Kathy Hochul To Attend Fundraiser From Anti-Union Group Linked To Safety Violations, Workplace Fatalities

Remember when AFT President Randi Weingarten made robocalls for bank lobbyist Kathy Hochul when Hochul was running for lieutenant governor and was having some problems dispensing with her opponent, Tim Wu, in the polling?

Here's how Hochul pays Union Prez Weingarten back - by attending a fundraiser for her boss, Andrew Cuomo, given by an anti-union group with links to construction firms with histories of safety violations and worker fatalities:

The attorney for a campaign against union construction labor is co-hosting a fundraiser for Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

On Monday afternoon, the founding partners of Gotham Government Relations invited powerbrokers to a Jan. 7 fundraiser for Cuomo at the home of Brad and Cheryl Gerstman in Roslyn, on Long Island.

The hosts are listed as the Gerstmans and David and Heather Schwartz. Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul is scheduled to make an appearance, according to the invitation. It’s not clear whether Cuomo himself will attend.

...

State records indicate their firm lobbies for 400 Times Square Associates LLC, which is reportedly using non-union labor to develop a hotel at 577 Ninth Ave., where a construction worker recently died.

As of last month, Gerstman was also an attorney for the Rinaldi Group, a building contractor whose license was pulled for running unsafe job sites. The city launched an investigation into Rinaldi after a worker perished at a Rinaldi construction site in Midtown.

Gerstman is also frontman for BuildingNYC, a group launched this month that advocates against union construction labor.

There's so much wrong here.

First, that Cuomo doesn't have the guts to attend himself shows you what a coward he is - if he wants the anti-union money with the blood on it, the least he can do is show up at the fundraiser to take it with his own hands.

Second, as many of us expected with Hochul's past as a bank lobbyist, she is happily anti-union and demonstrates this with her attendance at this anti-union group's fundraiser.

Third, Cuomo's been making a lot of hay recently with liberals, pushing for some prison reforms, pushing for a minimum wage hike and the like, but liberals ought not to be fooled by any of this.

Nothing's changed with the anti-union/anti-worker Cuomo, clearly, or he wouldn't be taking the blood money from the anti-union group linked to construction firms with histories of safety violations and worker fatalities.

As for Hochul, let's just note that if there suddenly is a vacancy n the governor's mansion and she gets elevated to governor, she's squarely shown her anti-union/anti-worker bona fides.

Families For Excellent Schools To Hold Charter School Teacher Rally

Eliza Shapiro at Politico NY:

Families for Excellent Schools, the charter school advocacy group, will hold a rally of charter teachers next week in an attempt to undermine the United Federation of Teachers' representation of public school teachers, according to several people with knowledge of the event.

Wednesday's rally is intended to challenge the notion the UFT speaks for New York City teachers. More than 1,000 charter school teachers are expected to attend the rally to declare their support for charters, which typically are not unionized.

FES' messaging surrounding the rally does not refer directly to the UFT or to teachers unions. Instead, it alludes only to "special interest groups" that prioritize benefits for adults over education for students.

As is typical for FES events, the rally will be attended largely by teachers from Success Academy, New York City's largest and most controversial charter network.

FES is going to get a 1,000 charter school teachers to rally for the wonders of charter schools?

I dunno, seems like a bit of a comedown from the 15,000 they had at the last rally, no?

Not to mention that this is the kind of rally that allows charter critics to point out the brutal attrition rates at charters - especially Success Academies - and ask just how sustainable this kind of model would be for the system at large.

I'm no political strategist, but I don't exactly see that much upside to this idea.

Looks to me like Families for Excellent Schools, with money to burn, just wants to keep churning out the propaganda, but just as with the race-baiting ad they pulled out a couple of weeks ago, I'm not sure this one helps them that much.

What say you out there?

Is this a good idea from FES?

Bashing Unions Didn't Help Scott Walker This Time

It was just one week ago that Scott Walker released his "I will destroy unions" plan to little fanfare and mostly yawns.

Since then he had another lackluster debate performance, the latest national poll showed him getting one half of one percent support in a Republican primary, and his fundraisers were calling for him to shake up his campaign.

Today he announced he was dropping out of the race for president.

So much for the union bashing card, eh?

No one is happier than organized labor to see Scott Walker drop out of the 2016 contest.

In July, when the Wisconsin governor announced his candidacy for the GOP nomination, AFL-CIO leader Richard Trumka issued a one-sentence statement: "Scott Walker is a national disgrace." On Monday, after hearing that Walker's candidacy had ended, Trumka said in a written statement: "Scott Walker is still a disgrace, just no longer national."

For labor, Walker's failure as a presidential candidate is especially sweet given the twin humiliations it's suffered from Walker in Wisconsin. A labor-backed effort to recall Walker failed in 2012 after Walker pushed through a bill drastically reducing public employees' bargaining rights. Then, in 2014, Walker won re-election after Trumka declared Walker's defeat organized labor's top priority. Earlier this year, Walker had made Wisconsin the country's 25th right-to-work state, freeing public and private workers from any legal requirement to pay dues or their equivalent to a union that bargains collectively on their behalf.

