Did Daily News Editor-In-Chief Colin Myler Pervert Justice In Hacking Case?

Labor MP Tom Watson released a book about the News Corporation hacking scandal yesterday called Dial M For Murdoch.

At the press conference for the release, Watson called News Corporation a "toxic institution" that operated as a "shadow state" in Britain, subverting law and ethics at will, intimidating and/or bribing any official who tried to stand in its way.

One of the News Corporation employees Watson charged with intimidation was former News of the World editor and current New York Daily News editor-in-chief Colin Myler:

Tom Watson, joint author of Dial M for Murdoch, said that the book also featured allegations that Murdoch's News of the World set out to search for "secret lovers" or "extramarital affairs" of MPs on the culture, media and sport select committee in 2009.

At a packed press conference, Watson, a member of the Commons culture select committee, said that the surveillance revelation – passed to him by former News of the World chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck – demonstrated how the Murdoch organisation tried to intimidate parliament.

Thurlbeck gave Watson an interview, with a witness present, in which he said that the then News of the World editor, Colin Myler, told journalists on the Sunday tabloid to "find out everything you can about every single member".

At the time, the select committee was conducting its second inquiry into phone hacking, in the wake of revelations in the Guardian that the practice went beyond a single "rogue reporter" at the tabloid.

The aim was to discover "who was gay, who had affairs, anything we can use," according to Thurlbeck, as quoted in the book. "Each reporter was given two members [MPs] and there were six reporters that went on for around 10 days."

The Guardian blog from yesterday has additional details about Myler's orders to try and dig up dirt on politicians in order to subvert justice and just how successful that gambit was:

I am sorry to say that this tactic was successful, the committee's legitimate investigation was undermined and parliament was, in effect, intimidated. News International thought it could do this, that they would get away with it, that no one could touch them, and they actually did it, and it worked.

...

Although the committee wanted Brooks to give evidence, its members, whose private lives News International had pored over, capitulated and decided not to summons her…

The gay Plaid Cymru MP Adam Price … claimed that the committee's members had been warned that if they had called Brooks, their private lives would be raked over.

He said later: "I was told by a senior Conservative member of the committee, who I knew was in direct contact with executives at News International, that if we went for her, they would go for us - effectively they would delve into our personal lives in order to punish [us].

If this allegation is proven true, Colin Myler doesn't belong at the helm of the New York Daily News printing smear stories about NYC public school teachers with titles like PERV TEACHERS CAN'T BE TOUCHED - he belongs in jail.

In Britain the phrase perversion of justice refers to

a criminal offence in which someone prevents justice from being served on himself or on another party. It is a common law offence carrying a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

Perverting the course of justice can be any of three acts:

• Fabricating or disposing of evidence
• Intimidating or threatening a witness or juror
• Intimidating or threatening a judge

Also criminal are (1) conspiring with another to pervert the course of justice and (2) intending to pervert the course of justice.

If Colin Myler ordered News of the World reporters to dig up dirt on Parliament members to intimidate them from continuing an investigation into phone hacking by News of the World employees, he is guilty of perverting justice and ought to be arrested.

Former News of the World reporter Neville Thurlbeck gave this information to Watson in an interview in which there was a third party present. Thurlbeck today walked back the allegation saying he was

"surprised and disappointed" with Watson, because he said that the MP had chosen to make a private conversation public. He said that he had "no evidence" to support the belief that the monitoring request came from the editor's office and added:

"All the staff were very reluctant to carry out this surveillance for logistical and ethical reasons and they introduced a degree of procrastination until the plan was suddenly and unexpectedly halted by executives 10 days later and before any surveillance had taken place."

This matter needs further investigation.

While Thurlbeck now denies he has direct evidence that the dirt digging order came from Colin Myler, he doesn't deny that someone at News International did order NOTW reporters to look very deeply into the personal lives of Parliament committee members.

An investigation can determine just who that person or persons were.

So again I ask, did former NOTW editor and current NY Daily News editor-in-chief Colin Myler order NOTW reporters to dig up dirt on committee members in order to intimidate them from calling Rebekah Brooks to testify before the committee investigating phone hacking charges?

Has anybody in the press asked Mr. Myler this?

Has anybody at the Daily News asked Mr. Myler this?

Daily News reporters Ben Chapman likes to cover the crime beat, especially stories about "perverts."

This looks like a story right up his alley - an editor charged as a "pervert of justice."

What say you, Ben?

Why not get right on this story?

Murdoch Faces Lawsuits Over Hacking, Other "Dark Arts" Committed By News Corp. Employees In U.S.

The Murdoch/News Corporation news just won't stop today:

Rupert Murdoch faces a growing legal challenge in the heart of his global media empire as lawyers representing alleged victims of phone hacking on US soil begin gathering evidence ahead of possible court action.

Mark Lewis, the English lawyer who has been a driving force behind phone-hacking revelations in the UK, and his American legal partner Norman Siegel, have revealed that they have been approached by at least 10 people bearing complaints relating to Murdoch's News Corporation.

The complaints relate largely to alleged hacking by News of the World journalists into phones in the US, but also extend to other News Corp holdings including Fox News.

Lewis said that he had been contacted by a number of people since he arrived in the US last weekend "raising issues against other [News Corp] titles or Fox News, not necessarily about hacking but about other untoward dark arts to obtain information that should be private." He added that the new complaints were unproven allegations.

Lewis told reporters that he had taken on a fourth case of alleged phone hacking in the US. Previously, it had been known that he was representing three individuals, one of whom is an American citizen and two of whom are Europeans who believe their phones were hacked while visiting America.

In addition, Siegel, a former head of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said he had been contacted by six individuals raising complaints about News Corp outlets. "My experience in these sorts of cases is that when people sense you are serious and balanced in your approach, they begin to come out of the woodwork," he said.

The lawyers are refusing to name the four firm cases of alleged phone hacking inside America they are pursuing, saying that to identify them would be to further breach their privacy. So far all that is known of the original three is that one is a soccer figure, another from Hollywood and a third an American.

Lewis and Siegel said they had begun to compile evidence relating to the cases, and lawsuits could flow when they were ready. At the heart of the three initial cases are notes kept by Glenn Mulcaire, the private detective used by News of the World to carry out illegal hacking of the phones of potentially thousands of people.

Lewis cautions that the other untoward dark arts committed by News Corporation outlets here in the U.S. are "unproven allegations," but as I have pointed out before, you can't go wrong betting the "over" on News Corporation criminal acts.

Levon Helm Dead At 71

From Rolling Stone:

Levon Helm, singer and drummer for the Band, died on April 19th in New York of throat cancer. He was 71.

"He passed away peacefully at 1:30 this afternoon surrounded by his friends and bandmates," Helm's longtime guitarist Larry Campbell tells Rolling Stone. "All his friends were there, and it seemed like Levon was waiting for them. Ten minutes after they left we sat there and he just faded away. He did it with dignity. It was even two days ago they thought it would happen within hours, but he held on. It seems like he was Levon up to the end, doing it the way he wanted to do it. He loved us, we loved him."

Nothing more to say except that a good man and a great musician is dead today.

More On The Threats And Intimidation News Corporation Used To Try And Quash Hacking Investigation

From The Guardian blog:

Watson claims that the members of the Commons select committee investigating News International were put under surveillance by a crack squad of News of the World reporters.

Watson says he was told this by the paper's former chief reporter, Neville Thurlbeck.

In Thurlbeck's words:


There was an edict that came down from the editor and it was 'find out every single thing you can about every single member; who was gay, who had affairs, anything we can use. Each reporter was given two members and there were six reporters.

11.54am: Watson adds:


I am sorry to say that this tactic was successful, the committee's legitimate investigation was undermined and parliament was, in effect, intimidated. News International thought it could do this, that they would get away with it, that no one could touch them, and they actually did it, and it worked.

Watson adds that as a result of the surveillance the committee members whose private lives had been under investigation decided not to summon Rebekah Brooks to give evidence in 2010.

The threats were delivered to committee members from a conservative MP with ties to Murdoch:

Watson on the intimidation of the select committee.


