Times Promotes Bloomberg On Same Day That Daily News Reports Bloomberg's Chief Aide Was Behind Money Laundering

There is a front page spread on Mayor Bloomberg tonight at the Times that reads like some p.r. piece from Bloomberg's political apparatus:

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — In an election year when anger and mistrust have upended races across the country, toppling moderates and elevating white-hot partisans, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is trying to pull politics back to the middle, injecting himself into marquee contests and helping candidates fend off the Tea Party.

New York’s billionaire mayor, whose flurry of activity is stirring a new round of speculation about his presidential ambitions, is supporting Republicans, Democrats and independents who he says are not bound by rigid ideology and are capable of compromise, qualities he says he fears have become alarmingly rare in American politics.

...

In the last election, Mr. Bloomberg, the nation’s most prominent and wealthiest independent elected official, explored the possibility of a presidential run but concluded that the moment was not right for a third-party candidacy. But his plunge back into national politics suggests he is once again seeking to elevate his profile and test the viability of running as a centrist problem solver.

Mike Murphy, a Republican political strategist who is advising Ms. Whitman’s campaign, called Mr. Bloomberg “a very special breed.”

“People see him not through a Democratic or Republican prism, but through a results, grown-up, get-it-fixed, make-it-work prism, which is very attractive,” Mr. Murphy said. “He has a very wide appeal.”

Ironic that the Times piece comes on the same weekend as this News article:

Mayor Bloomberg's political mastermind was outed in court papers Friday as the architect of a plan to hide $1.1 million in Election Day poll-watching.

Indicted campaign aide John Haggerty said in a 41-page motion that former Deputy Mayor Kevin Sheekey convinced Bloomberg to hire the state Independence Party to do the monitoring - instead of using his own campaign team.

Bloomberg's money went into the party's "housekeeping account," which is supposed to support only general party activities.

The Independence Party wasn't required to report the spending until two months after Bloomberg's reelection on Nov. 3, 2009. The party simply listed payments to a shell company Haggerty set up.

"It was Mr. Sheekey who decided that Mr. Haggerty should contact the Independence Party and request that ballot security be conducted through that political party," Haggerty's lawyers wrote.

Sheekey, who is now at Bloomberg LP, did not respond to requests for comment.

Haggerty is charged with stealing most of the $1.1 million and using at least $750,000 to buy a Queens home.

His lawyers say Haggerty ran a successful operation under the terms of Sheekey's arrangement - and that since Bloomberg donated the money to the Independence Party, he had no right to tell them how to spend it.

Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson said Bloomberg did nothing wrong.

"It was a donation," Wolfson said. "It was not an expenditure."

Ah, yes Bloomberg will be the "savior" of the country in 2012 because he is above petty politics and business as usual.

PUUUUUULLLLLLEEEEAAAAAAAASSSSEEEEEEE...

If they keep digging into this Haggerty story, it eventually reaches Bloomberg.

And if they dig even more, they'll find other stories like this one too.

Bloomberg uses his money to subvert democracy and buy elections.

That's what he does.

That's what he did in 2009 when he won his illegal third term.

That's what he's doing right now in 2010.

And if conditions are right, he'll try doing the same in 2012 if and when he tries to buy the White House with his cash.

There is nothing "special" about Bloomberg.

He's just another crooked politician.

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.

Little Andy Cuomo Looks To Out Tea The Tea Party

Oh, boy - Little Andy Cuomo is ratcheting up the attacks on the unions and public employee sector:

Andrew Cuomo claimed yesterday that he -- not bombastic, bomb-throwing Buffalo developer Carl Paladino -- is the real Tea Party candidate for governor this year.

The Democratic standard-bearer contended that his advocacy of tax and spending cuts and an end to influence peddling showed he had virtually the same message of reform being espoused by newly selected GOP candidate Paladino, but without caustic and divisive rhetoric.

"I've been saying everything you just said from the beginning of this campaign," said Cuomo when asked about the Tea Party's message.

"You're going to have to cut the programs because you're not going to be able to pay the amount."

"That's what the deficit is all about . . . Tea Party voter, Democrat or Republican, and independent or conservative, I don't think the labels matter this year," Cuomo continued.

...

"I've spent months traveling this state and I spent the summer traveling to over 40 counties. I don't care about the label. Everybody is frustrated. Everybody is anxious," Cuomo said.

"They're fearful of the situation in their own lives. They're afraid of their own personal economics, and then they look at Albany and they look at the state government that was supposed to be of service to them. This is the government that was supposed to be there when you needed help. They need help; they look at Albany and the dysfunction is breathtaking."

Little Andy's solution to Albany's dysfunction will be to destroy the public sector unions (esp. the teachers unions), privatize education, decimate the pension system and cap property taxes while noticeably NOT raising taxes on his hedge fund buddies or forcing Wall Street or corporate America to pay their fair share.