But Walker was never able to gain traction with his anti-union message in the pre-primary contest for the White House — in part, possibly, because unions have been gaining greater public approval in recent years, even among Republicans. Since 2009, Gallup found, union approval has risen from 48 percent to 58 percent for all voters, and from 29 percent to 42 percent for Republican voters.

There have been a lot of surprises in the presidential race already, but this may be the biggest one.

Scott Walker, once the frontrunner for Iowa, is out four months before the caucus is held.

Buh-bye, Scott.

Couldn't happen to a more deserving demagogue.

Some Republicans Not Sold On Eva Moskowitz For Mayor

A trial balloon was floated yesterday in the Murdoch Post about Mistress Eva of Success Academies running for mayor on the Republican line, but some cold water was thrown on that dream later in the day:

Rejecting a Manhattan GOP leader’s interest in having Democrat Eva Moskowitz run for mayor as a Republican, Republican chairs said today that they would prefer a registered Republican challenging Mayor Bill de Blasio.

“I’m not a big fan of Wilson-Pakulas,” said Craig Eaton, the chairman of the Brooklyn Republican Party. “I’m hopeful this time around we’ll have registered Republicans running on our line.” Mr. Eaton was referring to a state law that requires the approval of three out of five New York City party chairs for a candidate to run on a party line different than their own.

Ms. Moskowitz, the founder of Success Academy Charter Schools and a top de Blasio critic, has never expressed interest in party-switching or renting the GOP line. The practice drew scrutiny after Malcolm Smith, a former Democratic state senator, was convicted of trying to bribe his way into the 2013 GOP mayoral primary.

Adele Malpass, the chairwoman of the Manhattan Republican Party, wants Ms. Moskowitz to give the Wilson-Pakula more thought. “I would be very excited about Eva running for mayor,” she told the New York Post. “Education is a top priority for the next mayor and Eva is eminently qualified to do that. She’s outstanding.”

Ed Cox, the chairman of the State Republican Party, told the Post Ms. Moskowitz is a “visionary” on education issues, though he didn’t say outright she should run as a Republican.

Staten Island’s Republican chairman, John Antoniello, joined Mr. Eaton in calling for a real Republican to get the nod. “Without a doubt I’d prefer a registered Republican to run,” he told the Observer.

I don't see why Moskowitz, a registered "Democrat" can't switch parties and become a Republican?

Bloomberg did it, why not Eva?

Frankly she's a better fit for the GOP line than the Democratic line.

Her union-busting, anti-public education agenda won't sit well with labor and other traditional Democratic constituencies that put on big GOTV operations in primaries.

Chris Christie Says Schools Without Teachers Unions Would Be "Nirvana"

We must destroy the village in order to save it:

Governor Chris Christie said that the academic achievement gap can't be fixed until after a "fundamental fight" with the teachers unions.

"We know how to fix this, but we’re not doing it," he said Wednesday afternoon during an interview with Campbell Brown, of the Partnership for Educational Justice and the74million.org, at an education summit in New Hampshire. "We’re not doing it because the teachers unions and the educational establishment, not only in New Jersey but across the country, know that fixes to that take apart the monopoly they have on education."

"And until we have that fundamental fight in this country as to who’s going to run education in this country, parents or unions, until we fix that and come to a conclusion on that, we’re not going to be able to fix the achievement gap." (He later said that schools without teachers unions would be "nirvana.")

Schools without unions would be "nirvana"?

Well, at least he's honest about wanting to destroy teachers unions.

Nice thing is, his political future is destroyed, what with Bridgegate and a few other scandals related to Port Authority funds and his cronies hanging around his neck, New Jersey an economic and quality-of-life mess, and Donald Trump stealing the outrage vote from him in the GOP primary fight.

His latest poll numbers have him dropping out of the top ten in the Republican presidential primary battle, which means he may not get an invite to the next big table GOP debate.

As I posted after Christie said he'd like to punch the teachers unions in the face, his teacher bashing isn't helping him in either approval with New Jersey voters or GOP primary voters.

When he shows up at an unvetted event, people let him have it, Bronx cheer-style.

Quite frankly, Ralph Kramden and his big mouth are done, his political career is over (he's term limited in New Jersey and his chances of getting elected president are about as good as mine) and it couldn't happen to a more deserving guy.

Enjoy political obscurity, Chris.

Maybe you can ask George Pataki how he deals with it when you see him on the campaign trail.

Time To Ask Randi Weingarten About The Kathy Hochul Robocalls Again

Back during the 2014 Democratic Primary for lieutenant governor, Cuomo's people started to worry that law professor Tim Wu, Zephy Teachout's running mate, could beat Cuomo's running mate, bank lobbyist Kathy Hochul.

Polls showed that Wu was indeed within striking distance, so the Cuomo campaign had some robocalls go out on her behalf.

One of the political personages taped for those robocalls was AFT President Randi Weingarten.

