That conclusion, part of a report issued Friday by the National Research Council, is likely to drive new debate about the testing-centered culture of D.C. schools and other systems across the country. While the testing data contain encouraging signs, the widely quoted averages of citywide performance say little about the quality of teaching and learning.

"Looking at test scores should be only a first step - not an endpoint - in considering questions about student achievement, or even more broadly, about student learning," the study said.

The council is the research arm of the National Academies, and its report is the first in a series of evaluations required by the 2007 law that placed the city's long-troubled public schools under mayoral control. Researchers said that while the city has made "a good faith effort" to implement the Public Education Reform Amendment Act, it is premature to draw sweeping conclusions about its effect on student achievement.

The District became a national staging area for urban school reform under then-Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D), who appointed Michelle A. Rhee as the city schools' first chancellor hours after taking control of the system. She resigned in October, after more than three years on the job, and was succeeded on an interim basis by her deputy, Kaya Henderson.

Fenty and Henderson could not be reached for comment. Rhee declined to comment.

Reading and math scores on the District's two main tests, the annual D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System (D.C. CAS) and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), have shown what the report describes as "modest improvement" under Rhee and her predecessor, former superintendent Clifford Janey, although elementary-grade scores fell in 2010.

But researchers said the city must develop a more sophisticated capacity to track individual students who shift from traditional public schools to public charter schools, or in some cases drop out of the system entirely. The city also needs a firmer grasp on rapidly changing neighborhood demographics and their impact on academics. "In the meantime, naive aggregate comparison of test scores among race-ethnic groups in the District should be interpreted critically and cautiously," the study said.

The study received an enthusiastic greeting from critics, who say heavy emphasis on testing has narrowed curricula and warped classroom creativity.

"This report is a shot over the bow of politicians seeking to reform education in this incredibly narrow way," said Mary Lord, a member of the D.C. State Board of Education and mother of a junior at Wilson High School.

But of course the Morning Joe crew never pointed this stuff out to Fenty.

They also never point out to Joel Klein when he's on the program that the achievement gap between white and Asian students and black and Hispanic students in NYC schools was larger when Klein left as chancellor than it was before Klein took over.

Although now that Klein works at Rupert Murdoch's FOX News, I suspect the Morning Joe crew won't have to worry about carrying Klein's water anymore since Rupert won't let him on rival MSNBC.

Maybe that's why Fenty was on to shill for education reform instead.

Politico Says Ed "Reformers" Are Worried That The Fenty Loss Has Large Implications For The Ed "Reform" Movement

A mainstream political press article actually seems to acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, Rhee and Fenty brought about their own downfall with their arrogance, autocratic leadership, and derision for opponents and that maybe, just maybe, other education "reformers" might want to learn a lesson from their loss.

Oh, and that teachers might actually have some power to fight back:

Mayor Adrian Fenty staked his career on overhauling the District of Columbia’s education system with Obama-style reforms — closing dozens of failing schools and firing hundreds of teachers.

And then the teachers struck back.

Fenty’s defeat this week — due in no small part to community and teachers union resistance to his education push — is emerging as a cautionary tale for education reformers, who fear that it could cause others to back away from aggressive reform programs swept into the mainstream by President Barack Obama’s “Race to the Top.”

His downfall, observers fret, serves notice to officeholders coast to coast that they could suffer Fenty’s fate if they embark on that ambitious brand of school reform championed by Fenty and his controversial schools chief Michelle Rhee.

“This is a real wake-up call for the Obama administration,” said Richard Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation who studies teachers unions. “The emphasis on firing teachers which was central to Rhee’s approach — she stood in a picture on the cover of Time magazine with a broom. That doesn’t seem to resonate with voters.”

Fenty wasn’t the only one to draw the teachers’ ire this week. In three New York state races Tuesday night, the teachers union and its allies helped beat back challengers who supported charter schools and other reform measures.

And now, Georgia gubernatorial candidate Roy Barnes — who made a name as an education reformer as his first go-around as the state’s governor — is apologizing to the teachers union that kicked him to the curb in 2002. As governor of the state, Barnes had pushed through a controversial package of reforms, including annual student testing and linking teacher pay to performance.