You see, if you're a hedge fund criminal like Whitney Tilson, you shouldn't actually have to pay taxes like the rest of us.

Just gracing us with your presence is apparently payment enough.

But if you have been working for two decades as a state worker and have expectations about your pension, you can be sure those expectations will be changed by Little Andy.

Because the problem in modern America according to Little Andy and his neo-liberal ideologues buddies is NOT the vulture hedge fund industry, predatory Wall Street or a corporate structure that outsources jobs, squeezes productivity and does everything it can to NOT hire Americans while still stealing millions in tax breaks from the state.

Oh, no.

For Little Andy and his neo-liberal buddies, the problem is public sector employees and unionized workers and their pension expectations.

If we can just BREAK those people, all will be swell in New York.

Hey Little Andy, Johnny Cash has a message for you - hope you can read lips:

Poverty Rate Soars

Times are hard:

Struggling New Yorkers dragged into poverty during the recession weren't surprised to hear that things have gotten worse at the bottom of the economic food chain.

...

Although citywide poverty statistics won't be available until later this month, local advocates for the poor said there are more New Yorkers in need.

The West Side pantry experienced a 21% jump in visitors this year while St. John's Bread and Life, Brooklyn's largest soup kitchen program, reported a 47% increase in the number of people it served.

"These are people who were just getting by before. They can't work any harder. They just can't make it," said Anthony Butler, executive director of St. John's Bread and Life.

One woman, who asked not to be named, was visiting a food pantry for the first time Thursday because she hasn't been able to find work since her son was born a year ago.

Her husband's job as a security officer is no longer enough to pay their new expenses.

"It's harder to make ends meet," she said, adding "Things are more difficult in every way."

1 out of every 7 people in this country now live in poverty.

The unemployment rate stands at 9.6%.

The underemployment rate stands at 18%.

People are hurting.

What has Barack Obama's response been?

Bail out Wall Street, cut food stamps by $11.9 billion, and move to raise the retirement age to 72 with his Cat Food Commission.

Change we can believe in?

Nope - corporate governance from a corporate Dem.

The change I can believe in is seeing Barack Obama going the way of Adrian Fenty.

Can't Vote For The GOP, But...

...If this is what happens if they take back the Congress, well, some of this I COULD support:

The conservative wave sweeping toward the 2010 midterm elections could put in power a group of congressional Republicans who are largely disenchanted with a recent expansion of the federal role in K-12 policy and leery of offering incentives for states in areas such as adoption of common standards and assessments.

Lawmakers on both sides of the political divide also say the current version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the No Child Left Behind Act, needs a major shakeup. But it might be harder to reauthorize the nearly 9-year-old law if the GOP takes over one or both chambers, say longtime Capitol Hill aides from both parties.

“I’d say, expect more gridlock in the short term,” said Vic Klatt, a former top aide to Republicans on the House education committee. “If the Democrats with their huge majorities [in both houses] couldn’t move [reauthorization], it’s hard to picture it being any different if Republicans control the House or the House and the Senate.”

...

If Republicans do land a majority in the House, Rep. John Kline of Minnesota—who served as a U.S. Marine Corps colonel and helicopter pilot and was not in Congress in 2001 when the NCLB law was passed—would likely become the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee.

Over the summer, Rep. Kline talked to superintendents and administrators in his congressional district to get their views on the Obama administration’s blueprint for renewing the ESEA, released in March. The proposal seeks to give states more flexibility in intervening in most schools, while pushing states to adopt standards to help ensure students are college- and-career-ready. But so far, Rep. Kline hasn’t heard a groundswell of support from school leaders back in his southern Minnesota district.

“They’re frankly not real thrilled with the blueprint,” Rep. Kline said in an interview this week. Although educators in his district want to see a fix for the NCLB law, he said, there are “objections to anything ... that comes in and tells them how to do their job. ... One of the things that we’ve been insisting on is that we have to make [the law] simpler, easier to comply with, and more flexible, therefore putting some meaning back into local control.”

Rep. Kline declined to discuss what his priorities would be should he become education chairman, saying such questions were premature. But his take on some of the administration’s major policy initiatives gives an indication of where he—and many in the House Republican caucus—are leaning.

For instance, Rep. Kline casts a wary eye on the federal role in championing the Common Core State Standards Initiative. That effort, which resulted in the creation of reading and mathematics standards that so far have been adopted by nearly 40 states, was state-led, through the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association.

Rep. Kline has no problem with, for instance, Minnesota and Wisconsin getting together and coming up with their own set of more-rigorous academic standards. But the federal incentives for adopting the common-core standards make him—and many of his fellow House Republicans—uneasy, he said.

...