When Weingarten was criticized on Twitter for making robocalls for the Cuomo campaign (which is what these were, despite her claims to the contrary that they were only for Hochul), she said that Hochul was a reliable advocate for public education and she wanted to support Hochul for that.

There's news some morning that the reliable advocate for public education, former bank lobbyist and current lieutenant governor, Kathy Hochul will be one of the politicians feting Eva Moskowitz at her pro-charter rally today:

Gov. Cuomo, unlike last year, will skip a large pro-charter school rally at the Capitol on Wednedsay, but his new lieutenant governor will be there.

Lt. Gov. Kathleen Hochul is one of at least nine elected officials scheduled to be in attendance. Many are from the Bronx.

Also set to attend is Senate GOP Majority Leader Dean Skelos (R-Nassau County), Senate Independent Democratic Conference Leader Jeffrey Klein, Senate Education Committee Chairman John Flanagan (R-Suffolk County), Sen. Ruben Diaz (D-Bronx).

Among the Assembly members said to be coming is Marcos Crespo (D-Bronx), Michael Blake (D-Bronx), Ruben Sepulveda (D-Bronx), Robert Rodriguez (D-Manhattan ) and Mark Gjonaj (D-Bronx).

...

Cuomo, who last year attended the rally and is pushing a host of education reforms this year that includes a expansion of charter schools, will be in Rochester and Syracuse pushing Wednesday is plan to hike the minimum wage.

Let me ask Ms. Weingarten once more, why did she make robocalls for bank lobbyist, Cuomo running mate and charter shill Kathy Hochul?

These are robocalls that helped Hochul beat Tim Wu in the primary and now help push an anti-public education agenda.

Why would a union president who supposedly cares about public education make robocalls for a political campaign that is virulently anti-public education and anti-public school teacher?

The excuse that Hochul is an advocate for public schools doesn't work so well now that she's shilling for Eva Moskowitz and the charters.

NY Post Calls For Cuomo To Override Union Contracts In School Districts

Adam Brodksy at the NY Post has some advice for Governor Cuomo - become more like Scott Walker:

This year, Cuomo’s even pushing reforms the union hates: a tougher teacher-evaluation regime, raising the charter-school cap, taking over failing schools. If his agenda passes, opportunities for kids will likely improve.

Yet even this won’t transform education in New York — or give Cuomo a real legacy.

Remember, in districts like the city’s, it isn’t just a few schools failing. It’s most of them.
Cuomo needs a bolder approach. He’ll need to find a way to bypass the union — or limit its power, perhaps in much the way governors like Bruce Rauner of Illinois and Scott Walker of Wisconsin are dealing with unions in their states.

Yes, Cuomo’s a Democrat, and those two are Republicans. No one expects him to “break” a union, end collective bargaining or shutter schools en masse.

But to see big gains, Cuomo will have to move in that direction. Along with bumping the charter cap, how about creating an environment that lures charter operators?

Overriding contracts with legislation? OKing alternatives — vouchers, private-school tax credits, traditional schools with all-new work rules and management — that foster competition among schools?

Cuomo may think this is too much for bluer-than-blue New York. But if he hopes to make himself viable nationally, he has to prove he can lead his base — not just appease it.

Actually Cuomo is pushing for "failing" schools and even "failing" school districts to be taken over by the state and put into receivership where the teachers contracts can be broken and whole swaths of teachers fired.

Cuomo's also pushing for vouchers for private schools via an education tax credit, an increase to the charter cap, and more accountability measures for pubic schools (but not for charter schools.)

Alas, those privatization Cuomo policies aren't enough Scott Walker for the NY Post - they want even more.

Well, they just need to wait a year or two - I'm sure Cuomo will give it them.

Every year he grows more anti-union and anti-pubic school.

Give him a couple more years and he'll complete his transformation into Scott Walker.

In fact, he's more than half way there now.

Cuomo's Vengeance Against State Workers Union Hits A Snag

Amidst all the dark news emanating from Albany these days comes a little bit of good news:

The Cuomo administration's push to move an estimated 2,500 unionized state workers into nonunion "management/confidential" status has hit an early snag.

The state's Public Employment Relations Board, which would approve or deny the move, said the state needs to identify which individuals they want to reclassify as well as whether they would be put in management or confidential jobs.

Management people are generally supervisors or upper-level positions, while confidential jobs can be high-level, but they can also cover positions such as clerks or administrative assistants who have access to sensitive information or documents such as personnel files.

The 54,000-member Public Employees Federation, the union from which the administration is trying to reclassify workers, said it was encouraged that the application was sent back to the Governor's Office of Employee Relations for more details.

"This is encouraging news as it shows that PERB is firm in holding GOER to the requirements that an employer's application must contain more than a mere conclusory statement that positions, which have been in PEF for decades, should now be management-confidential," PEF President Susan Kent said in a prepared statement on Monday.

In short, PERB is not rolling over at the mere mention of Governor Cuomo's desire to move nearly 5% of PEF's membership to nonunion "management/confidential" status.