Although the committee wanted Brooks to give evidence, its members, whose private lives News International had pored over, capitulated and decided not to summons her…

The gay Plaid Cymru MP Adam Price … claimed that the committee's members had been warned that if they had called Brooks, their private lives would be raked over.

He said later: "I was told by a senior Conservative member of the committee, who I knew was in direct contact with executives at News International, that if we went for her, they would go for us - effectively they would delve into our personal lives in order to punish [us].

12.30pm: Watson says an News International "intermediary", who was female, asked him if he would like to meet Rupert Murdoch over a dinner meeting.

She allegedly told him: "He's a charismatic man. He'd want to square off these difficulties and put matters right."

Watson says he was not interested in cutting a deal.

If Murdoch exerted that kind of influence in Britain, you can be sure he exerts a similar influence here in the U.S.

Has Murdoch tried to keep the Obama DOJ from looking too deeply into the phone hacking case in the U.S.?

Remember, News Corporation short-circuited investigations in Britain in both 2006 and 2009 by threatening, intimidating and/or buying politicians and police.

This is an election year in the U.S. The Obama administration, always adverse to controversy that would make for unhappy campers on the right, have been sitting on this investigation for awhile now.

Why?

Have they been bought off by Murdoch with a "You don't go too heavy on us, we won't go too heavy on you on FOX News" deal?

Have they been intimdated by the FOXies to drop any serious hacking investigation or FOX News will drop some bombshell on them?

You can bet if Murdoch and News Corporation used threats, intimidation and bribery of politicians and law enforcement officials in Britain, they have done so here as well.

On the local level, Andrew Cuomo - joined at the hip with the NY Post's Fred Dicker - is another suspect in the "Politicians bought by Uncle Rupert" category.

So far, Murdoch and the political establishment in the U.S. have kept this stuff under wraps.

But the shit is hitting the fan in Britain these days for Murdoch and with Mark Lewis planning on bringing civil lawsuits here in the U.S. against News Corp. for phone hacking, it may hit the fan here as well, despite Murdoch's best efforts to keep News Corporation clean here.

And then, even the U.S. politicians trying to keep this scandal under wraps and hide their own moral and ethical failings will have to come clean on just what kind of business they have done with Murdoch and News Corp.

Murdochs Called To Testify On Political Connections, Threats To Politicians

Lots of news on the News Corporation criminal front today.

First up, the Murdochs have to testify before Parliament in the hacking scandal again:

News Corp. (NWSA) (NWSA)’s influence over British politics since Rupert Murdoch entered the U.K. media market in the 1960s will be dissected at an ethics inquiry reviewing the ties between journalists and politicians.

The News Corp. chairman and his son, Deputy Chief Operating Officer James Murdoch, will testify at the inquiry prompted by the phone-hacking and bribery scandals at their U.K. tabloids. James Murdoch is scheduled to testify April 24, while is father will appear the following two days, according to the inquiry’s website. The Murdochs will appear in person instead of using a video link and are the only witnesses scheduled for those days.

The review began last year after evidence emerged that voice-mail interception at News Corp.’s News of the World title was rampant and not limited to a “rogue” reporter as the company claimed. Some victims and lawmakers have said Murdoch’s connections to politicians helped protect New York-based News Corp. during police probes in 2006 and 2009 that failed to uncover the extent of the scandal.

“The public are going to be gobsmacked by the closeness” between News Corp. executives and Britain’s politicians, said Duncan Lamont, a lawyer at Charles Russell LLP who represents some News Corp. competitors in the inquiry. The Murdochs, in what could be their last public appearance in the matter, “are determined to go out with a bang -- not a whimper.”

Indeed, MP Tom Watson published a book today with details of just how much punishment Murdoch and his papers looked to dish out to those who crossed them, saying that News Corporation essentially operated as a "shadow state" in Britain:

News Corporation is a "toxic institution" that operated like a "shadow state" in British society, according to a Labour MP who is the co-author of a new book about the phone-hacking scandal.

Tom Watson, joint writer of Dial M for Murdoch, said that the book also featured allegations that Murdoch's News of the World set out to search for "secret lovers" or "extramarital affairs" of MPs on the culture, media and sport select committee in 2009.

At a packed press conference, Watson, a member of the Commons culture select committee, said that the surveillance revelation – passed onto him by former News of the World chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck – demonstrated how the Murdoch organisation tried to intimidate parliament.

Thurlbeck gave Watson an on-the-record interview, with a witness present, in which he said the then News of the World editor, Colin Myler, told journalists on the Sunday tabloid to "find out everything you can about every single member".

At the time the select committee was conducting its second inquiry into phone hacking, in the wake of revelations in the Guardian that the practice went beyond a single "rogue reporter" at the tabloid.

The aim was to discover "who was gay, who had affairs, anything we can use," according to Thurlbeck, as quoted in the book. "Each reporter was given two members [MPs] and there were six reporters that went on for around 10 days."

Thurlbeck told Watson that the investigations eventually "fell by the wayside" and that "even Ian Edmondson", the then news editor, "realised that there was something quite horrible about doing this".

Watson, and his co-author Martin Hickman, an Independent journalist, said that they believed that pressure on MPs at the time influenced the decision not to compel Rebekah Brooks, who was then News International's chief executive, to give evidence before the committee.

So give Rupert and his News Corporation criminals what they want or they'll dig up dirt on you and go public.

How's that for acting in the "public interest"?

One of the News Corporation employees involved in this dirt-digging and intimidation was Colin Myler, a former News Corp. editor who now is editor-in-chief at the Murdoch rival New York Daily News.

Myler should be under arrest, along with many of his News Corp. colleagues, but so far has eluded handcuff. Not so some more journalists who work for Murdoch, however:

(Reuters) - British police arrested three people, including the royal editor of Rupert Murdoch's Sun tabloid, a source familiar with the situation said, in an escalation of a long-running phone hacking scandal which reaches into Britain's political establishment.

Thursday's arrests and the fact they stemmed from information given to the police by Murdoch's company itself is likely to reignite tensions within the media group, just days before parliament gives its verdict on how the culture of illegality came about.

Next week Rupert Murdoch and son James will also appear before a judicial inquiry to answer questions over the conduct of the press, which will focus on the close ties between Murdoch, his executives and the political establishment.

James Murdoch will appear in court room 73 at the Royal Courts of Justice on Tuesday while lawyers at the inquiry have cleared a day and a half to grill the 81-year-old Rupert on Wednesday and Thursday.

"This was always going to be an important six weeks in this affair, with the Murdochs and politicians going before the Leveson judicial inquiry, but it will be exacerbated by the arrests and the imminent committee report," said Steven Barnett, communications professor at the University of Westminster.

Police made the arrests one day after prosecutors confirmed they had started to examine the police case against four journalists and seven others to establish whether they should be charged with a range of offences including perverting the course of justice.

Press reports have speculated that one of those named in the files is Rebekah Brooks, a former editor of the News of the World and Sun tabloids and a close friend of both Murdochs and Prime Minister David Cameron.

Brooks has been arrested twice, once for corruption and intercepting communications, and more recently for perverting the course of justice, along with her husband, Charlie Brooks.

The three arrested on Thursday were detained at dawn and questioned over inappropriate payments made to police and public officials.

That's Joel Klein's hand behind News Corp turning over evidence on employees to the police that are resulting in arrests of Murdoch employees.

The last time Klein engineered this, Rupert Murdoch himself had to fly into London to quell a News International near-riot against the company.

But this time, there will be no trying to quell employees - Murdoch and Klein are deliberately trying to hang the scandal around the neck of those arrested, including former News International chief (and Murdoch favorite) Rebekah Brooks.

So much breaking in this scandal that it's hard to keep track.

One thing is for sure, it's not been such a good week for the Murdochs or News Corporation and next week could be even worse.

The Telegraph reports that with today's arrests, James Murdoch faces a dire future:

Mr Murdoch, News Corp's deputy chief operating officer and former chairman of News International, is facing renewed pressure in the US following the arrest of The Sun's royal editor, Duncan Larcombe, over alleged payments to public officials.