“We’re watching this very closely,” Rep. Kline said of the standards push. “If we are, in fact, putting in a de facto national curriculum, my caucus will rebel. I’m very leery when [the action] shifts over to the U.S. Department of Education providing either rewards or punishment” for adopting certain standards. “That’s dangerous,” he said.

Rep. Kline also has qualms about the administration’s $350 million program aimed at helping states develop common, richer students assessments, funded with Race to the Top money. He wants to ensure that it doesn’t lead to Education Department involvement in creating the tests.

The Obama administration also asked for $1.35 billion in the fiscal 2011 budget to continue the Race to the Top program for an additional year and extend grant eligibility from states to school districts; Rep. Kline said he wouldn’t support that plan. He thinks the program was too rigid and imposed federal policy preferences on states.

“This is the U.S. Department of Education putting [out its] view of what needs to be done. ... It’s not the states deciding. It’s not local control,” he said.

I know it's dangerous to suppose Repubs would actually follow through on what Kline has outlined above, and I know they are very friendly to charters and very hostile to unions (indeed, he says the one piece of common ground he has with Obama is the need to end teacher tenure.)

But what the hell, Obama is very friendly to charters and very hostile to unions and tenure AND he wants to impose national standards, a national curriculum, and a government that ONLY rewards states that pass Gates Foundation-approved reforms.

Oh, and he also wants assess those new national standards with lots of new standardized tests and to fire teachers and close schools based on those tests.

So how much worse would a GOP-led Congress that doesn't want to go along with the Obama/Duncan national standards agenda (including the new battery of assessments they're pushing that will eventually be used to fire teachers)?

What say you out there in the ed blogosphere?

Should we start hoping for a GOP takeover of the Congress as the fly in Obama's ed deform ointment?

Or is that like cutting our nose off to spite our face?

(Sorry for the cliches...really, really tired...)

NBC Hates Teachers

Here's the list of participants for their "Education Summit":

Participants in the Education Nation Summit will include:

•Michael Bloomberg: Mayor, City of New York
•Geoffrey Canada: CEO & President of Harlem Children's Zone Project
•Arne Duncan: US Secretary of Education
•Byron Garrett: CEO of the National Parent Teacher Association (PTA)
•Allan Golston, President, US Program, The Gates Foundation
•Reed Hastings: Founder & CEO of Netflix
•Walter Isaacson: President & CEO of the Aspen Institute
•Joel Klein: Chancellor of New York City Schools
•Wendy Kopp: CEO and Founder of Teach for America
•John Legend: Musician; Founder of the Show Me Campaign
•Gregory McGinity: Managing Director of Policy, The Broad Education Foundation
•Bill Pepicello, Ph.D.: President of University of Phoenix
•Sally Ride: First Female Astronaut; Vice-chair of Change the Equation
•Michelle Rhee: Chancellor, District of Columbia Public School System of Washington, D.C.
•Margaret Spellings: Former US Secretary of Education
•Antonio Villaraigosa: Mayor, City of Los Angeles, California
•Randi Weingarten: President of American Federation of Teachers (AFT-CLO)

Not ONE teacher there.

Not one.

Weingarten doesn't count.

Nor does Wendy Kopp.

And Christ, what is the University of Phoenix guy doing there?

He belongs in jail for fraud, not pontificating about education.

Have you taken a look at the number of consumer fraud complaints AGAINST the University of Phoenix?

There are 14 pages of complaints about this "university" at Consumeraffairs.com alone.

Seriously, this guy belongs in a Turkish prison.

That HE has been invited to the "summit" while a working teacher has not says all you need to know about NBC News, G.E. and the other corporate sponsors of this "summit."

But there are plenty of other problems with the summit as well.

Why is John Legend there?

Will he be singing?

Or just parroting Gates Foundation propaganda like he usually does?

Because the summit doesn't need John Legend to parrot Gates Foundation propaganda when they have the president of the Gates Foundation on the panel.

Like most education "reform" discussions, the NBC Education Summit is a sham.

They already KNOW the answers to the questions they're going to ask.

They just want to continue to sell the country on them.

Give NBC a call and let them hear some of your thoughts.

Phone: (212) 664-4444

Ask for the NBC News comment line. Then ask for the MSNBC comment line.

And be brief. You only get about 45 seconds.

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.

Bill Perkins Beats Charter School Stooge: 76%-24%

Bill Perkins defeats Basil Smikle - by 52 points:

In the race that pitted State Sen. Bill Perkins against political operative Basil Smikle, incumbent Perkins seemed to enjoy the same sort of support from the community that Rangel did.

Perkins claimed victory late Tuesday night. Outside of Paris Blues, a bar on 121st Street and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd., he said his election shows that his constituents do not want him to be silent on certain issues, such as charter schools.

Perkins has been critical of charter schools and charter school proponents had filled his opponents' campaign coffers.