Let's remember that we can be successful fighting this governor as he plans to "break" teachers and the public school system this next term - IF we have union leadership looking to actually win it.

Some teachers understandably are dubious that the union leadership will stand up effectively.

I'll have more about that later.

Open Letter To Randi Weingarten About Andrew Cuomo And New York's Teacher Evaluation System

Dear AFT President Randi Weingarten,

I wanted to write you an open letter asking what you intend to do now that Governor Andrew Cuomo has signaled that he is not happy with the teacher evaluation results in New York City and will look to impose a much more punitive system that rates more teachers "ineffective."

One thing the governor says is right - there is a huge problem with the way the current evaluation system is constituted.

The changes we have seen as a result of the current system have been numerous - 4-6 annual classroom observations (known colloquially by teachers as "Danielson drive-bys"), ratings tied to student test scores, the use of the Danielson rubric to "assess" so-called "effective" teaching so that every teacher must teach in a standardized way or risk a low rating.

This evaluation system that Cuomo helped put into place here in NYC requires many more hours of a teacher's time and energy, takes away a lot of time that could be spent with students and forces teachers to spend much of that time on compliance work (paperwork "proving" their "effectiveness.")

Teachers aren't the only ones angry about the system - so are well-respected education leaders.

In fact, a group of Lower Hudson Valley superintendents called the state's evaluation system "demoralizing, expensive and ineffective":

The superintendents group contends that the evaluation system has been demoralizing, expensive and ineffective, resulting in the overtesting of students. The system has not made it easier to fire poor teachers, the group says.

This region's school chiefs would like to see legislators convene a group of educators, teachers, lawmakers and state officials to create a system that would help teachers improve instruction and make it easier for districts to fire poor teachers.

"We need to start over," Harrison Superintendent Louis Wool said.

...

A study commissioned by the superintendents found that scoring problems prompted school districts to give teachers high grades for classroom observations so they would not get undeserved poor overall grades. State Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins, D-Yonkers, the Democratic leader in the Senate, said the study deserves serious discussion so teacher evaluations can be made more effective. 

"It is always important to listen to the people that have the expertise and knowledge of the current procedures and standards," she said.

Cuomo, on the other hand, seems to believe a teacher evaluation system should be demoralizing, since he said he wants to use it to "break" teachers:

The governor told the Daily News Editorial Board in October he wants to toughen the evaluation standards in the coming year, calling it a big way to bust the public school “monopoly.”

Just yesterday, Cuomo said this about the current system:

“These results of these evaluations say one thing: not real,” he continued. “It’s not real. You are an evaluation system in name, and you have to go back to the table and try to come up with an evaluation system that is more accurate. The teachers’ union is trying to reduce the number [of teachers] that are deemed ineffective, right? And that’s what this evaluation system did. But it’s clear that an inaccurate evaluation system helps no one, not even the teachers.”

From what I see in the governor's statements, Cuomo will only be happy with an evaluation system that greatly increases the number of teachers deemed "ineffective" every year so that he can accomplish his goal to "break" the public school "monopoly" and privatize much of the public school system.

You were sitting next to him at a Forbes forum last June when he first made his "break the public school monopoly" comments, so I know you know he means this threat and has been thinking about it for a while now.

Rumor has it that he will try and add a quota for the percentage of "ineffective" teacher ratings a district must hand out every year.

Other ways he may "toughen" the rating system is to ratchet up the "effective" and "highly effective" categories so as to make them aspirational but nearly unobtainable, make 40% of the evaluation based on state test scores alone, and/or tweak the VAM used for the test score component so that "effective" or higher is difficult to reach.

What do you and your compatriots at the NYSUT and the UFT plan to do in order to fight Governor Cuomo on his threats to "toughen" the New York State teacher evaluation system in order to "break" the teachers in the public school system?

He's coming for us, he's coming to do harm and now is the time for you and the rest of the teachers union leadership in this state to fight him.

Will you fight him?

I have my doubts.

You claimed in the fall that the "break" the "monopoly" comment he made was simply "campaign rhetoric," there was nothing to worry about.

Do you still think that way?

Earlier this year you backed a putsch at NYSUT that knocked out an increasingly anti-Cuomo NYSUT leadership, you (along with Michael Mulgrew at the UFT) joined a contingent of union leaders that threatened the Working Families Party with financial ruin if they didn't endorse Cuomo last May and you made robocalls for his running mate, Kathy Hochul, when it looked like she could lose her Democratic primary.

All this help and he pays you back by threatening to "break" your members and the public school system they work in.

Doesn't sound like you got much payback from him for the political aid and comfort you have given him.

It surely would be nice if you stopped helping Andrew Cuomo and started helping us - especially now that he has stated publicly repeated times that he intends to destroy us.

So what's it going to be, Randi?

Fight or flight?

I see you all over the TV and newspaper with the UVA/Rolling Stone story, the Garner protests, the Ferguson protests.

All that political work you do for those causes is great, but now I (and my fellow union members) would like you to take some of the energy you put into those causes and put it into the cause of fighting Andrew Cuomo on his threat to "break" us.