According to US lawyers, Mr Murdoch stands to have his personal assets seized and could be jailed if Mr Larcombe or any other member of News International's staff is found guilty of bribing police of government officials outside the US.

Such payments are prohibited by America's Foreign & Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), the piece of legislation which is at the heart of parallel investigations into News Corp by the US Department of Justice (DoJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Investigations typically last around five years, but have severe personal consequence for the directors of any companies charged, regardless of whether they were directly involved in the wrongdoing. The directors can be jailed for up to five years for each FCPA charge.

Thomas Fox, an FCPA expert who has spoken on the subject at events organised by News Corp's Dow Jones newswire, said that companies charged under FCPA "have to clear their house out at the highest levels in order to move forward and for that reason I wouldn't be surprised if James Murdoch had to step down from his leadership role".

Joel Klein is working really, really hard to tie the scandal around the necks of other people, so we'll just have to see how this plays out.

Maybe Klein, "The Fixer" in the case, can save Rupert Murdoch from the wolves.

But Klein certainly has his work cut out for him now, and each day that work gets harder and harder.

Long Island Students Overwhelmed By Length Of New York State Tests

Here is a glimpse of the future in all grades in all subjects - students exhausted by the tests and just randomly bubbling things in:

With state testing under way, many younger students appear to be exhausted by this year's longer exams and unable to complete their work effectively, Long Island school officials reported Tuesday.

English testing began in grades three through eight Tuesday and will continue Wednesday and Thursday, with a maximum four hours, 30 minutes allowed for completion over the three days. That includes 90 minutes allotted Tuesday.

"They just didn't have the stamina for it," said Peggie Staib, assistant superintendent for curriculum in the Connetquot district, which serves communities in Islip Town.

Last year's state English tests allowed a total of two hours, 50 minutes or less for completion, depending on grade level.

Islandwide, more than 200,000 students in public schools are taking tests required by the federal No Child Left Behind law. Math testing will be held April 25-27.

This year's testing has extra significance because results will be used by the state for the first time in its new job-performance ratings of teachers and principals. Job evaluations, which will include input from local districts, are due Sept. 1.

...

Preliminary reports from districts such as Amityville , Connetquot, Jericho , Oceanside and Rockville Centre suggest that many 8- and 9-year-olds are having trouble completing the tests, which include more multiple-choice questions and essays than those used in the past.

According to Staib, Connetquot's seven elementary schools reported that substantial numbers of younger students, tired after 45 minutes or so of testing, were simply filling in the remainders of their answer sheets at random -- a reaction known as "bubbling."

Tony Sinanis, a principal at Cantiague Elementary School in Jericho , observed a similar response by some third-graders there.

"We're noticing that they're getting the same types of questions wrong at the end of the test that they got right at the beginning," Sinanis said. "Stamina becomes an issue."

Just wait until students have to take BOTH city AND state tests in every subject - math, ELA, science, social studies, physical education, art and music - in order to evalute teachers as part of the new NY State teacher evaluation system as agreed to by the NYSUT and the UFT.

How many teachers are going to be declared "ineffective" and vilified by the criminal journalists at thr NY Post and the serial liars at the NY Daily News because students just stop caring about the tests after awhile?

And what is all this testing going to do the children?

Does anybody really think 35+ standardized, high stakes tests a year is going to improve education for children?

I mean, anybody outside the "reformers" who stand to make money off this stuff - like News Corp's Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee, Pearson, et al. - or the politicians and oligarachs who want to use these high stakes test scores to pillory teachers and break the unions - like Bloomberg, Cuomo, Obama, et al.?

This is madness, brought to us by Barack Obama and his "Fire Our Way To The Top" education reform policies, steamrolled through legislatures all across the country and hapily promoted by the corporate media like the Washington/Kaplan Test Post or News Corporation/Wireless Generation that stands to make hundreds of millions from these "reforms."

Bloomberg Works To Complete Destruction Of Public School System

Bloomberg and Klein always had one goal in mind when it came to public schools - blow the old system up so that it could never be replicated.

That's why in the early days of their reign, Klein and Bloomberg reorganized the NYCDOE four times - exploding the old districts into regions and then cohorts and consortia and now whatever the hell they're calling things.

On one level, they were trying to figure out what they thought would work better than the old BOE structures. But on another level, they just wanted to destroy the structure of the old system so that whoever came after them could not pick up the pieces and put it back together again.

This is why they have closed so many schools as well, especially the large zoned schools.

Those schools were the center pieces of the old system, so if you want to blow up the old system completely you have to go after those schools.

Since 2002, Bloomberg and his various chancellors have closed most of those large zoned schools and replaced them with either smaller schools or charter schools.

But the pace of destruction has not been fast enough for Bloomberg as he realizes his Reign of Error is coming to an end. In addition, the Cathie Black debacle took him and the DOE off track for a few months, further requiring an acceleration of their creative destruction plans.

This is why Bloomberg is putting the pedal to the metal this year on school closures - closing a total of 49 schools - and school openings - opening a total of 80 next year.

If Bloomberg gets his way on the 23 SIG schools and closes them this summer, he will have closed 140 schools since he took office.

Bill Thompson said at an education forum yesterday that he has heard rumors from people in the DOE and from politicians in the legislature that Bloomberg plans on closing 75 schools next year.

Bloomberg has already told us in his State if the City address in January that he plans on opening many new charter schools and small schools before he leaves office, wanting to have over 1800 schools in the system by 2013.

Since he took office, he has opened 589 schools (though some of those new Bloomberg schools have later been closed for "failing".)

To what end is all of this destruction and creation?

Bloomberg says it is to give city voters school choice.

But underlying all of this is the same philosophy Bloomberg brought when he came into office and gave the keys to the system to Joel Klein - destroying what came before so that it can never be put back together again.

Profit for Bloomberg's cronies in the technology, education, and testing worlds is another motive, of course.

Reformers fear there will be rollback when the next mayor comes into office, no matter who it is, because that mayor will not have the same animosity for the old system and hostility toward teachers and the UFT that this mayor has.

This was why they were so angry over the Black chancellorship - that debacle took precious time away from Bloomberg's destruction of the school system and put him on the defensive rather than the offensive on education matters.

This was also why I had hoped Black would stick around for a while longer.

But Black is gone and Bloomberg has his puppet Walcott to do his dirty work and the next year and a half is going to be a particularly destructive time for students, teachers and schools.

When we get to 2014 and the end of Bloomberg's Reign of Error, we will just have to see what is left standing, pick up the pieces of what has been broken and try and make this system human.

Because currently it is a corporatist's wet dream - a top-down managed, fear-based, data-driven system beset by chaos and destruction.

Bloomberg and Walcott can put a happy face on it all they want.

The corporate news media can mislead the public into thinking Bloomberg's reforms have worked all they want to.

The reality is, Bloomberg's legacy has been nothing more than the chaos and destruction he brought to the system.

He used to tout test score gains.

Those disappeared when the state admitted the tests were too easy.

He used to claim he had closed the achievement gap.

That claim disappeared along with the test score gains.

He claims graduation rates have soared since he took office, but the number of NYC grads needing remediation when they get to college suggests graduation rates are phonied up as much as the testing data was.

Really, his only accomplishment under mayoral control has been blowing up the old system, replacing it with the constant churn of chaos and destruction and enriching his cronies in the testing, charter school, and media worlds with all that yummy yummy education money in the form of hundreds of millions of dollars in no bid contracts.

Levon Helm In Final Stages Of Terminal Cancer

Via The Guardian, some sad, sad news:

Levon Helm, the revered multi-instrumentalist and singer for the group the Band, is in the final stages of cancer, according to his family.

A heartbreaking note appeared on the musician's website Tuesday announcing that he is terminally ill:

Dear Friends,

Levon is in the final stages of his battle with cancer. Please send your prayers and love to him as he makes his way through this part of his journey.

Thank you fans and music lovers who have made his life so filled with joy and celebration… he has loved nothing more than to play, to fill the room up with music, lay down the back beat, and make the people dance! He did it every time he took the stage…

We appreciate all the love and support and concern.