"The hedge fund millionaires lost and they do not dictate the outcome of an election by virtue of their money," Perkins said.

"The vote tonight tells me that even charter school parents support me. They are not of the belief that my voice should be silenced when it comes to wanting more transparency regarding charter schools," he added.

The election numbers are here.

DFER and the hedge fund criminals threw an awful lot of money into this race to beat Perkins, once a charter school advocate who now supports more transparency and accountability for the charter school movement and the people running it.

It's good to see that sometimes hedge fund criminal money CANNOT subvert democracy and buy an election.

It's also good to see that Basil Smikle - despite endorsements by the NY Post and the NY Daily News - got his ass kicked and lost by 52 points.

That's a pretty emphatic victory.

It's even better to see former NY1 political reporter, current charter school advocate and convicted wifebeater Dominic Carter wrong as usual.

He declared Perkins in "serious trouble" and predicted the tabloid endorsements, along with Smikle's support of charter schools, had given Smikle the "momentum" over Perkins.

Nice work, Dominic - you got stuff wrong again, just like in the old days when you were still on NY1 and not writing your political commentary from a jail cell.

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.

Bash The Teachers: Jonathan Alter Edition

In a new series entitled BASH THE TEACHERS, I will take a look at various anti-union, teacher-bashing corporate journalists and pundits (e.g., Jonathan Alter, Tom "Mustache of Understanding" Friedman, Evan Thomas, Nicholas Kristof, David "Bobo" Brooks, Joe Klein, David Broder et al.), examine their journalism and /or punditry records using the same rigorous performance-based standards they call for using on unionized teachers, see just how much "added value" they are giving their readers and decide whether they need to be swept out of journalism by Michelle Rhee's broom.

This series starts today with Newsweek's Jonathan Alter.

At Common Dreams, Peter Hart has written a good overview on why the elite corporate-owned media - both conservatives and "liberals" - scapegoat unionized teachers and push unproven or disproven reforms like merit pay and charter schools in order to improve the public education system.

If the article doesn't want to make you pull what little hair Jonathan Alter still has in his head out of it, good for you.

As for me, I couldn't help but want to do just that after I read quotes like these:

When someone like Fox News host Bill O’Reilly (7/13/10) declares that liberals oppose school vouchers “because they are protecting the teachers’ unions,” the only surprise might be his uncharacteristic restraint. Nominally liberal pundits like Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter, who wrote (2/12/07) that Democrats are “wrong to kiss up to teachers unions,” are hard to distinguish from O’Reilly on this issue.

...

Six years later (7/21/08), Alter had removed the gloves, pounding the “Paleolithic teachers unions” and predicting that middle-of-the-road voters would rally behind “a Democratic candidate willing to show he can slip the ideological stranglehold of a retrograde liberal interest group.” As if the point weren’t clear enough, Alter advised then-candidate Barack Obama to lay out his demands to teachers and tell them “they must change their focus from job security and the protection of ineffective teachers to higher pay and true accountability for performance—or face extinction.”

Alter, btw, works for a news magazine that has gone from losing $5 million a year in 2007 to $30 million a year in 2009, was sold by its owner, Kaplan University, for $1, and has over one million readers in the last nine years.

Under the value-added system corporate journalists like Alter push, teachers must add value to their students test scores every year or be fired.

Yet somehow Alter, who works at a news magazine that has increased its dollar losses six-fold in just three years, has seen its revenue drop 30% during that same time period and has lost over one million readers over the last nine years, doesn't think the same "high performance" standards that he applies to schools and teachers should be applied to news magazines or journalists like himself.

So much for true accountability for performance.

But that's just the free-market values that Alter himself professes need to be used on the public education system in order to improve it. It points to Alter's hypocrisy on the issue, but doesn't show just how WRONG he has been on many issues.

So let's take a look at the quality of Alter's punditry and see if he is "adding value" (i.e., getting stuff right) there.

First, Jonathan Alter supported the Iraq war beforehand, saying

I now support military action for four basic reasons:

1. Collective Security: Under U.N. Resolution 1441, which has been clearly violated by Saddam Hussein, military action would be in the context of nearly 90 years of collective security—an essential prerequisite for intervention in today's world.

2. Nuclear Security: The national security policy of the United States should be encapsulated in four words: "The club is closed." While little can be done about those countries that already have nuclear weapons, we should focus great energy and attention on limiting entrance to the nuclear club, especially among rogue states. Colin Powell was not convincing on al-Qaida/Iraq connections, but he was persuasive on Iraq's efforts to obtain nuclear weapons. We cannot afford to wait until Iraq obtains such weapons and blackmails the region—as North Korea is doing now.