Are you in, Randi? 

Or are we, as usual, on our own?

Sincerely,

An Embattled Member of the UFT, AFT and NYSUT
Perdido Street School

Governor Cuomo Seeks To Weaken Union

The Public Employees Federation (PEF) endorsed Zephyr Teachout during the Democratic primary.

Given that endorsement of Teachout, you can't be surprised about this latest Cuomo gambit:

In a move that has sent shock waves through the state's unionized workforce, the Cuomo administration on Monday sent notices to about 1,000 members of the Public Employees Federation telling them the state is seeking to reclassify the recipients as non-union workers.

The notices went to people in more than three dozen state agencies, including the departments of Environmental Conservation, Labor, Health, Housing and Motor Vehicles, the Office of General Services, the Office for People with Developmental Disabilities and more.

Affected job titles range from attorneys to auditors, program specialists, parole hearing officers and tax law judges.

The notices said that the state has filed with the Public Employment Relations Board to reclassify the jobs as managerial/confidential rather than unionized positions.

Employees who were handed the notices were asked to sign them on the spot to acknowledge that they received them, although not everyone complied.

"We were just handed this," one union member said of the notices.

...

The scope and number of positions that would be affected by this request was unusually large.

...

The Cuomo administration and PEF had been disputing the status of those jobs since March 2013, and PERB eventually ruled for unionization. The state then sued but lost in trial court. The state could appeal and if that happens the status of those employees may not be decided until next year. Some on Monday wondered if the move was in retaliation for that battle.

Another theory about the latest move centered on whether the state is simply trying to weaken PEF by reducing the union's approximately 54,000 members by 1,000.

Others wondered if the governor is angry at PEF's endorsement in September of Zephyr Teachout, the Fordham Law school professor who challenged Cuomo in the Democratic gubernatorial primary.

It's probably a combination of all three.

I don't think anybody who's watched Cuomo would be surprised to hear he wants to weaken a state workers a union nor that he would want to retaliate against them for fighting him on job reclassification in the past.

But the clincher had to be the Teachout endorsement.

This ought to be a little sign to union leaders and unionized workers of what is to come in the next four years of the Cuomo administration.

Jeb Bush Echoes Andrew Cuomo, Calls The Public School System A "Monopoly" That Must Be Dismantled

Let's play a game.

Who said the following?

 “Education should be a national priority...Most of the time, it will require a political fight. Monopolies don’t go quietly into the night.”

“I believe these kinds of changes are probably the single best thing that I can do...that’s going to matter long-term to break what is in essence one of the only remaining public monopolies — and that’s what this is, it’s a public monopoly.”

If you're scoring at home, Quotation #1 is something Jeb Bush said at his education foundation gathering today, Quotation #2 is the infamous Cuomo exchange with the Daily News editorial board before the 2014 election.

Notice how similar in tone and language the two quotations are?

Bush is a Republican in favor of busting unions and expanding testing and national standards so that every child learns the same things and is tested in the same way to ensure that they have learned those things and, should the test scores show they have not learned those things to the satisfaction of Jeb Bush, the teachers are fired.

And Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, is in favor of those things too.

Cowardly Cuomo Refuses To Own Up To Working Families Party Slam

Typical from Governor Narcissist - say something scummy, then make believe he didn't say it:

Gov. Andrew Cuomo today denied identifying the labor-backed Working Families Party as a “fringe” party, despite radio remarks yesterday that seemed to mock and belittle the left-leaning group.

On a Friday interview on the Brian Lehrer Show, Mr. Cuomo seemed to allude to the WFP–with which he has long had a fractious relationship, and which reluctantly endorsed him twice for governor–as a “fringe” party, while pushing the Women’s Equality Party, which he created this year. The WEP purports to promote the anti-discrimination, pro-choice Women’s Equality Agenda, but many critics view it as an effort to lure progressives away from the WFP and deny it the 50,000 votes it needs to keep its ballot line.

“The Women’s Equality Party, the Women’s Equality Agenda, is something that is very important to me. I think it can be a national precedent. And it empowers women in a way that’s never been done. It’s almost amazing when you think about it. We’ve formed every kind of fringe party for every kind of reason. We have Democrat, Republican, Green, Red, White, Blue, Working People, Working Short People, Working Tall People,” Mr. Cuomo said yesterday.

But following a rally in the Bronx today with 1199 SEIU, 32BJ SEIU and the Hotel Trades Council–all components of the WFP’s union-community group alliance –“I don’t think I called them a ‘fringe party,'” Mr. Cuomo said, then clarifying his remarks when the Observer quoted his words from yesterday to him. “I think that I said there are a number of parties, you can vote for me on the Democratic Party, you can vote for me on the Independence Party, you can vote for me on the Working Families Party, you can vote for me on the Women’s Equality Party.”

Clearly he was tweaking WFP yesterday with the "We have Democrat, Republican, Green, Red, White, Blue, Working People, Working Short People, Working Tall People” comment on Lehrer's show.