To be sure, a variety of local factors contributed to Fenty’s defeat, but by far his most high-profile initiative — and the one that drew the most fire — was school reform.

Rhee’s reforms closely mirrored those pushed by Obama’s “Race to the Top” sweepstakes to encourage more teacher accountability and tougher standards. Though she landed in Washington in 2007, Rhee set to work reorganizing the central office. She negotiated an innovative new contract with the Washington Teachers’ Union containing initiatives historically spurned by teachers. Rhee fired staff for poor performance, even dismissing her daughters’ principal. Fenty was supportive and approved the firing of several hundred teachers in the middle of his primary campaign.

But even some Fenty backers acknowledge he and Rhee didn’t always handle the reforms well, putting through wrenching changes in the schools without enough community buy-in, and giving critics plenty of ammunition to say they took a high-handed approach to an issue dear — and deeply emotional — to many parents.

And that’s where the American Federation of Teachers came in. The national union spent roughly $1 million in contributions to a labor-backed independent expenditure campaign — also supported by the public workers union AFSCME — and on its own extensive political operation, a Democratic political consultant familiar with the details of the spending told POLITICO.

The national union declined to comment. George Parker, president of AFT’s local Washington Teachers’ Union, said it’s “no secret” that Fenty wasn’t a friend of unions.

“The message is that you cannot omit and exclude parents, teachers and communities in terms of developing an education reform platform,” he said. “It is a referendum on the kind of leadership the city wants. The mayor’s style — un-collaborative and un-transparent — had as much to do with the election as education itself.”

Teachers unions, and AFT, in particular, haven’t been shy about expressing their resistance to the Obama-style reforms and saying they unfairly punish teachers for much broader problems in the education system. The Fenty vote shows that the unions can do something about it, beyond just complain, and serves as an important bit of electoral muscle-flexing for the AFT, Kahlenberg said.

“This is big and highly symbolic for the teachers unions,” said Kahlenberg.

But now that Fenty is out, reformers worry that it will be harder to make such reforms stick elsewhere. Justin Cohen, who previously worked for Rhee and now runs a school-turnaround nonprofit, asked, “How do you make, in a politically charged environment, real change sustainable?”

Let me repeat some of the lessons of Tuesday's loss not only for the autocratic ed reform crowd who think only THEY have the answers for public education but also for the more cautious teachers union people who seem to think allowing the ed deform movement to frame education reform issues and spend all their time reacting to the latest outrage against the union or scapegoating of teachers is the best strategy to fight back:

And then the teachers struck back.

Fenty lost due in no small part to community and teachers union resistance to his education push.

Fenty's loss could cause others to back away from aggressive reform programs swept into the mainstream by President Barack Obama’s “Race to the Top."

See how this works - expose the education reform movement for the corporate-style usurpation of public education that it is.

Remind people that teachers are NOT the sole nor the most important influence on children - parents are.

Show people how the "value-added" testing apparatus that ed reformers gleefully use to evaluate teachers and fire them is full of flaws - in fact, the margins of error are so large you could drive Kevin Johnson's libido through them and STILL have room for the egos of Rhee, Fenty, Duncan AND Obama.

Show people that adding new standardized assessments to every subject at every grade level twice a year in order to "assess" both students and teachers is NOT going to improve education, especially if the tests are high stakes and schools will be closed and teachers fired if the scores are low - rather it is going to create test prep factories in every urban city that is forced to undertake the Obama.Rhee/Bloomberg/Klein/Duncan reforms.

Finally, promote a model of collaboration and between teachers, parents, students AND politicians in which EVERYBODY has to bear responsibility for the failures in the public education system - currently parents, students and politicians skate free and teachers bear ALL the blame.

In the short term, things are going to get even uglier for teachers. Waiting for Spiderman and the NBC Ed Deform Summit will give corporate forces lots of opportunities to scapegoat unionized teachers for all the problems in public education.