3. September 11: While war against Iraq may increase terrorism in the short run, it is, on balance, more likely to decrease it in the long run. Even if al-Qaida is not operating in Iraq right now, Iraq has been friendly with terrorists. Generally speaking, the fewer rogue states, the fewer places for terrorists to hide. Until 9/11, stability was preferable to upheaval in the Middle East. Now, change is the best option. War is always a leap in the dark, but even the chance of greater regional democracy—and thus less of the displaced anger that fuels terrorism—makes the risks worth taking.

4. Credibility: If Saddam disarms now, war should be avoided. But if he continues to cheat and retreat in the next few weeks, a decision by the United States to back off and delay would be interpreted as weakness in the Middle East. Osama Bin Laden hit us on 9/11 because he thought we were soft and would not respond. Weakness now would further embolden Saddam Hussein.

The war did NONE of those things that Alter claimed it would - the Iraq war did NOT keep other countries from entering the nuclear weapons country club. In fact, while the U.S. and its allies were bogged down in Iraq, Iran got much closer to getting nuclear weapons.

Nor did the Iraq war DECREASE terrorism in the long run as Alter claimed it would. There have been two attempted domestic terrorism attacks in the last year alone (the Detroit plane bombing, the Times Square bombing) and it is very likely that both of those terrorists were radicalized in part by the U.S. war in Iraq.

Nor did our macho sword-waving against Saddam make Bin Laden and Al Qaida less emboldened. Rather, it gave them the opportunity to gain more followers by using the bloodbath in Iraq as proof-positive that the United States as a country and Americans as a people were anti-Muslim and anti-Arab, it diverted resources from our actual attempts to find Bin Laden, and further put a tremendous financial burden on this country as we fight two simultaneous wars on credit whilewe cannot even keep our freaking roads paved anymore.

Yet somehow Alter, who was wrong on ALL the reasons he gave for going to war with Saddam, still has his job even after it is clear that he didn't "add value" to his readers by reciting Judy Milleresque nonsense in the pages of Newsweek about the war.

Let us also not forget that Alter promoted the use of torture in a November 2001 Newsweek column entitled "Time To Think About Torture," saying that the United States is now a fundamentally different place and that anybody who isn't in favor of torturing terror suspects was hopelessly pre-September 11th:

In this autumn of anger, even a liberal can find his thoughts turning to... torture. OK, not cattle prods or rubber hoses, at least not here in the United States, but something to jump-start the stalled investigation of the greatest crime in American history. Right now, four key hijacking suspects aren't talking at all.

Couldn't we at least subject them to psychological torture, like tapes of dying rabbits or high-decibel rap? (The military has done that in Panama and elsewhere.) How about truth serum, administered with a mandatory IV? Or deportation to Saudi Arabia, land of beheadings? (As the frustrated FBI has been threatening.) Some people still argue that we needn't rethink any of our old assumptions about law enforcement, but they're hopelessly "Sept. 10"--living in a country that no longer exists.

...

We can't legalize physical torture; it's contrary to American values. But even as we continue to speak out against human-rights abuses around the world, we need to keep an open mind about certain measures to fight terrorism, like court-sanctioned psychological interrogation. And we'll have to think about transferring some suspects to our less squeamish allies, even if that's hypocritical. Nobody said this was going to be pretty.

Notice how Alter, who no doubt sees himself as a "good guy," won't go so far as to sanction physical torture here in the U.S., but has has no problem turning terror suspects over to "our less squeamish allies" to do the torturing for us. He acknowledges this is "hypocritical," but seems to work under the preconceived notion that we have to use "whatever works," law and ethics be damned. He doesn't know if it actually works (he uses Abu Nidal and the Philippine police as examples of instances when torture works, but doesn't explain exactly how), but for Alter that's not the point. As he said in his pro-Iraq war piece, even when we don't know what the effects of a particular action are going to be, "change is the best option."

In fact, that is often Alter's take on policy.

Something's not working - change it!

Which brings me to the education issue.

Alter has some ideas - make the entire public education system into KIPP.

More test prep.

Standardized tests in every grade and every subject.

9.5 hour school days and shortened summer vacations to get ready for those tests.

"Thin" teacher contracts and no work protections.

Fire teachers based on test scores from all the tests added to the school day.

Never mind that the "change" Alter wants to bring may be short-sighted and bring all kinds if unintended consequences upon us (as the Iraq war did - emboldening Iran and giving them a better opportunity to pursue nuclear arms because the U.S. was bogged down in two other wars) or worse -may be antithetical to our nature (as either torturing suspects or turning them over to countries to our dirty work ought to be) and lead to all kinds of very easily predicted consequences (i.e., the United States was vilified across the world as a nation of torture.)

For Alter, the system has completely failed and only complete "change" undo the damage.

Never mind that he doesn't really know if the system has completely failed because he is only regurgitating Gates Foundation/pro-privatization talking points in his columns on reform.

