Bloomberg Wants To Ban Soda But Doesn't Care About PCB's In Schools

From Schoolbook:

Parents at a Brooklyn elementary school are calling on the Department of Education to move faster to remove toxic PCBs from lighting fixtures in school buildings around the city.

At a rally on Monday outside P.S. 146 Brooklyn New School in Carroll Gardens, Alexis Quy said she and other parents had sent the Education Department photographs of likely leaks of the chemical compound.

“To know that there’s a toxic substance in this school that is leaking into the air, that is actually leaking onto surfaces where they can ingest and inhale, seems unbelievable,” she said.

Ms. Quy said parents had also sent letters and petitions, and they were not happy with the response from education officials.

“They say that it poses no immediate health risk,” she said. “O.K. So, our children aren’t going to come into the school and start coughing and wheezing. However, what will happen in 10 years?”

Ten years, that's how long it's going to take Bloomberg and Walcott to remove the cancer-causing toxins from the school.

Clearly Bloomberg doesn't care if kids come down with cancer in 10 or 20 years as a result of exposure to PCB's and other toxins in his schools.

He just wants to make sure they can't have a 24 ounce soda at the movies.

The next time Bloomberg talks about how only he cares about looking out for the city's kids, that the teachers and the union doesn't care, somebody in the press who isn't on his payroll needs to to tell him to his face he's full of soda.

Or toxic PCB's.

Gordon Brown Says Rupert Murdoch Lied Under Oath

From The Guardian:

Gordon Brown has mounted an impassioned and emotional attack on the Murdoch family and News International at the Leveson inquiry, accusing Rupert Murdoch of lying on oath, criticising James Murdoch for "breathtaking arrogance" and the Sun for obtaining unauthorised information about his son's medical condition.

...

A clearly emotional Brown insisted he did not make "unbalanced" and threatening remarks in a phone call to Rupert Murdoch in late September or early October 2009 – directly contradicting evidence given by the media mogul to the Leveson inquiry in April.

Rupert Murdoch had told the inquiry under oath on two successive occasions that the phone call had taken place on or shortly after the Sun newspaper announced it was switching its support to the Tories, which happened on 30 September of that year. The News Corporation boss said that Brown had pledged to "declare war" on his company.

Relying on No 10 call records, Brown said that "News International have produced not one shred of evidence that a call took place, not one date for the call or time for the call".

But despite Brown's statements, a News Corp spokesman said: "Rupert Murdoch stands behind his testimony."

Brown did say that he had a separate conversation with Rupert Murdoch on 10 November. That conversation came shortly after the Sun attacked Brown for sending a hard-to-read handwritten note of condolence to the mother of a soldier killed in Afghanistan.

Brown said there was a discussion in which he argued that the Sun's hostile coverage was undermining the military's efforts in the country.

Brown also revealed that Fife's NHS board had written to him to say it was "highly likely" that a member of its staff told the Sun that his son Fraser had been diagnosed with cystic fibrosis in November 2006.

The newspaper's front-page splash that month pictured Brown under the headline "Four-and-a-half years after daughter's death, docs find cystic fibrosis in baby Fraser".

He told the inquiry that he had submitted a letter from Fife health board "which makes it clear that they have apologised to us because they now believe it highly likely that there was unauthorised information given by a medical or working member of the NHS staff that allowed the Sun in the end through this middleman to publish this story". Brown said his family only agreed to co-operate with the Sun after it was made clear that an article about Fraser's health would be published in any event by the newspaper.

Wait - it gets worse:

Brown's claims – a development of those first aired in parliament last July – set him on another collision course with the Sun, which has insisted it did not access Fraser's medical records and that the 2006 story came from another source – a member of the public "whose family has also experienced cystic fibrosis".

A News International spokesperson said: "We welcome the fact that NHS Fife have today said that they believe there was 'no inappropriate access' to the medical records of Gordon Brown's son. The Sun stands by previous statements issued on the matter."

However, former Sun editor David Yelland, who edited the title between 1998 and 2003, said on Twitter that he believed that Brown and his wife, Sarah, were "bullied" by the tabloid and that: "I'm afraid that my old paper behaved awfully in his last year or so. It was brutal stuff."The statement from NHS Fife suggests it felt under intense pressure to establish how details of Fraser Brown's medical condition were leaked to the Sun, but then carried out an exhaustive investigation.

Two points here:

First, these are evil, disgusting people at the Murdoch papers.