But outside of the corporate media, it is becoming clear that the ed deform movement is not resonating with much of the public - especially the part about scapegoating teachers for all the problems in the education system.

Now let's see if we can build on this and drive back some of the Obama/Bloomberg/Klein/Duncan/Rhee/Gates/Broad agenda.

Fenty, Rhee Learn Nothing

The mark of a mature human being is the ability to meet life's challenges with grace and dignity, accept the mistakes made along the way and learn from them.

Adrian Fenty does NOT seem to be able to do that:

After touring polls across the city, I encountered Fenty at 5 PM on the corner of Calvert Street and Wisconsin Avenue, in the heart of Ward 3. Polls were still open; Fenty was trolling for votes.

Would he have done anything differently?

“Absolutely not,” he said. “Of the hundreds of decisions I made, I would not have changed one. I have no regrets.”

Michelle Rhee has learned nothing from Fenty's nine point loss Tuesday either:

So, it turns out, the problem with school reforms in D.C. -- which contributed to the defeat of D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty in the Democratic primary -- wasn’t that some of them were punitive and nonsensical. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee said in an interview today that the people just didn’t get it.

It’s the people’s fault, actually.

In an interview that Rhee did today with Nora O’Donnell, a reporter for MSNBC and a conspicuous fan of Rhee’s, the chancellor concedes that “we didn’t do as good a job as I think we could have in communicating why we were making the decisions that we did that sort of led people to be suspicious.”

It’s a communications failure, as it were.

She further suggests that people didn’t like the reforms -- which include linking teacher pay to student standardized test scores (a terrible idea) and increasing the number of standardized tests kids must take (another rotten idea) because they were hard.

The people just don’t want “hard” reform.

“Reformers across the country knew when the mayor and I took these aggressive reforms on that it was going to be tremendously difficult... People need to see how hard the work is.”

Refusing to look at one's own actions, take responsibility for mistakes made, and adjust one's behavior accordingly - not, in my opinion, a mark of a mature human being.

Fenty and Rhee both prefer displacing blame onto others:

People just don't get it.

Consensus doesn't matter.

Only I have all the answers for the school system and I WILL force people to accept my will for the system or die (figuratively, of course) trying.

That is the Rhee way.

That is the Fenty way.

(It is the Bloomberg way too, and with such deep pockets, he often does get what he wants...)

That is the Chris Christie way.

This way of doing things seems to appeal greatly to the corporate media.

The op-ed writers at the News, Post and Times love it - my way or the highway, get tough with "those" people, push through reforms no matter the lack of consensus or evidence for them.

It is a fundamentally flawed way to govern, in my opinion.

It builds lots of resentment in the people shut out of the process, and in the case of the ed deform movement - funded by a few billionaires, developed by a few think tanks funded by those billionaires, and shoved through by a bipartisan contingent of corporate-friendly politicians - it is building more and more resentment among many parents, students and teachers.

We'll just have to keep fighting to have our voices heard.

The ed deformers have the money, the media and the politicians in their pockets.

But we can still take actions every day to push for a more inclusive, democratic school system that teaches students more than test prep.

We can do this in our schools, in the city, in the media, on the Internet.

As Howard Zinn once wrote:

We don't have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world. Even when we don't "win," there is fun and fulfillment in the fact that we have been involved, with other good people, in something worthwhile. We need hope. An optimist isn't necessarily a blithe, slightly sappy whistler in the dark of our time. To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places-and there are so many-where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

Final D.C. Mayor's Race Tally

Here are the final numbers on the Fenty defeat:

54%-45%

So a 9 point victory. Definitely a nice win for Gray and somewhere between the poll numbers that were reported over the past few weeks that had Gray winning either by 5 points or by 12 points.

So now what happens to Rhee?

Will Whitney Tilson and some other hedge fund criminals/DFER’s show up at Gray’s office with a couple of suitcases full of cash in order to “persuade” Gray to keep Chancellor Rhee on.

They already handed a couple of suitcases full of cash to Little Andy Cuomo and got Little Andy to publicly warn the teachers union they are in his sights come January.