As Diane Ravitch has noted here, the system is not in the crisis that the Obama administration or the corporate journalists claim it is, that many traditional public schools across this nation actually work and work better than charter schools, that doesn't stop Alter from saying things like

supporting accountability with teeth and more charter schools should be a litmus test for anyone serious about proving he or she is not just another hack.

You see, Alter has a pre-conceived Elite Washington Village notion that OF COURSE teacher accountability and pay tied to test scores and thousands of addtional charter schools across this nation are just the "change" needed to bring the system out of crisis, even though the CREDO study has already proven that on average most charter schools are no better than traditional schools while 37% actually perform worse and the additional standardized tests that have to be added to every grade in every subject to hold teachers "accountable" will ensure a very regimented, test prep-based education system that will actually undercut the development of creative, free-thinking, innovative students.

For Alter, facts don't matter. Being wrong in the past about stuff doesn't matter. Pushing behavior antithetical to moral human character doesn't matter. Working for a news magazine that has clearly outlived its usefulness and is millions of dollars in debt doesn't matter (I guess only schools are supposed to be survive by the free market principles Alter so loves...news magazines get a pass.)

What matters is pushing his Gates Foundation talking points about "accountability" while bashing teachers unions and any politician who doesn't automatically roll over for the charter school and accountability movements.

What matters is supporting the conventional wisdom of the Washington Village Elite on education (and so many other issues, as well) and disparaging anybody else who dares to break from that view.

Yet in ten years, when it becomes clear that adding additional standardized tests in every grade/subject at least twice a year and forcing teachers to "add value" to their students scores or be fired has made the education system worse, and when it becomes clear that blowing up the public education system and replacing it with non-unionized charters as has been done in New Orleans isn't the "magic bullet" reformers claim it is, will Alter take responsibility for all the crap he has written about education reform and teachers over the years?

I'm sure he will - just as he has acknowledged being wrong about advocating torture or how beautiful invading Iraq would turn out to be.

Oh, right, He didn't take responsibility for that stuff.

Okay, I guess we'll just have to sweep Jonathan Alter out the door with Michelle Rhee's broom - stick side up.

Next in the series: Tom Friedman.

Crime Stats: An Anecdotal View Of How The NYPD Manipulates And Distorts Them

UPDATE: Now that someone has used a credit card from my girlfriend's "lost" wallet, the incident has been re-termed "grand larceny."

Nonetheless, my point about the re-categorization of crimes from the post below still stands.

Last night, the two cops who reported to the 911 call were less than eager to take down a report.

Eventually they did, calling the item "lost" and grumpily filling out a report.

Today when my girlfriend found that there had been some fraudulent activity on a credit card that had been in the wallet, she went to the precinct and found that the report filed by the two cops last night was full of errors and hadn't been signed.

The police didn't seem all that serious about filing that report.

Today after a credit card company was involved, the police at the precinct were more serious about filing a report.

Funny how that works - missing your wallet and cash, the cops shrug; have somebody use your credit card without authorization, suddenly they're interested.

ORIGINAL POST:


Earlier this year, two college professors released a study that accused Mayor Bloomberg and the NYPD of understating crime statistics in New York City:

New York, NY - Two academics at an FBI-sponsored conference Friday will accuse the NYPD of cooking the books to make the city appear safer.

The claims are contained in a survey of more than 309 police officers - most of whom have served as precinct commanders since the department started using the CompStat program in the mid-‘90s.

More than half of the respondents admitted to fudging numbers, according to the study by John Eterno of Molloy College and Eli Silverman of John Jay College.

The pair of criminologists will also release recordings they obtained from several roll calls that they say capture supervisors telling officers not to take reports of robberies unless the victim is willing to go to the stationhouse.

The recordings also capture officers being told not to take reports if they think the district attorney will not prosecute.

“It’s putting people in an unreasonable position,” said Silverman, adding that there is growing pressure from top brass to keep the numbers down. “The public needs to understand that crime can fluctuate.”

Silverman said the city needs to change how it views CompStat, a program that maps crime so that police can zero in on problem areas.

“It needs to be less number-driven,” Silverman said. “You can’t just measure [cities] by their crime rate.”

Police did not immediately comment.

Silverman and Eterno, a retired NYPD captain, will present their findings at the Crime Data Conference at John Jay’s West Side campus on 10th Ave.

Mayor Bloomberg himself scoffed at the notion that he has the NYPD fudge stats, saying

Bloomberg told Gambling (thanks to Adam Lisberg for listening and transcribing) that there's certainly pressure to fight crime, but "No. You know, it's, in this day and age, I love this, gonna cook the books. With the press talking all the time, with everybody having Twitter and Facebook and everything, do you really think you could keep anything private anymore? C'mon."

Gambling: "Doesn't seem to be."