From his daughter Amy, and wife Sandy

Helm was scheduled to play Wellmont Theater in New Jersey earlier this month but cancelled due to a back injury. At the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony on Saturday, former bandmate Robbie Robertson sent "love and prayers" out to Helm.

Helm was diagnosed with throat cancer in the 1990s but had since beaten it back. In the fall of 2007 he released the brilliant album Dirt Farmer, Helm's first studio solo recording since 1982. His voice, silenced by the disease, had returned a little thinner, but with its characteristic grit and class. It won him a Grammy for the year's best traditional folk album.

Helm, who grew up working on an Arkansas farm, is known for a soulfully gravelled vocal delivery – country-baked and whiskey soaked. He can be heard singing and playing on many of the Band's most classic recordings, such as The Weight, Up on Cripple Creek, Ophelia and The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.

One of my favorite Band songs - "Don't Do It" from The Academy of Music with that fabulous horn section. That's Snooky Young right behind Levon:




Ride easy, Levon.

NYC Poverty Rate Rises By 100,000; Bloomberg Contributes To This Rise With Ed Reform Policies

Two stories in today's NY Times caught my eye. Here's the first:

The number of New Yorkers classified as poor in 2010 increased by nearly 100,000 from the year before, raising the poverty rate by 1.3 percentage points to 21 percent — the highest level and the largest year-to-year increase since the city adopted a more detailed definition of poverty in 2005.

The recession and the sluggish recovery have taken a particularly harsh toll on children, with more than one in four under 18 living in poverty, according to an analysis by the city’s Center for Economic Opportunity that will be released on Tuesday.

Families with children were also vulnerable. They had a poverty rate of 23 percent, and a significant number of households were struggling to remain above the poverty line. Even families with two full-time earners were more likely to be considered poor in 2010; their ranks swelled by 1.3 percentage points to 5 percent compared with 2009.

By the city measure, more than 1.7 million residents were poor in 2010, the last year for which an analysis could be calculated.

...

The city classified 12.4 percent of New York residents as near poor — living at 100 percent through 124 percent of the poverty level — compared with 5.4 percent by the federal measure.

From 2009 to 2010, according to the federal standard, the city’s poverty rate increased 1.5 percentage points to 18.8 percent.

The poverty rate had declined for years from a high of 20.5 percent in 2005 but began climbing in 2008, when the recession hit. Hispanic and black New Yorkers, including children, were hit especially hard.

“Given the priority that policy makers have given to child poverty,” the analysis by Mark Levitan, the center’s director of poverty research, said, “the rise in the poverty rate for children, from 22.9 percent in 2008 to 25.8 percent in 2010, is particularly notable.”

And now the connecting story:

New York City is filled with schools marked twice over for death.

The Bloomberg administration long ago determined that its education revolution would occur at the edge of an ax. So far, officials have closed 140 schools, which they routinely describe as failing, and replaced them with smaller schools and charters, which they routinely describe as making “historic gains.”

Perhaps this is so. But for tens of thousands of children who live in the purgatory of schools marked for closing, boasts of an education revolution bring little comfort.

Last week, I talked with Juan Pagan, the parent association president at Legacy High School for Integrated Studies in Manhattan. This year, the city’s Panel for Education Policy, a public board as obedient to mayoral desire as any in the city, voted to begin the shutdown of Legacy, a process that takes years.

Mr. Pagan described a school slowly bleeding out. Elective classes and after-school programs falling away. Favorite teachers seeking new jobs. But for his daughter, a 19-year-old senior in special education without enough credits to graduate, the most grievous recent loss was the social worker.

“They say the school is shrinking, and the social worker was excessed,” he said. “The teachers are great, but, I mean, oh my God, that social worker was keeping her in school.”

He talked faster. “I’m sorry; let me take a deep breath,” he said. “I want to know how you can shrink a school while so many kids are still inside of it.”

...

The 23 schools marked for closing began this year weighed down with higher percentages of special education and over-age students than other public schools in New York. In there are strong students, but many more arrive at the front door with pitifully low math and reading scores.

Many of these schools will, in their last years of existence, become gathering places for the forgotten. Homeless children, teenage parents, those struggling with English: it’s as if the department channeled the most troubled students to the most troubled schools.

The administration decided to close Paul Robeson High School in Crown Heights, Brooklyn; fully 13 percent of its students live in homeless shelters or in homes with more than one family.

To live this reality is to feel the weight of impossibility weighing down. Joanne Frank, once the principal at Norman Thomas High School in Manhattan, retired 10 years ago. But she recalled when a previous administration closed two high schools. Within weeks, waves of students from those failed schools began washing up at her door. “The administration is depressed and angry, the teachers are depressed and angry, and the kids feel they failed,” she said.

Back at Legacy High School, Keyla Marte of East Harlem has battled that fate. She’s fought to save her school. She plans to go to college and perhaps become a teacher.

I listened to her bubble over with ideas. But in the end, even her hope sounds strained.

“Our school,” she said, “is slowly fading away. You can say that, and it’s very sad.”

According to the Center for Economic Opportunity report, one in four children is living in poverty.

Bloomberg's strategy to deal with this is to close many of the schools they attend, steal the money that should be going to those school to give those children decent educations, hand that money to education consultants, Verizon techs and SIG hucksters, and reopen them as small schools or charters with a whole other population of students.

No wonder the poverty rate is increasing.

And even if these children graduate high school, go on to college and try and find a job afterward, they will struggle like no other generation in recent memory.

There are no jobs for most of these kids outside of the service industry or retail.

That's the reality.

Bloomberg has contributed to that reality too by backing up his cronies on Wall Street and the increased financialization of the economy wherein only people who move paper around on trading desks make any money anymore.

He has also opposed the living wage bill that would require companies doing business with the city and receiving large subsidies in the process to pay $10 an hour to employees with benefits or $11.50 an hour without benefits.

But Bloomberg says businesses cannot afford to do this and so he opposes the law.

He prefers the feudalism economy we have now where people are chained down for life in debt as they try and educate themselves to compete in an increasingly cutthroat globalized economy that sees Bloomberg's Wall Street cronies benefit every time they outsource jobs to Sri Lanka and put more Americans under the poverty line with the leftover crap wages here.

Make no mistake, Bloomberg's free market policies help contribute to this sorry state of economic affairs and his education policies - the school closures, the stealing money from schools and handing it to consultants and technology companies, the emphasis on charter schools, the busting of the teachers union, the demonization of labor - are all part of the same story.

We live in a neo-feudal state and Bloomberg is the Lord, Goldman Sachs are the Knight of the Round, and most of the rest of us are the vassals left to compete for the scraps from the Bloomberg banquet table.

Cuomo's Nixonian Side Re-Exposed

Ten years ago, Andrew Cuomo had a reputation as a nasty, vindictive, paranoid asshole.

After his loss to Carl McCall, Cuomo decided to reinvent himself (the "New Cuomo") and came back into public life trying to seem more measured, more mature - less like his old self, the nasty, vindictive, paranoid asshole.

One of the strategies he employed as part of his reinvention was to court Rupert Murdoch and Murdoch's man in Albany, Fred Dicker, in order to get the NY Post and FOX News on his side.

By courting Murdoch and his henchmen, Cuomo was following in the footsteps of British politicians like Tony Blair who had shown how powerful it was to have Murdoch and his papers on your side when you're a politician - even one who is ostensibly from the decidedly less conservative party.

So far, that reinvention has worked.

Cuomo has extremely high approval ratings two years into his governorship and he has managed to take his popularity and use it to push through all kinds of policies that Rupert Murdoch likes.

In return Murdoch's papers treat Cuomo with respect and promote this image of Cuomo as mature, measured, statesmanlike and indeed, presidential.

But behind the scenes Cuomo has the reputation for being the same nasty, vindictive, paranoid asshole he always was - he's simply learned to game the public relations so that few people outside of politics know that.

Unfortunately for Cuomo, both the connections to Murdoch and the re-emergence of the old Cuomo have been exposed today. The Village Voice political blog does a great job of covering the story:

Governor Andrew Cuomo's PR flack is under fire for a "file" he kept on a reporter who's often critical of Cuomo -- and now the gov's PR squad is running damage control.