So why not try Gray too?

That’s the great thing about being a hedge fund criminal like Whitney Tilson.

If at first you cannot subvert democracy by buying off people and throwing boatloads of cash behind a challenger, you still have lots more cash to try it again and again.

Let's face it - until the American people come to realize that hedge fund criminals belong in jail not PAC’s, the United States will continue its slide into Third World nation status.

As for Rhee, I maintain she still needs to do the full-time gig running interference for all the women her fiance, Kevin Johnson, sexually harasses or assaults.

Here is one example.

Here is another.

Seems like running interference for KJ and offering hush money to the women unlucky enough to be groped by him is a full-time job.

Fenty Loses

We'll see what happens to Michelle Rhee, but we do know one thing - Adrian Fenty, mayor of D.C., has lost to Vincent Gray.

Buh-bye, Adrian.

Given that Rhee campaigned for Fenty, you would think Gray would can her. But as Michael Fiorillo noted in this comment here:

Gray will be under immense pressure to keep Rhee. The malanthropists will threaten to yank the money they're contributing to the pound-of-flesh wage increases in the new contract, Duncan will expectorate on the issue, etc.

Valerie Strauss at The Answer Sheet says whatever Gray does, he should do it soon. I think the longer Gray waits to make a decision, the more likely it is Rhee stays.

We'll see.

Maybe she can just get a full time job bribing the woman sexually harassed by her fiance Kevin Johnson to stay quiet?

Gray To Keep Rhee?

I think Adrian Fenty is one of the most disgusting, venomous people in politics today, so I hope he loses regardless, but is Vincent Gray starting to cave on Rhee?

Sounds like it here in this CNN interview he had with John King:

KING:: We saw the mayor up in Northwest and a woman who had just voted there and one of my neighbors said last night that I would have voted for Vince Gray but I wanted to keep Michelle Rhee so I voted for Mayor Fenty.

If you win this election, can you keep her?

GRAY:: Well, we'll see. I've said many times that education reform has to be about more than one person. And I have been a strong proponent of education reform. I have indicated that I am going to continue with education reform. I helped to shepherd the legislation through the council in the first place. I'm going to continue with a very strong chancellor. We are going to have a birth-through-24 approach. We are going to frankly involve all the stakeholders in how we make our decisions and restore fiscal responsibility to our schools. And I have said on many occasions that after this election is over, I'd like to sit down with Michelle Rhee and let us walk and talk through it, you know, how we might work together.

KING: Would you like her to stay?

GRAY:: Well, we -- we'll decide that. I think that's a conversation that she and I, you know, need to have in terms of what's important to her with respect to what she's looking for in a mayor and the things that I think are important to me as a Mayor.

Notice CNN's John King using his neighbor's "I would have voted for Gray but I wanted Rhee to stay" jive in the interview.

Of course John King's neighbor wanted Rhee to stay.

He/she is no doubt an affluent white person in an affluent white neighborhood and as we have seen from the polls taken, affluent white people in D.C. want Rhee to stay to keep all those scary students of color and lazy unionized teachers under control.

That, really, is what "education reform" is all about to most of the people like John King's neighbor (or for that matter media people like John King.)

I hope I'm wrong about this, but I can see Gray being bought off post-election and Rhee getting to stay around to fire the other 75% of D.C. teachers who haven't already been fired or declared "ineffective" and slated for firing next year.

RESULTS HERE at the Kaplan Test Prep Post.

UPDATE: 10:19 PM and D.C. still hasn't started counting votes (or at least the Kaplan Test prep Post hasn't posed any results.)

Screw it - off to bed.

I can wait until morning to see whether hedge fund money bought Fenty (and thus Rhee) another term or if they'll have to spend a little more to bribe Gray to keep her.

Primary Day

Adrian Fenty rallied supporters at 5:30 AM today on why he should be re-elected: School reform!

Of course, at 5:30 AM, most of those supporters were probably just charter school teachers on their way in to work (6:30 AM-6:30 PM!!! No Excuses!!!!)