Bloomberg: "You got it. So, you know, I, everybody, will they look on the favorable side? You know, you ask me, did we do a good job? Yeah, we did a good job on X. I could say we did a so-so job, but everybody's going to be favorable in their jobs. But no. There isn't any room. Even if you wanted to cook the books, it would be really hard. If you cook the books it isn't going to stay private for very long. Somebody's going to find out about it. And then you're gonna, the management, Kelly on down, is going to come down on you like a brick. And so -- and are there some bad people? There's always somebody who pushes and pushes too much deliberately or accidentally, or gets caught into a scandal and it gets worse and worse and worse. But no. But is there pressure on the individual police officer or sergeant, lieutenant, captain, inspector, chief, to bring crime down? Enormous, and it's going to be more.

"We are not going to tolerate crime. Period. Now, you know, the real world is you're never going to get it down to zero, and this year it's a touch worse than it was last year, but keep in mind you're at a nine-year low, or a record low even, last year. And we're going to keep the pressure on. Anything, anybody that thinks that the police have an easy job is not realistic. Anybody that thinks that they aren't trying isn't realistic either. And, and if anybody that thinks they're not succeeding, only in a relative sense compared to last year. It's a touch worse. But they're not cooking the books."

Last night, my girlfriend and I were walking from 45th and 6th Avenue to the PATH station at 32nd and 6th.

There were a LOT of people on 34th and we were jostled a bit as we crossed 34th Street.

When my girlfriend got to the train station, she discovered her wallet gone.

When the police came to take a report of the incident, they termed it a "lost item."

Even after explaining that there was little way that the wallet could have been lost, that it had to have been taken by somebody slipping his/her hand into my girlfriend's bag while she was walking (it has a clip on the top, but it doesn't close all the way), the police said "No, we cannot determine that it was stolen, only that it is lost. Unless you saw or felt a person take it, the wallet is considered 'lost.'"

This morning at 3:42 AM, somebody tried to buy a meal at McDonald's using a credit card from that "lost" wallet.

Yet the wallet stolen during last night's incident is still termed a "lost item" - just one more crime in this city that was classified as something other than a crime.

Those of us in the NYCDOE know all about the fudging of test scores, graduation rates and other numbers that Bloomberg and Klein use to "prove" their education reforms are working.

I have long said that I bet the same fudging of stats done in the DOE (I dubbed it "Klein-metic") is being done with all kinds of other important stats - like crime statistics, fire fatality statistics, etc.)

I know that this story I have just told here is "anecdotal" and therefore not "proof" of the jive-ass manipulation Bloomberg is pulling off in this city to make himself look like the most brilliant leader since General Eisenhower, but I do believe it is a fairly good indication of just that.

POSTSCRIPT: I know long-time NYers will say "Well, that's what happens when you go around with a bag that doesn't zip. You are just asking to get pickpocketed."

She HAD a bag with a zipper that closed all the way, and also a backpack with a little safety place inside for valuables that she often used for her wallet.

But after a bed bug infestation at her workplace, she tossed those and was using the one she had last night temporarily until she could buy another one with a zipper.

So I guess you could say this summer's bed bug infestation of New York City led indirectly (or not so indirectly) to her being pickpocketed.

Two New York stories in one - crime and bed bugs.

Yikes - why the hell do we still live in this "massive, trash-ridden hellhole that slowly sucks the life out of every one of its inhabitants"?

No Time For Play

This is the world the ed deform movement (and their corporate backers) are bringing us - no time for five years to play during the school day, only time for scripted activities and test prep.

Terrifying.

Bail Out The Post Office Using Big Bank Money

I love this idea!

Almost daily, I receive at least one pre-approved credit card offer from a big national bank that received bailout money from U.S. taxpayers. I hate big banks, and I hate bailouts, and I really hate it when my bailout money is used to send me junk mail I didn't ask for and don't want.

Actually, this junk mail may just be what's keeping the U.S. Postal Service afloat -- if by floating you mean not yet completely submerged in red ink. The USPS lost $3.5 billion in the third quarter compared with $2.4 billion in the same period last year -- a 46% increase.

Hefty Bank Profits

Meanwhile, the bailed-out banks are reporting hefty profits financed by taxpayer largesse (JPMorgan Chase (JPM): $4.8 billion; Citigroup (C): $2.7 billion; Bank of America (BAC): $3.1 billion for the most recent quarter). We kept them afloat in their hour of need -- in a crisis at least partly, if not largely, of their own creation. Isn't it time for the banks to pay it forward?

How about a special tax on the big banks to help keep the Postal Service and the vital work it does going -- and to preserve the jobs and benefits of its employees. The struggling economy doesn't need any of the 623,000 postal workers dumped into this increasingly job-free labor market.

Here's the best part: We don't need Congress or the president to enact such a tax.