First stop -- as always -- Andrew Cuomo apologist/New York Post state capitol bureau chief Fred Dicker's radio show.

It should be noted that we contacted the governor's office last night asking for an explanation of the "file." Like many other media outlets that publish less-than-flattering commentary on the governor, we were ignored.

Dicker -- who currently is in the process of writing a biography on Cuomo (natch) -- had Cuomo Press Secretary Josh Vlasto on his show this morning to discuss the "file" kept on Albany reporter Elizabeth Benjamin by Cuomo Communications Director Richard Bamberger regarding the "generally snarky" blog posts she's written about the governor.

Vlasto -- who took time away from his vacation to chat with Cuomo's pal Dicker -- claims the "file" isn't nearly as sinister, or "Nixon-esque" as certain members of the media are making it out to be.

An "unfortunate episode" is how Vlasto describes the "file" on Benjamin, claiming that it's nothing of any substance -- just a collection of blog posts with a few notes from Bamberger (read it for yourself here).

He blames the spread of the leaked "file" on the fast-paced nature of Internet journalism -- specifically blogs that can be particularly "snarky."

Dicker, obviously, agreed with Vlasto's assessment of how insignificant the information contained in the "file" is -- with no mention of what the "file" represents: how paranoid the governor's office is with Cuomo's media image, and how Cuomo's PR people pick and choose which media outlets will have access to the governor based on how favorable their coverage will be. For example, the governor has appeared on Benjamin's public affairs television show, Capitol Tonight, a grand total of once. Dicker, on the other hand, frequently has Cuomo as a guest on his radio show, and currently is writing a biography of the governor, for which he's been assured he'll have Cuomo's "cooperation."

Dicker, obviously, is at the top of the list when it comes to Cuomo-approved reporters, so the governor's office's paranoia with the media doesn't impact him. The rest of us aren't as lucky/don't treat the governor like he's royalty -- in the past two months, the governor's office has only once responded to our request for comment...on anything.

Dicker went so far as to suggest that there might be some sort of "espionage" going on on the second floor of the state capitol, and that reporters might be picking through the governor's trash looking for "exclusive" documents, like the "file" on Benjamin.

Dicker further blamed the distribution of the "file" compiled by Bamberger -- who Dicker apparently adores -- to the "snarky" nature of the blogosphere, noting that "snarky" is just a modern-day term for "nasty." He illustrated his point by saying how "nasty" the Village Voice has been with him the past "several weeks."

Keep in mind, this is the same Fred Dicker who's alleged to have sent photographers to the home of former gubernatorial candidate/Cuomo opponent Carl Paladino to take pictures of his daughter.

We sent Dicker an email asking if he really didn't see anything wrong with the gov's office keeping a "file" on a reporter. We'll let you know if he gets back to us.

This will be interesting to watch going forward.

First, the episode gives us a glimpse of the old nasty, vindictive, paranoid Cuomo in action once again - building a kind of enemies list of media people, compiling alleged crimes committed by these media people and perhaps looking for ways to retaliate against them.

Second, in this Voice piece you can see the resentment Cuomo has built up in the press corps who are not part of his Royal Court (NY 1, in another example, has a "Cuomo Clock" that counts the number of days Cuomo has refused to appear on the channel.) As Cuomo tries to pivot to presidential politics come 2014, it will be interesting to see if his hardball media tactics don't come back to bite him.

Third, you can see how the relationship between Andrew Cuomo, Rupert Murdoch and Fred Dicker is as corrupt as any between Murdoch and and British politicians like Tony Blair or David Cameron. Cuomo is completely on Murdoch's payroll, giving the man whatever he wants in order to stay on his good side and get the glowing coverage Dicker and the Post provide.

Witness when Cuomo almost decided not to push heavily for a new teacher evaluation system earlier this year. Murdoch took to Twitter to call Cuomo a "coward" and within minutes Cuomo had fallen all over himself to give Murdoch what he wanted on the evaluation system.

When Rupert (or Fred Dicker) talks, Cuomo jumps. And when Cuomo needs to be defended in the media, Fred Dicker and the Murdoch papers swing into action.

So far, Cuomo has gotten away with this strategy. But today's drama over Liz Benjamin, while certainly not fatal or even all that damaging to Cuomo's reputation (after all, other than politicos, who the hell reads the blogs this stuff shows up on?) does show that Cuomo is still the same nasty, vindictive paranoid asshole he always was and many in the Albany press corps will be happy to hand his head to him when they get the chance.

NYSED Commissioner: Teacher Evaluation System In NYC Is "Inevitable"

First, the story:

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Despite the rocky relationship between City Hall and the United Federation of Teachers, State Education Commissioner John King is confident the two sides will eventually agree on one of the most hotly contested issues in city education: Teacher evaluations.

"I think a lot of it is about trust-building, on the (state education) department's part, and on the city's part, to have people believe that the evaluation isn't just about firing people - it's actually about helping people get better," King said in a meeting with the Advance editorial board.

A state law passed last month laid out the bulk of how a 100-point scale will be used to grade teachers, but left it to individual districts and unions to hammer out the finer details and come to agreements. Of the 100 points, 40 will come from student assessment scores, a mix of state exams and local tests left up to each individual school system. The other 60 percent will be based on classroom observations, portfolios, student and parent feedback, and other measures.

The law also smoothed the road for negotiations by setting up an appeals system in New York City.

King said he believes the UFT knows "evaluation is inevitable."

"It's in state law. When you poll nationally, or in the state, there's overwhelming public support for the notion that there should be evaluations," King said.

Now my reaction:

King shills for this system which will require students take approximately 35 tests in every subject every year (both city and state exams) in order to get a value-added measurement to use to evaluate teachers.

No poll that I know has asked parents "Would you support a new teacher evaluation system that requires children to take 35 high stakes standardized tests a year that will be used to decide if a teacher keeps his/her job or not?"

I bet that kind of poll would not have the support King says evaluation polling has.

As for the new evaluation system not being about firing teachers, that's absolute horse hockey.

The system was changed by King and Regents Chancellor Tisch, with the help of Cuomo, to make it JUST that.

If a teacher comes up "ineffective" on the testing part of the eval (the 40%), they get fired.

That's not about helping teachers improve - that's about firing teachers while forcing the state to hire King's testing cronies to the tune of hundreds of millions to create all these new tests.

Let's also not forget that a teacher can be ranked either "effective" or "developing" on all three parts of the eval - the state test part, the city test part, the classroom observations - and STILL be rated "ineffective" overall because King, Tisch and Cuomo went back and changed how the 100 point eval system is added up, making 65 the cut off for "ineffective".

This system is completely created to fire teachers, as many as possible, as quickly as possible.

I think once parents see how insane the new evaluation system is - inlcuding the required 35 tests per - what is "inevitable" is that it will be changed.

But I also suspect it will be around for a few years, do lots of damage to children, teachers and schools and once it is changed, King will NOT be held accountable for the mess her brought.

Bill To End Mayoral Control Of NYC Schools Introduced

Now this is change I can believe in:

State lawmakers have introduced legislation that would repeal mayoral control of the city school system — a move that would undo one of Mayor Bloomberg’s crowning achievements, The Post has learned.

Sen. Velmanette Montgomery (D-Brooklyn) and Assemblyman Keith Wright (D-Harlem) claim that the 10-year experiment giving City Hall sole power over educational matters has been a failure.

And Montgomery has won the support of the ranking Democrat on the Senate Education Committee, Suzi Oppenheimer (D-Westchester), who has signed on as co-sponsor to the measure.

The mayoral control law is not up renewal until June 30, 2015. But under their bills, the two legislators call for overhauling the law this year.

“There’s a lot of support for reversing mayoral control and creating a more independent board in terms of setting educational policy and hiring the chancellor. This bill does that,” Montgomery said.

Of course City Hall says this bill is nothing but shillery for the UFT.

But that's not the reason why mayoral control should be repealed.