Too bad he didn't have the guts to admit it in front of working people from 1199 SEIU, 32BJ SEIU and the Hotel Trades Council who were rallying for him.

Too bad the working people from 1199 SEIU, 32BJ SEIU and the Hotel Trades Council who were rallying for him don't realize what an arrogant, anti-union prick he is.

Clinton Gets Orwellian In Defense Of Cuomo

Ross Barkan at Politicker:

Recasting Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s race as a bellwether of the left’s ongoing struggle with conservatives nationwide, former President Bill Clinton told a crowd of union members tonight that Mr. Cuomo would be a bulwark against the “last gasp of trickle-down economics.”

“He has made this a more progressive, more fair, more forward looking state–and it’s turned out to be good for the economy,” Mr. Clinton said at the headquarters of 1199 SEIU, the powerful healthcare workers union, in Manhattan. “This team of Andrew and Kathy [Hochul] will do more.”

He said that Mr. Cuomo, facing a conservative, under-funded rival in Republican Rob Astorino, was all that stood between progressives and a possible Reagan revolution-like redux: “This election is about the last gasp of trickle-down economics,” he charged.

What the hell is Clinton talking about?

Cuomo has demonized the "extreme left" and pushed again and again for tax cuts for rich people and corporations while attacking unions and unionized workers.

What's "Democratic" about this record?

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo , whose center-right policies have alienated him from much of his party’s progressive base, attacks the “extreme left of the Democratic Party” in his new memoir, according to a report in the New York Times.

While his father Mario Cuomo’s 1984 address at the Democratic National Convention served as a liberal rallying cry, Andrew Cuomo has repeatedly found himself starkly at odds with the liberal wing of the party. Although the governor signed marriage equality and gun safety legislation into law and has staked out a robustly pro-choice position, he has also slashed corporate taxes, capped property taxes, maneuvered to keep his own party from controlling the New York State Senate, lent conditional support to fracking, and earned plaudits from the right-wing National Review for his conservative economic agenda. There’s also the federal probe into Cuomo’s disbanding of his much-heralded anti-corruption commission, which Cuomo had touted as evidence of his commitment to good government.

Capitalizing on progressive discontent with Cuomo’s policies and his sudden dissolution of the Moreland anti-corruption commission, challenger Zephyr Teachout managed to secure 34 percent of the vote against Cuomo in New York’s Democratic primary last month.

Given his center-right track record, it’s hardly unsurprising that Cuomo is no fonder of the left than the left is of him. According to the Times – which got its hands on a copy of his new memoir, All Things Possible: Setbacks and Success in Politics and Life – Cuomo rips the “extreme left” in the book, particularly for what he depicts as its hostility to the rich. Leftists, Cuomo writes, “speak of punitively raising taxes on the rich and transferring the money to the poor” and seek to “demonize those who are very wealthy.”

Dunno why Cuomo felt the need to bring Clinton in as closer for the campaign - the latest Marist poll shows Cuomo up 36 percentage points, with 56% support in the election - so he's going to win on Tuesday no matter what.

But for Clinton and Cuomo to make believe like he;s some great progressive - please!

Non-Union Teacher Joins Campbell Brown's Anti-Tenure Lawsuit, Provides Highly Ineffective Argument Against Tenure

Eliza Shapiro at Capital NY:

Campbell Brown's lawsuit challenging teacher tenure and other union-backed protections is gaining a new plaintiff: a non-union public school teacher from Albany.

DeLaine Wilson, a 15-year veteran pre-school teacher at the North Albany Academy YMCA, said in an interview with Capital on Thursday that New York's slate of teacher protections academically harmed students in upper grades at her school.

"We had honor roll students [at my school] and when it came to the Regents tests they weren't able to pass them," said Wilson, who has four children who attend public schools in Albany and was a member of the New York State United Teachers when previously she taught at a private school.

...

Wilson, who is joining the lawsuit along with her husband, Roderick Wilson, said she believes eliminating the current teacher tenure laws will "hold more teachers accountable."

"Tenure makes them comfortable," she said, adding she would try to convince unionized teachers that potentially eliminating tenure and other protections would help all teachers perform better.

If the argument is that tenure makes teachers comfortable so they don't actually care whether children do well on Regents tests or not, whether they learn or not, it's not a "highly effective" argument.

The state's new teacher evaluation law holds teachers accountable for their students' test scores, including Regents scores.

40% of a teacher's evaluation is based on so-called student performance - 20% from local measures of performance (which may include tests or performance assessments) and 20% from state measures (like Regents exams.)

DeLaine Wilson can join Campbell Brown's anti-tenure bandwagon (if there's room on it, since Mona Davids and Sam Pirozzolo are already there and fighting with Brown over the direction of the lawsuit), but I am skeptical that argument she's bringing onto the bandwagon will help much since it's easily refuted by the parameters of the APPR teacher evaluation law.