Later he will be on MSNBC to talk about school reform with the Morning Joe crew.

You can bet if Fenty loses today (and he is down in the polls), he will get some cushy job in the ed deform movement and appear on programs like Morning Joe where they regularly bash teachers, unions and extol the wonders of the 10 hour school day the KIPPsters endure.

If Gray does win and decides not to keep Rhee, the same goes for her - cushy foundation job, lots of media appearances (maybe MSNBC will make her their paid "education consultant"?) and lionization by the corporate media. Or maybe Secretary Arne will find a place for her in the DOE.

That's the thing about being a right wing ideologue who does the work of the hedge fund managers and banksters.

There will ALWAYS be a paid gig waiting for you after you finish selling out the masses.

Fenty Buys Votes

The allegations have been swirling for a while now - D.C. mayor Adrian Fenty has been spending money to buy votes in the D.C. election.

Now there looks like some proof:

There's one question that seems bound to consume the final days of the mayoral campaign: Is Mayor Adrian M. Fenty's campaign buying votes?

That has been the lightly-founded rumor among supporters of D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray dating back to a Ward 8 straw poll, back in May.

The allegations got a credibility boost last night from WJLA-TV's Sam Ford, who reported on two people who have come forward to say they were promised campaign jobs in exchange for Fenty votes. The jobs were not delivered.

The charges are serious. With people on the record, complete with names and some corroboration for their story, the Fenty campaign is faced with fighting a story that is difficult to disprove. Fenty sources say they have no record of the accusers getting a ride to the polls in a campaign van -- something that they say is thoroughly documented -- and that drivers are given strict instructions on what and what isn't appropriate. But elections officials confirm that at least one accuser did cast a ballot last week.

When a reporter from the Washington Post went out to investigate the allegations and talk to some Fenty supporters, here's what happened:

It doesn't help that the Fenty GOTV operation has the air of a black-ops mission. Last Saturday, I attempted to interview three voters who were sitting in a Fenty van outside the Greater Southeast Tennis and Learning Center, an early-voting site. I began speaking to one person, munching on a bag lunch, when a driver came and shooed me off. "We're private," she told me.

Gee - that doesn't sound like the open transparent operation Fenty claims to be running.

It sounds more like an operation that is losing but has money to burn to try and turn things around the last few days.

Given that crooks like Democrats for Education Reform and Mayor Moneybags are both supporting Fenty, we shouldn't be surprised about the Fenty campaign tactics - whatever it takes to win.

That's how DFER and Bloomberg operate too.

Throw around the hedge fundie cash and see who takes it.

Next up on the DFER list - Little Andy Cuomo, who of course left a DFER meeting with a bag full of cash.

Ah, yes - democracy for sale.

Given how much money the top 1% have to throw around and accomplish their goals, the United States will be a full-fledged serf nation by the end of the decade.

People In D.C. Think Adrian Fenty Is A Dishonest, Arrogant, Corporate Sell-Out

If this Kaplan Test Prep/Washington Post poll is accurate, buh-buy Adrian Fenty:

Poll shows D.C. Mayor Fenty getting more credit than support in primary race against Gray

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty is foundering in his reelection bid against his chief opponent, D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray, despite a widespread sense that the city is heading in the right direction, according to a new Washington Post poll.

With early voting beginning Monday in the Sept. 14 primary, Gray is clearly ahead, leading Fenty 49 to 36 percent among all Democratic voters surveyed. Gray's advantage swells to 17 points, 53 to 36 percent, among those most likely to vote in the primary.

Although most of those Democrats polled credit the mayor with a record of accomplishment and say he brought needed change to the District, many doubt his honesty, his willingness to listen to different points of view and his ability to understand their problems. The criticisms are especially deep-seated among African Americans, who are likely to make up a majority of primary voters.

Nearly six in 10 black Democrats see Fenty as caring primarily about upper-income residents; more than four in 10 see him as disproportionately concerned about whites in the District. In predominantly black Wards 7 & 8, east of the Anacostia River, where Fenty carried 54 percent of the primary vote four years ago, just 14 percent of all Democratic voters there now back him against Gray.