The reason mayoral control should be repealed is because the autocratic little businessman named Bloomberg has

a) run roughshod over students, parents, teachers, and administrators these past ten years by imposing his own policies regardless of the opinions, feelings or needs of anybody else - including people in the community

b) closed hundreds of schools in order to hand space in public school buildings to his charter school cronies like Eva Moskowitz

c) actually INCREASED the achievement gap on test scores between white and Asian students and black and Latino students while claiming he has done the opposite

d) corporatized the curriculum, standardized the bulletin boards and otherwise imposed a top-down, do it my way or hit the highway control system that stifles creativity in schools

e) spent hundreds of millions of dollars on corporate consultants while cutting 20% from actual school budgets

f) and most importantly, fetishized standardized testing to such a degree that students in the next few years will take as many as 35 high stakes standardized tests a year that will not mean anything for them but could mean firings for their teachers and closing for their schools

Those are just a few reasons off the top of my head why mayoral control should be ended.

One more just came to mind.

The mayor and his DOE are getting set to close the 25 SIG schools, fire 50% of the teachers (thus adding them to the ATR pool) and reopen the schools the next day with new names and new teachers - a move that will probably cost $100 million before all is said and done - not because Bloomberg wants to improve education for the children in those schools (indeed, the school closure meetings show students do NOT want these schools closed) but simply to punish the UFT for not agreeing to every component he wanted in the new teacher evaluation system.

And of course because Bloomberg has dictatorial control of the system, he can do this without regard for anybody else.

I can't think of a better symbol for why mayoral control should be ended.

So the new legislation adds some accountability for the mayor:

“It’s been a very unpopular process having this top-down decision-making with no one able to weigh in. Having a singular authority with total power on all the decisions has not worked out for all of the children,” Montgomery said.

Montgomery’s bill would strip the mayor’s control over school policy by cutting his appointments to the 13-member citywide school board in half, from eight to four members. The City Council would appoint four members and the borough presidents one apiece.

And the board, rather than the mayor, would select the chancellor.

Wright’s slightly different bill would create a nine-member board with just two appointed by the mayor. Five others would be named by the borough presidents and one apiece by the state education commissioner and City Council.

Making the PEP board something other a rubber stamp for the mayor would go a long way toward putting the "public" back into the public education system in NYC.

Expect the usual suspects - the ones who make tons of money off the mayor's reforms like Moskowitz and General Geoffrey Canada and the KIPPsters - to scream holy hell about this.

But as Valerie Strauss pointed out in her Washington Post blog today, sometimes the reformers who scream the loudest about helping the kids are the ones making the most money.

And so it is here in NYC too.

It's time to end mayoral control, time to end the public trough for the charter networks that expropriates resources from the communities and gives it to the privatizers.

It's time to put the "public" back into the public schools system.

Link Teacher Evals To Tests, You Get All Test Prep All The Time

Doesn't take a whole lot of research to figure that out - just look around at what's happening already BEFORE they add the 35 new Common Core tests to every grade, 3-11.

The Newark Star Ledger takes a look at the consequences of basing so much on high stakes tests:

As New Jersey’s public schools put students through the annual spring round of standardized tests, a growing number of districts are devoting time to helping kids prepare.

Standardized tests — the NJ Assessment of Skills and Knowledge, or NJ ASK, for grades 3-8, and the HSPA, for high schoolers — have long been serious business for schools. But with New Jersey moving toward using student test scores in teacher evaluations, experts say the stakes are rising.

Some worry that time spent taking the tests — and preparing for them — will increase at the expense of other learning.

...

In some districts, teachers have been asked to "stop teaching more — go back, review and get kids ready" for the test, said Rosemary Knab, associate director of research for the New Jersey Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union.

This isn’t just happening in New Jersey, said Drew Gitomer, a professor at the Rutgers Graduate School of Education and an expert on standardized tests. Reports from other states have "suggested a very substantial amount of school time is spent preparing for tests in ways that are hard to justify educationally," he said.

If test scores are linked to teacher evaluations, that practice will only increase.

"If they think the way to improve test scores is to practice a lot on the test, I think they will do that," Gitomer said. "Some test preparation, in its place, is okay. It’s when it becomes the dominant form of the curriculum, that it has pernicious effects on education."

President Obama said in his 2012 State of the Union address that he wants less teaching to the test in public schools, and yet he has put in place policies that promote national standardized tests based upon the Common Core, teacher evaluations based upon how well students score on those tests and (if his Secretary of Education gets his way) teacher pay based upon those same scores.

Does he REALLY think these policies are going to lead to less teaching to the test?

Does he REALLY think these policies are going to improve education for children?

Does he REALLY think a narrowing of the curriculum to only what is tested and school environments where FEAR over test scores rules everything else is the way to educate children for the future?

If you put into place policies that promote 35+ tests a year and base teachers' jobs and pay on those scores (not to mention the existence of the schools themselves), you are going to get a very damaged and damaging education system.

President Obama is a lot of things, but he is not a stupid man.

I have to assume that he has put into place education policies that promote these consequences because he wants things that way.

Cuomo Vetoes $5,000 Grant For Little League Kids, Hands BlackRock $5 Million In Taxbreaks

Governor 1% is at it again - stealing from the little guy to give to the rich and powerful.

Tony Avella calls Cuomo out on it in an open letter to the governor:

Dear Governor Cuomo:

I am writing to you in regards to your recent budget line item vetoes that eliminated certain discretionary funding.

As you may know, I completely disagree with your decision. This funding went to groups that need and rely on this money to survive. In my district alone, you eliminated funding for such groups as the Bayside Little League, Bayside Historical Society, and an anti graffiti initiative. These groups certainly are not pork.

However, I was even more disheartened to learn that BlackRock, the world’s largest investment manager, will be benefiting from a tax break that was included in this year’s budget. It is unfathomable that this company, which earned $2.3 billion on revenue of $9.1 billion and manages over $3.5 trillion in assets, will receive a tax break estimated to be worth at least $5 million while a neighborhood little league cannot receive a $5,000 grant.

Your characterization that these were new budgetary grants is a convenient distraction from the truth that these monies were allocated to specific communities. Those neighborhoods deserve to receive the grants that had been previously promised.

We should be helping these youth groups, senior centers, cultural organizations and little leagues that provide essential services, not companies that cater to and are part of the 1 percent.

Once again, I reiterate my strong opposition to your veto and I ask for an explanation of your actions, especially as it relates to BlackRock.

Sincerely,

Tony Avella
State Senator
11th Senatorial District

I'm not sure why Cuomo is so popular.

Either New Yorkers believe the Cuomo mythology churned out by Murdoch and Zuckerman and Cuomo himself and don't know what a corporatist he is.

Or they support his corporatism.

In my world, stealing from little leaguers to give to the scum at BlackRock is criminal.

But in Cuomo's world, it's just business as usual.

Bloomberg Appeals Court Decision On 911 System Report To Keep Boondoggle Under Wraps

The Accountability Mayor refuses to be held accountable himself:

The Bloomberg administration appealed on Friday a state judge’s order requiring New York City to release an consultant’s report that is believed to be critical of the 911 emergency-dispatch system.

“The city has been forthright and already provided reams of critical documents — but releasing an unfinished work product will chill the candid discussion necessary for genuine analysis,” said Gail Mulligan, the city’s assistant corporation counsel. “Today’s legal filing means that an automatic stay is in place. We’re hopeful that the appellate court will consider our arguments carefully.”

On Monday, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron ordered the city to turn over the documents by Monday of next week. He compared the city’s claim that the report should be kept private to former President Richard Nixon’s claims of executive privilege during the Watergate scandal.

But an appeal means the report will remain under wraps for the foreseeable future.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg commissioned the report following the city’s poor response to the post-Christmas blizzard in 2010, a storm that paralyzed the city for days and tarnished the mayor’s reputation as an expert manager. The mayor has repeatedly apologized for the city’s response to the storm, calling it inadequate.

The Teacher Data Reports they released as soon as they could.

The 911 report that shows Bloomberg's administration to be crooked and incompetent - that they're sitting on for as long as they can.

This system is $1 billion over budget and doesn't work.