A Grassroots Bailout

Instead, a grassroots bailout -- this time, of the post office. This time, paid for by the bailed-out banks. We can do it. Here's how: From now on, don't just throw out those credit card offers. Instead, put the paperwork in the "postage will be paid by addressee" envelope (first removing anything with your name on it) and drop it back in the mailbox. You've just transferred the cost of mailing that letter from the not-so-needy Chase/Citi/Bank of America to the oh-so-needy USPS. Who needs Robin Hood when we have postage-paid envelopes?

The U.S. has 307 million people. If each person received an average of just one credit card offer a month (most adults get more than that, while children get none) and mailed it back to the bank without a signed application, at a cost to the bank of 44 cents postage, U.S. consumers could transfer $135 million a month from the banks to the Postal Service.

There's no red tape, no lobbyists to pay off, and no congressional hearings to schedule. Tweet this post (#grassrootsbailout) or share it on Facebook to get started. The employees of the USPS are counting on you.

I've got a couple of those pre-approved offers sitting around right now.

Going to make the post office some money tomorrow!

What a great idea!

BTW, was checking out Zac Bissonnette's book Debt Free U tonight at Borders. I'm going to buy it tomorrow using teachers choice money and use this for my two college prep classes. Great stuff!

Philly Newspaper Criticizes 1.5% Teacher Absence Rate

Apparently a 1.5% absence rate for teachers is too high.

The Daily News went with this same jive a few weeks ago by publishing a piece about 13 DOE employees who called in sick to take vacations and honeymoons.

Now, how many people are employed by the DOE?

Let's say it's a nice round number like 80,000.

It's higher than that , but for our purposes, 80,000 is good.

Now let's divide 13 by 80,000 and see what percentage of DOE employees calling in sick to honeymoon without approval there were...

My calculator comes up with 0.0001625%.

Gee, that's a pretty small percentage of lazy-ass, crooked teachers taking honeymoons in Bermuda when they're supposed to be teaching test prep.

One might say it's not a story at all.

Yet of course it became one of the "most read" education stories at the News.

Because teachers are, you know, lazy and crooked.

And 1.5% absence rate on the first two days of school in Philly proves we need more reforms to hold teachers accountable and fire them.

How dare 201 teachers out 11,000 call in sick on the second day of school?

Value Added Assessment Of The Obama Administration's Economic Record

First, input the stats

• Wages & Salaries are still down 3.7% from the prior peak
• Corporate profits are still down 20% from the peak
• Real GDP is still down 1.3% from the peak
• Industrial production is still down 7.2% from the peak
• Employment is still down 5.5% from the peak
• Retail sales are still down 4.5% from the peak
• Manufacturing orders are still down 22.1% from the peak
• Manufacturing shipments are still down 12.5% from the peak
• Exports are still down 9.2% from the peak
• Housing starts are still down 63.5% from the peak
• New home sales are still down 68.9% from the peak
• Existing home sales are still down 41.2% from the peak
• Non-residential construction is still down 35.7% from the peak

Those are the current stats.

Now take a look at the trend for the future:

This is not what the market wanted to hear: "Reports from the twelve Federal Reserve Districts suggested continued growth in national economic activity during the reporting period of mid-July through the end of August, but with widespread signs of a deceleration compared with preceding periods. Economic growth at a modest pace was the most common characterization of overall conditions, as provided by the five western Districts of St. Louis, Minneapolis, Kansas City, Dallas, and San Francisco. The reports from Boston and Cleveland also pointed to positive developments or net improvements compared with the previous reporting period. However, the remaining Districts of New York, Philadelphia, Richmond, Atlanta, and Chicago all highlighted mixed conditions or deceleration in overall economic activity."

Widespread deceleration of economic activity?

Gee, that sounds bad.

Given the the negative quality of the current economic stats, down anywhere from 3.7% to 68.9% from the peak of economic activity, and given the future trend of widespread deceleration of economic activity, Mr. Obama we're afraid we are just going have to fire your incompetent corporate-whore ass.

The good news is, you can play golf with Mayor for Life Richard Daley now that his corrupt, corporate ass is heading out of office too.

UFT Ready To Sell Members Out Again?

This post at Gotham Schools sounds a bit ominous.

Klein wants the D.C. contract for NYC.

Weingarten says there is nothing extraordinary about the D.C. contract (even though teachers can be fired using test scores, teachers can be laid off without regard to seniority, tenure protections are non-existent and merit pay is promoted.)

Klein "snorts" with laughter and says "Fine, the D.C. contract has no concessions. Give that to me here in NYC."

Once again, Randi and the UFTer's/AFTer's argue that war is peace, up is down and giving a chancellor the power to fire teachers at will without regard to seniority or tenure is not a concession.

Can't you see Leo Casey twist himself into a pretzel to carry water for that contract?