Citywide, most black voters doubt Fenty's honesty and say he doesn't understand their problems. Four years ago, just 17 percent of African Americans expressed unfavorable views of Fenty; now, that number has leapt to 56 percent.

The poll results show not only a dramatic drop in support for the mayor, but also the steep climb he faces in the two weeks left before the primary. Despite a recent promise to be more inclusive and more attentive to residents, Fenty's last-minute appeal may have come too late to change the minds of voters.

The mayor appears to have lost considerable ground to Gray, who entered the race at the end of March and only recently started running television ads. Gray, 67, who has run on a theme of "One City," says he is better suited to overcome the city's racial and class divides. In the poll, Gray is broadly seen as honest, open to various viewpoints and empathetic, all areas of perceived weakness for Fenty. Overall, Democratic voters give Gray the edge when it comes to being an effective leader and divide about evenly on which of the two candidates has a clearer vision for the District's future.

Wow.

This race WAS close and given how people genuinely think the city is heading in the right direction (unlike most Americans in most other places around the country), Fenty should be winning in a walk.

But people see through his jive.

And black people especially seem to be able to see though his jive.

Many see him as a corporate (i.e., white) sell-out looking to help his hedge fundie friends.

Here's a sample:

The perception that Fenty favors wealthier and predominantly white neighborhoods persists despite his administration's efforts to build or renovate schools, parks and recreations centers across the city.

Danielle McDonald, who lives off East Capitol Street in Ward 7, said the mayor was too focused on "putting up high-rises and condominiums" and has not done enough to improve life in her neighborhood.

"The big bucks go downtown where the rich people are," said McDonald, 66. "He's for all that, and then throws a little something on the side to us and says, 'Oh, we gave you this.' "

McDonald said she likes Gray because he performs well in the council sessions she watches on the government cable access channel. "He seems to be for neighborhoods and was always willing to question what the mayor was doing to hold him accountable," she said.

Here's more:

The number of Democrats holding favorable views of Gray has moved higher since the beginning of the year; public assessments of Fenty's trustworthiness have not improved since a Post survey in January. In the latest poll, 39 percent of Democrats say Fenty is honest and trustworthy, compared with 61 percent who say so about Gray.

Thelma Harris, who lives in Michigan Park, in Northeast, said she recently decided that "Fenty hasn't been honest from the get go" and that she will vote for Gray. Fenty "seems to represent the interest of only a select few, and he is arrogant," said Harris, 52, a social worker at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. "I know his commercials say he appears arrogant. Well, he is arrogant."

Elsewhere in Northeast, Carol Holston, 52, who lives in Benning Heights, credited Fenty with providing recreational centers and football fields, but she said they remind her of the ongoing investigation into whether the administration unfairly awarded tens of millions in construction contracts to his friends and fraternity brothers.

Harry Gates, 71, a resident of the Palisades, in Northwest, is a defector from the Fenty camp who said he volunteered for Fenty's 2006 mayoral run. "We did have a team, but there was always a wall up between the rest of the team and Adrian. I always wondered if he was listening," Gates said. "The pat answer everyone has is the day he moved into the Wilson Building, he turned his back on everyone who put him there."

Traditionally, 6o% of voters in the D.C. Democratic primary are black.

Only 19% of Democratic black voters support Fenty.

Unless Fenty turns things around awfully fast, he is done.

Fenty Staffer: "Adrian Fenty Is One Of The Biggest Assholes I've Ever Met In My Life."

No wonder DC mayor Adrian Fenty is down 5 points in a race he should be winning.

People hate him.

Seriously, people hate him.

Especially people who have worked FOR or WITH him:

With weeks to go before the decisive D.C. Democratic mayoral primary, the city’s political establishment seems to have decided that the election boils down to a referendum on the personality of the incumbent, Adrian Fenty.