The report shows that.

Bloomberg wants to make sure New Yorkers don't learn that for a long, long while.

In other Bloomberg tech news, the administration whacked its top technology official on Thursday over all the "hiccups" the administration has had with technology projects going millions over budget and becoming outdated before they're finished.

New York City’s chief technology official resigned after clashing repeatedly with a deputy mayor over the management of several costly, ambitious and troubled projects that have bedeviled the Bloomberg administration, people briefed on the confrontations said on Friday.

The departure of the technology official, Carole Post, was announced on Thursday, a day before Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said the city would challenge a judge’s order to release what is said to be a sharply critical consultant’s report on an over-budget, much-delayed modernization of the city’s emergency calls and dispatching system.

The 911 system overhaul was one of a number of technology projects that were signature initiatives of the Bloomberg administration, but encountered cost overruns and performance issues.

City Hall aides said Ms. Post, who is the commissioner of the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications, should not be blamed for the mismanagement of the $2.3 billion 911 project, whose woes predated her arrival in the job by several years.

But the city’s deputy mayor for operations, Caswell F. Holloway, grew increasingly frustrated by and impatient with Ms. Post’s department’s work on major initiatives, individuals involved in the city’s technology operation said.

...

In meetings over several months last year and as recently as March 27, people briefed on them said, Mr. Holloway, a hard-charging infighter who formerly led the city’s Department of Environmental Protection, voiced concerns about the cost of an upgrade to CityNet, the city’s internal data network; continuing problems and shortcomings with CitiServ, a data center that was supposed to consolidate dozens of city agency servers; and a shortage of users for NYCWin, a secure municipal wireless network.

The wireless network, for example, which cost $500 million to build and costs $40 million a year to operate, is underused and arguably outdated.

CityNet has experienced interruptions in service, despite a system of redundant fiber optic rings intended to enable it to withstand a breakdown. And the $95 million CitiServ project has confounded agency officials, with DoITT struggling to migrate old systems into the new data center.

The technology department is officially referred to by its acronym, DoITT, but is sometimes derided as “Don’t Do It” by city workers who seek to avoid working with the department.

Tech projects way over budget, not delivering what was promised, or worse, outdated by the time they're completed.

That's Bloomberg' technology legacy as mayor.

Doesn't matter if Bloomberg has a great track record in the private sector as some technology genius.

As mayor, his record sucks at best.

At worst, it veers on the criminal (a la CityTime.)

Which is why he wants to sit on the 911 report.

He's got to know that this $2 billion boondoggle is going to make CityTime look like good governance.

More Fallout For Murdoch In Hacking Scandal

Is he forced to give up his stake in BSkyB?

A British parliamentary report into a phone hacking scandal may lead eventually to News Corp being forced into cutting or selling its stake in the highly profitable pay-TV firm BSkyB, having already dropped its bid to buy it outright last year.

Parliament's culture committee is widely expected to criticise News Corp in its long-awaited report, raising the possibility that the British broadcast watchdog Ofcom will take action against Rupert Murdoch's media conglomerate.

News Corp lies at the centre of a long-running scandal over phone and computer hacking, in which journalists intercepted the voicemails of celebrities and crime victims, and now faces allegations that police officers were also paid for information that was used in newspaper reports.

Ofcom, which has to ensure that directors of TV companies are "fit and proper" to hold a broadcast licence, is already conducting its own investigation into News Corp and BSkyB's directors, including Murdoch's youngest son James, who resigned as BSkyB chairman last week but remains on the board.

Meanwhile, Murdoch's influential British newspapers, which were subdued for a time at the height of the scandal, have gone on the offensive against Conservative Prime Minister David Camerson and his coalition government.

"From a political standpoint, Rupert Murdoch's attacks could have really burned his bridges with the government," said Ian Whittaker, a media analyst at London investment bank Liberum Capital, who follows BSkyB.

"From the point of view of News Corp's opponents, if you wanted to lance this whole boil once and for all with News Corp and its stake in Sky, this would be a very good opportunity to do that," he said.

Indeed.

Now that word has come that at least three law suits will be filed against News Corporation by hacking victims in the United States, this is a great opportunity to lance the boil that is Murdoch and News Corporation here in America too.

As I posted yesterday, every time light is shone onto News Corporation, it's employees and its business practices, criminality is unearthed.

You can be certain the same will happen here in America once Mark Lewis and Norman Siegel force scrutiny onto News Corp. via hacking lawsuits.

Let's lance the boil that is News Corporation.

It's time to get this infection off the ass of the world.

An Open Letter To Erin Durkin, Rachel Monahan And Ben Chapman

Dear Ms. Monahan, Ms. Durkin, and Mr. Chapman,

Now that your April 8th article about Chaz has been found to be error-riddled and your editor has issued a note saying just that, I suppose you'll be writing another story in the Daily News that will be displayed as prominently telling us how you got this allegation against Chaz wrong?

You'll of course note that whoever you received the info from at the DOE was lying to you about the details and you'll apologize for not checking your facts before printing your story, yes?

And then you'll quit your job as "journalists" and go and work as stenographers for the NYCDOE, a position for which you are much more suited.

If the world were fair, this is what would happen.

Of course the world is not fair and I did not just fall off a turnip truck, so I know you will still be around tomorrow to print your lies and destroy innocent people on a daily basis.

How do you sleep at night?

How do you look at yourselves in the mirror?

How do you do what you do on a daily basis, slinging the lies of the rich and powerful and smearing the reputations of the poor and humble, and not think of yourselves as evil?

Seriously.

If ever there is a time for a serious re-examination of career and self, this would be it.

Please see this instructional video to aid you in your quest to living a life of truth, honesty and integrity.

Why don't you quit doing the evil you do for the union-busting Mort Zuckerman and the union-busting Michael Bloomberg and do something you can be proud of?

Sincerely,

Reality-Based Educator
NYC Teacher

Daily News Reporters Should Be Held Accountable For Chaz Smears

The Daily News took the DOE press release about "pervert teachers" and printed it verbatim.

They never checked their facts.

They printed lies about Chaz.

They defended their article.

And then they issued an editor's note saying "Oops! We got stuff wrong..."

Here is that note:

Ed. Note: This story refers to a letter of reprimand received by Eric Chesanoff for a 2002 incident in which he allegedly put his arms around a student’s waist. Although the Department of Education recently supplied that letter to the Daily News, we have since learned that an arbitrator ruled in 2004 that the allegation was false and ordered the Department to remove the reprimand from Chasanoff’s file.

Not good enough.

The reporters on this story should be fired for failure to do their jobs.

Not only did they not "add value" to the knowledge of their readers by failing to check facts before acting as stenographers for the crap the DOE gave them to print, they helped to ruin somebody's reputation.

As Pissed Off Teacher wrote, these reporters are always looking to hold teachers accountable.

How come nobody holds these reporters accountable?

Murdoch's Times Of London Sued For Illegal Hacking

The lawsuits against News Corporation just keep coming:

News Corp. (NWSA)’s Times newspaper in London, which escaped the phone-hacking and bribery scandals at Rupert Murdoch’s other U.K. titles, was sued by a former police blogger for hacking into his e-mail account in 2009.

The lawsuit by detective Richard Horton, who wrote an unauthorized, anonymous blog about police work, was filed yesterday in London against News Corp.’s Times Newspapers Ltd. unit. The paper in January admitted the hacking, which allowed it to reveal Horton’s identity three years ago.

Horton, of the Lancashire Constabulary in Northwest England, seeks “substantial” damages in the case, his lawyer Patrick Daulby of Taylor Hampton Solicitors Ltd., said in a phone interview today. The suit was filed after the Times failed to respond to a letter describing the claims, Daulby said.

The Times, Britain’s oldest daily newspaper, is the third News Corp. title in London to come under suspicion of wrongdoing after police probes of phone hacking and bribery at its best- selling U.K. tabloids. Murdoch, chairman of the New York-based company, shuttered the News of the World in July to help contain public anger after revelations it hacked the mobile-phone voice mail of a murdered schoolgirl in 2002.