And while some deformers may counter that most teachers were deemed "effective" or "highly effective" in the state so that the APPR system has no teeth, I would note that teachers in Rochester, Buffalo and other urban districts with high poverty found out just how much teeth the system has when overwhelming numbers of them were rated "developing" or "ineffective" on the evaluation system.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka Pushed For Endorsement Of Cuomo

Those of you paying close attention to the machinations of the union leadership around the Cuomo re-election campaign will not be surprised by this news:

Before a deal was made to ensure New York’s leading progressive party endorsed Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s reelection bid, negotiators were in touch with one of the top labor leaders in the country.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said Thursday in an interview with BuzzFeed that he “spoke to some people” as the deal was being forged, though he wouldn’t say to what extent he participated in the negotiations.

The deal between Cuomo and the Working Families Party was arranged by party leaders, which include top state labor leaders and activists, though many of those who attended the nominating convention opposed putting Cuomo on the ballot line. Many in the party, including those who worked the deal, remain skeptical that Cuomo will uphold his end of the bargain.

When asked if he trusted Cuomo, Trumka replied, “We’ll let his record decide.”

I'd say it's amazing how all these union leaders have fallen all over themselves to ensure that an anti-union politician like Cuomo remains in power, but given how anti-union some of the actions of the union leaders are thse days, it really isn't.

It's all about power, privilege and access - that's all these union leaders care about.

All The Good Walmart Does

Former Bloomberg DOE minion of school closings in NYC, Marc Sternberg, is featured prominently in this morning's NY Times piece on the Walton philanthropy-industrial complex and charter schools:

In 2013, the Walton foundation spent more than $164 million across the country. According to Marc Sternberg, who was appointed director of K-12 education reform at the Walton Family Foundation last September, Walton has given grants to one in every four charter start-ups in the country, for a total of $335 million.

“The Walton Family Foundation has been deeply committed to a theory of change, which is that we have a moral obligation to provide families with high quality choices,” said Mr. Sternberg. “We believe that in providing choices we are also compelling the other schools in an ecosystem to raise their game.”

...

Walton’s Mr. Sternberg, who started his career in Teach for America and founded the Bronx Lab School, a public school in New York City, does not apologize for Walton’s commitment to charter schools and vouchers. “What’s the argument there?” he said during an interview. “Don’t help anybody until you can help everybody?”

He said the foundation was focused not on ideology but on results, a word he repeated many times.

Let's focus on the "results" that Walmart, the company, gets so that the Walton Foundation can use some of that money they make to hire Marc Sternberg and other edu-entrepreneurs and reformers and push their pro-charter/pro-voucher agenda.

Sternberg claims the Walton money has clearly made DC a better place:

“D.C. is a better place today than it was 10 years ago because of the reforms that have played out here,” said Mr. Sternberg, who was an official in the New York City Department of Education under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. He pointed to recent increases in scores on national tests by both public and charter school students, saying that neighborhood schools had responded to competition from charters. “And maybe in very small part, because of Walton’s role,” he added.

Let's see all the good Walmart has done in DC:

Mayor Vincent C. Gray vetoed legislation Thursday that would force the District’s largest retailers to pay their workers significantly more, choosing the potential for jobs and development at home over joining a national fight against low-wage work.

Gray’s quandary is playing out in many U.S. cities, where local leaders who generally sympathize with worker causes are also eager to lure jobs and commerce for their constituents. Retailers, most notably Wal-Mart, have placed an increasing focus on urban expansion, while unions and advocates for workers have pushed measures like the District’s “living wage” bill as a valuable hedge against the proliferation of low-paying jobs.

 The veto, which is unlikely to be overridden by the D.C. Council, clears the way for Wal-Mart to continue its entry into the District — plans years in the making that were thrown into question after lawmakers embraced the wage proposal this year.

...

The bill, known as the Large Retailer Accountability Act, would require retailers with corporate sales of $1 billion or more and operating District stores of at least 75,000 square feet to pay their employees a “living wage” — no less than $12.50 an hour in combined wages and benefits. The proposal includes an exception for employers who collectively bargain with their workers. Existing employers would have four years to come into compliance.

The city’s minimum wage is $8.25 an hour. The bill would raise the annual earnings of a full-time employee making the lowest legal wage from about $17,000 to $26,000.

While the bill’s supporters repeatedly said it was not targeted at Wal-Mart, the debate was inextricably tied to the retail giant’s plans, announced in late 2010, to open as many as six stores in the city in the coming months and years.

The union exemption and square-footage requirement rankled Wal-Mart officials, who said those provisions created an uneven playing field — particularly with the unionized grocery chains they plan to compete with in the city.

A day ahead of the bill’s final passage in July, Wal-Mart told council members and the public that it would not pursue three of the six planned stores and would explore options for withdrawing from the others should legislators proceed. The ultimatum changed no votes on the council.

Wal-Mart spokesman Steven Restivo called the veto “good news for D.C. residents,” saying Gray chose “jobs, economic development and common sense over special interests.”

Restivo said the company will move forward with its stores in the District: “We look forward to finishing the work we started in the city almost three years ago.”