Unfortunately for the mayor, his fellow pols aren’t debating whether Fenty has a personality problem. Rather, they’re arguing about how to best describe that problem. To pick just three of the terms thrown around during this unhappy summer of lopsided straw polls and campaign-trail boo-birds, the options include “arrogant prick,” “brat,” and “spoiled child.”

“His politics are unnecessarily abrasive, confrontational, disrespectful, superficial,” says At-Large Councilmember Phil Mendelson, who was on the council during Fenty’s six years there and has continued as a councilmember during Fenty’s four years as a mayor.

“I think his social skills have a lot of room for improvement,” says Ward 7 Councilmember Yvette Alexander. “It’s gotten completely out of control.”

Other choice quotes and stories from the article about Fenty:

One police officer who has helped provide security for the mayor on several occasions says Fenty acts friendly to officers when there are other people around. But when it’s just Fenty or his confidantes, the mayor acts “very pompous and very much an ass,” rarely bothering to acknowledge the security guys’ presence. (The officer’s union, the Fraternal Order of Police, has endorsed Gray.)

In Fenty’s own office, current and former lower-level staffers call him a “moody” boss. One says he became so accustomed to Fenty’s angry side that he could see the mayor’s rage coming by watching for the throbbing of a vein in his head. “He runs his ship by fear; people are afraid of him,” says one staffer. “He’s one of the biggest assholes I’ve ever met in my life.”

Several sources said Fenty has a ferocious temper. Last December, according to multiple sources, Fenty kicked a trash can, slammed a door, and screamed, “I’m the fucking mayor,” after learning that some much-hated New Jersey Avenue NW billboards were being removed without his being present for a photo-op. A Fenty campaign spokesman disputes the details of that event. The mayor also got worked up when he heard that LeBron James was in town and his staff hadn’t arranged for Fenty to meet with the basketball star, according to sources.

One former staffer likened working for Fenty to being an “abused wife,” constantly fighting a losing battle to make the mayor happy. The one time Fenty gave him a compliment, it came as such a shock that he called his significant other to tell her that maybe the mayor wasn’t such a bad guy, after all.

I think the way his detractors feel about Fenty can be summed up by this quote:

“I’d vote for a little dead bug before I’d vote for Fenty,” said a retired school teacher at a recent Ward 7 straw poll.

You know, you can tell a lot about a person by how they treat others.

That Fenty is an asshole and bully says a lot about him.

It definitely shows why he picked another asshole and a bully like Michelle Rhee to run the school system.

It also shows why assholes and bullies like Michael Bloomberg, Cory Booker and Joel Klein support Fenty.

I know that his supporters say that sometimes you have to be an asshole and a bully to break the status quo and get things done.

But that's just jive.

Fenty isn't acting like an asshole and a bully because he wants to break the status quo and get things done.

He acts like an asshole and a bully because he IS an asshole and a bully.

The same goes for Rhee.

Adrian Fenty Trails by 5 In Primary Race

From Political Wire:

A new Clarus poll in Washington, D.C. shows Vincent Gray (D) leading Mayor Adrian Fenty (D) in the Democratic mayoral primary, 41% to 36%.

Digging into the poll, Gray has a much better personal favorability rating than Fenty.

Gray has a higher favorability rating with blacks than whites while Fenty has a much higher favorability rating with whites.

Fenty's approval rating has risen from 41% to 49% since the last Clarus poll in December.

The favorability ratings of top officials in D.C. are also given.

Michelle Rhee has a 50% approval rating/35% disapproval rating.

Rhee, like her patron Fenty, does much better with white voters (79%) than black voters (28%.) Rhee's strongest support comes from white women (80%), her weakest support comes from black women (25%.)

A high white voter turnout seems to favor Fenty, high black turnout favors Gray.

Gray's lead is 3 points among all registered voters, 5 points among most likely voters.

The primary is September 14th.

Incumbents with approval ratings below 50% close to election time are generally in trouble, but Fenty's approval rating rising, the trend may mean more than the number.

I'm not knowledgeable enough about D.C. municipal politics to make a call either way, but it seems the primary hinges on turnout and demographics.