Mary Kearney, a spokeswoman for London-based News International, which publishes the Times, confirmed the lawsuit had been filed and declined to comment further.

...

The Times’ editor, James Harding, told an inquiry into media ethics in February that the paper misled a judge who oversaw Horton’s failed lawsuit to block publication of his name. The publisher won by claiming it deduced the author of the “NightJack” blog through legitimate means, even though it was aware of the hacking, Harding said.

Reporter Patrick Foster hacked Horton’s e-mail in May 2009 to expose him as the writer of the blog, arguing that his identity was in the public interest. Horton, in his earlier lawsuit, had raised the possibility that his e-mail had been illegally accessed.

Ah, yes - illegally accessing someone's email, claiming it was in the public interest to do so when caught, then misleading a judge in a lawsuit brought against the paper to keep it from publicizing what was learned from criminal means.

That sure does sound like Rupert Murdoch's company.

This comes after the news that Mark Lewis, the lawyer who has represented hacking victims including the family of Milly Dowler in hacking cases in Britain, is filing at least three lawsuits in the United States against News Corporation for phone hacking on U.S. soil.

Which comes on the heels of the news that another Murdoch-owned subsidiary hired hackers to steal security codes of Murdoch's TV satellite rivals and spread those all over the Internet in order to wreck their businesses.

Which comes on the heels of the news that a TV news channel partially owned by Murdoch has admitted to two instances of illegal computer hacking.

Which comes on the heels of all those arrests of current and former Murdoch employees at The Sun and the now shuttered News of the World

Which comes on the heels of the news that former News International chief Rebekah Brooks and former News International director of group security Mark Hannah have been arrested for trying to cover up the hacking scandal.

Joel Klein, the man Murdoch hired to "fix" the scandal fall-out must be a very busy man, what with all these pending lawsuits and new allegations of computer hacking, TV piracy and criminal conspiracy to cover up crimes.

I wonder where he's going to get time to promote his new StudentsFirstNY education reform group?

I mean, he's got his work cut out for him, doesn't he?

Did New York Post Reporters Engage In Illegal Hacking?

With the news today that Mark Lewis, the British lawyer who successfully battled Rupert Murdoch and News International over illegal phone hacking in Britain, is going to file at least three cases in the United States against News Corporation for phone hacking on U.S. soil, one question comes to mind:

How far does the criminality at News Corporation go?

Looking back, every time there was an allegation of hacking or wrongdoing made against News Corporation/International employees, the company sought to minimize the damage by either denying the allegations or saying they were limited to one individual.

When hacking reports first surfaced in Britain and News International (News Corporation's British subsidiary) was forced to admit that someone at the News of the World had hacked into phones, they blamed the incidents on "one rogue reporter."

Later on, that excuse was made inoperative when it became apparent that hacking was endemic at News of the World, many reporters there had engaged in the practice and News of the World executives knew this.

At that point, News International claimed hacking was limited to the News of the World tabloid (which Murdoch promptly closed) and was not engaged in by employees at any other N.I. papers.

But that excuse was made inoperative when the police arrested a News International employee at News of the World's sibling paper, The Sun, for hacking.

At this point, News Corporation, looking to minimize the damage to just its British tabloids, began turning over reams of evidence to British police that led to the arrests of more Sun employees.

The atmosphere got so toxic at The Sun, as employees felt Rupert Murdoch and his scandal fixer Joel Klein were using them as scandal scapegoats, that Murdoch himself had to fly into London to quell potential rebellion.

Then allegations came that reporters for the Times of London, another Murdoch owned newspaper, had engaged in the hacking of email accounts, further ratcheting up the scandal from reporters at the Murdoch tabloids hacking into phones to reporters at the respected Times of London hacking into email accounts.

The line from News Corporation at this point was hacking and the attendant police bribery, corruption, conspiracy to cover up crimes and destruction of evidence were limited to its British newspapers and were being cleaned up by scandal fixer Joel Klein and News Corporation's new ethical guidelines committee.

But that excuse was made inoperative when it was reported that Sky News, a partially-owned Murdoch TV news channel, had also engaged in illegal hacking of computer accounts.

The excuse executives at Sky News used for the illegal hacking was that the crimes were in the "public interest," though legal experts in Britain say the legal statutes contain no such clause for law breaking.

In any case, the hacking scandal had now gone from Murdoch's British papers to a TV news channel partially owned by Murdoch. In an additional widening of the scandal, News Corporation has also been accused of hiring hackers to steal the security codes of rival satellite operators and disseminate those codes for free on the Internet to ruin its rivals.

When those allegations surfaced, Rupert Murdoch took to Twitter to deny them as ridiculous and to claim that News Corp. was getting ready to hit back hard against its opponents.

That was last week.

This week, one of its opponents, the lawyer who successfully fought the Murdochs and News International over hacking in Britain (winning settlements for Milly Dowler's family as well as scores of other hacking victims) instead has taken the fight to Murdoch and News Corporation by announcing suits to be filed in the U.S. over hacking on U.S. soil, with at least one of the alleged hackees a U.S. citizen.

At every point in time when News Corporation was faced with allegations of criminal wrongdoing, the Murdochs or their henchmen (including former NYC schools chancellor Joel Klein) claimed the crimes were limited in scope and there was no further wrongdoing to be revealed.

Every one of those excuses by News Corporation was eventually proven inoperative.

Which brings me to the question of whether New York Post (or Wall Street Journal or FOX News) employees have engaged in any hacking or criminal wrongdoing.

News Corporation defenders have maintained that no hacking has occurred in the United States by News Corporation employees at U.S. news outlets.

Even the cases soon to be filed by Lewis are for hacking done by British reporters at the News of the World (though the hacking is alleged to have occurred on U.S. soil.)

But as I have noted above, at every juncture where News Corporation has tried to build a firewall to the scandal and limit the scope and the damage, the fire has breached the wall and spread elsewhere.

We have gone from phone hacking limited to "one rogue reporter" at News of the World to the exposure of widespread phone hacking by many News of the World employees to the spreading of the both phone and computer hacking to The Sun and the The Times of London to the additional spreading of the hacking to a TV operation partially owned by Rupert Murdoch to TV piracy allegations made against News Corporation in Australia, Britain and Italy.

With every excuse or denial made by News Corporation eventually made inoperative by subsequent revelations of criminal wrongdoing, why should we believe that News Corporation employees at the Murdoch-owned New York Post or Wall Street Journal or FOX News haven't engaged in criminal wrongdoing like hacking, bribery, extortion, etc.?

In addition, many News Corporation employees at the Post, Journal, et al. came over from Murdoch's British newspapers where criminal wrongdoing was habitual.

Why should we believe that those News Corporation journalists and employees left their criminal ways back in Britain when they began work at Murdoch's U.S. papers?

So far, betting that every allegation made against News Corporation over hacking, bribery, criminal activity, et al. is actually worse than first revealed would make you a lot of money while believing ANY of the excuses or denials News Corp. has offered in the scandal would lose you a lot of money.

Now that lawsuits are to be filed in the U.S. against News Corporation, there will be a lot of scrutiny to Murdoch's U.S. operations that he has so far avoided.

For whatever reason, the Obama DOJ has seemingly slow-walked its investigation of claims that News Corporation employees hacked into the family members of 9/11 victims, so much so that some family members have become frustrated by the lack of progress in the case.

I have speculated that just as the Obama DOJ didn't want to prosecute any Bushies over torture because of the political fallout such cases would engender, the Obama DOJ is reluctant to pursue a case against News Corp. here in the U.S. over hacking for fear of seeming "political" in an election year by going after the owner of FOX News.

But with Mark Lewis getting ready to file suits in both NY and LA, you can bet that Murdoch will no longer have his scandal firewall in the U.S. and the Obama DOJ will not be able to slow walk their investigation any more.

And as light gets shone onto News Corp's U.S. properties, particularly onto the Wall Street Journal (where publisher Les Hinton resigned as a consequence of the hacking scandal in Britain) and the Post, more criminal wrongdoing by News Corporation employees will be exposed.

So far that has been the case at every juncture of the scandal.

There is no reason to believe that has changed now.