While the ultimatum from Walmart may have changed no votes on the council, it did ensure Gray's veto.

In the end, Walmart got exactly what it wanted - a dead living wage bill.

Oh, yeah - just feel all the goodness Walmart and Walton money have brought to DC.

So much goodness that you, well, can't actually pay your bills with it.

Daily News Propaganda Says Public Employee Contracts Will Wreck NYC

You can read it here.

The gist:

Speaking for Bloomberg, Deputy Mayor Cas Holloway recently called on the unions to accept zero raises for outstanding contracts, relinquish back wages and help finance future raises by having workers contribute to health care coverage.

“In any scenario, granting retroactive contractual salary increases for the period covering the recession would open multibillion-dollar budget gaps and force a dramatic reduction of city services,” Holloway warned, while the unions declared that they would make their demands on the next mayor come New Year’s Day.

The powers that be are worried they're not going to get a mayor who automatically insists on 0% increases, no retro and paying for health care, so they're going on the offensive to get that out to the public now.

The public employees unions must agree to these things or NYC will die.

It's interesting how they have money for tax breaks for real estate interests and tech companies that employee 17 workers, but raises for teachers who have gone without for five years - nope.

Can't give them the 4%/4% that every other union got or NYC will die.

Weiner, of course, is already hinting at this kind of tact.

Don't be surprised if that doesn't bring the oligarchs around to supporting him.

They don't care about Twitter photos if the next mayor is willing to force "the unions to accept zero raises for outstanding contracts, relinquish back wages and help finance future raises by having workers contribute to health care coverage."

One Family Member Strikes, Whole Family Loses Gov't Support

Wow - this is really taking the war on unions nationwide:

All around the country, right-wing legislators are asking middle class Americans to pay for budget deficits caused mainly by a recession caused by Wall Street; they are attacking workers’ collective bargaining rights, which has provoked a huge Main Street Movement to fight back.

Now, a group of House Republicans is launching a new stealth attack against union workers. GOP Reps. Jim Jordan (OH), Tim Scott (SC), Scott Garrett (NJ), Dan Burton (IN), and Louie Gohmert (TX) have introduced H.R. 1135, which states that it is designed to “provide information on total spending on means-tested welfare programs, to provide additional work requirements, and to provide an overall spending limit on means-tested welfare programs.”

Much of the bill is based upon verifying that those who receive food stamps benefits are meeting the federal requirements for doing so. However, one section buried deep within the bill adds a startling new requirement. The bill, if passed, would actually cut off all food stamp benefits to any family where one adult member is engaging in a strike against an employer.

The bill also includes a provision that would exempt households from losing eligibility, “if the household was eligible immediately prior to such strike, however, such family unit shall not receive an increased allotment as the result of a decrease in the income of the striking member or members of the household.”

Yet removing entire families from eligibility while a single adult family member is striking would have a chilling effect on workers who are considering going on strike for better wages, benefits, or working conditions — something that is especially alarming in light of the fact that unions are one of the fundamental building blocks of the middle class that allow people to earn wages that keep them off food stamps.

Luckily President Obama (D- Corporate America) cut food stamps for many Americans so that he wouldn't have to cut money from his Race to the Top education privatization boondoggle, so not too many people will be affected by this anti-union provision.

Not too many except for the 42 million receiving food stamps.

I dunno who I find more venomous, the anti-union Republithugs in the House or President "Let's Cut Food Stamps" Obama.

Ah, screw it - a pox on ALL of them.

Cuomo: Unions Are The Enemy

Andrew Cuomo chose his running mate - Rochester mayor Robert Duffy - because he is a "tough" guy who has taken on the unions.

According to the Daily Murdoch, Cuomo said

"He was not a push-over; he was not a roll-over," Cuomo told reporters with Duffy at his side.

"Yes, he tangled with public employee unions. Guess what? We're going to be tangling with public employee unions going forward."

Remember when Democrats used to be pro-worker/pro-union?

Not anymore they aren't.

From Bill Clinton to Barack "Lloyd Blankfein Deserves His Bonuses" Obama to David Paterson to Andy Cuomo, they all see unionized workers as the enemy.

And of course Wall Street and the hedge fund managers love that.

That's why they gave Barack Obama more money than john McCain.

It's why they met and gave bundles of money and promises to Andy Cuomo a few weeks ago.

The serfdomization of the middle and working classes continues as both parties say people need to work longer and harder for less money, less job security and no health care benefits so that the Wall Streeters and hedge fund managers can rake in 70% of the country's wealth.

It's time for a real third party.

Not one beholden to the Wall Street crooks, the hedge funders and banksters who raped this country for trillions and then came to the government and got bailouts when they almost brought the system to collapse.

One that works for the middle and working classes of this country, one that works for the union members, one that sees worker protections are important, one that sees that there must be containment of the big powerful moneyed interests that have all the access and all the say in Washington, Albany and City Hall these days.

I am no longer a Democrat.

Obama brought me to that place.

Cuomo pushed me over the edge.