And second, did Murdoch lie under oath about the (supposed) conversation with Brown?

And if so, when will he be prosecuted for his crime?

Tennessee Teacher Evaluation Morass & Florida FCAT Mess Are A Preview Of Tribulations To Come In New York State

Florida and Tennessee have gone further in their "reformy" use of testing to bludgeon students, teachers, administrators and schools than any other state in the nation.

Tennessee's testing and teacher evaluation tribulations have already been covered here by Michael Winerip.

Teachers in the state who work in grades or classes that do not have standardized tests must choose another grade or class that does have standardized tests for their evaluation.

Thus "Math specialists can be evaluated by their school’s English scores, music teachers by the school’s writing scores. "

It's kinda like Vegas on the Mississippi - spin the wheel, win a "highly effective" evaluation for the year! Oh, sorry - you hit red, you're "highly ineffective" for the year!

But it's worse than that. Administrators have to observe teachers at least four time a year, and

Have a pre-observation conference with each teacher (which takes 20 minutes), observe the teacher for a period (50 minutes), conduct a post-observation conference (20 minutes), and fill out a rubric with 19 variables and give teachers a score from 1 to 5 (40 minutes).

The result in Tennessee has been disastrous so far and morale is "in the toilet." As one principal in the state put it:

The new state policies put everyone under stress, are divisive and suck the joy out of a building.

Today, in his last column on education, Winerip looks at the FCAT mess in Florida, where the state "toughened the standards" but didn't change the scoring system.

Passing rates plummeted.

Students who scored high enough on Advanced Placement exams still couldn't get a proficient score on the FCAT.

So what did the state do?

Did they live with their "toughened standards" and soaring failure rates.

Nope - they lowered the score needed for a proficiency rate after the fact and scores soared once again.

Now the state's testing system is the laughing stock of the nation - and that's saying something, considering the problems NYSED Commissioner John King and Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch have had with their Pearson/Pineapple tests here in New York.

Pay close attention to this nonsense in both Tennessee and Florida, because the same kind of arrogant, clueless education reformers are running the show here in NY State as in those two southern states.

King, Tisch, the NYSED and the governor claim the new teacher evaluation system and tests based on the new Common Core State Standards in New York will be "state of the art," "scientific," and "objective."

But as we have seen this year with Pearson's tests - many of which had questions with no right answers, or questions with too many right answers, or questions that didn't make sense, or passages that didn't make sense or translations that didn't make sense - there is nothing "state of the art," "scientific," or "objective" about these tests or the evaluation system built around them.

And the geniuses at the NYSED and the Regents still haven't rolled out the VAM (value-added measurement) they plan to use on teachers yet as part of their "accountability mechanism."

In NYC, the ELA VAM had a median margin of error of 52% and a maximum margin of error of 87%.

NY State's VAM doesn't hold much more promise than the one used in NYC.

Also, they haven't quite figured out how to handle teachers who teach subjects without standardized tests.

Maybe they can play Vegas on the Hudson and use something like Tennessee's system!

They also haven't quite figured out what to do with high school teacher evaluations either, where teachers only have students for 4.5 months before the state exams are given.

Can you evaluate a teacher on 4.5 months of teaching using the test at the end of the semester? Or the end of the year? Or can those evaluations be challenged since some other teacher had the kids in the first part of the year?

Who knows? John King certainly doesn't, and neither does Merryl Tisch, but neither one of these officials care about that.

They're too busy defending themselves over the Pearson mess and attacking anybody who criticizes the state exams and their handling of them as opponents to accountability.

But the mess we have seen in Tennessee and the mess we have seen in Florida are coming here next, because the same half-baked systems they put in place there are being put in place in NY State.

King and Tisch can attack the critiques of their "accountability systems" all they want.

When the systems put in place are absurd and harmful, when the people overseeing these systems are incompetent at best, dishonest at worst, the outcome is going to be pretty, pretty bad.

It's a shame Winerip won't be on the education beat to cover the King and Tisch mess to come.

That's probably not an accident that Winerip is off the education beat at such a crucial time when we need his critical eye and voice.

Cuomo Remains Popular With Voters Despite Gambling Money Scandal

Siena poll taken June 3-6, right during the revelations that Governor Cuomo's Super PAC the Committee To Save New York took $2.4 million from an overseas gambling consortium to run pro-Cuomo ads just days before Governor Cuomo added gambling legalization and "racinos" to his economic agenda shows Cuomo's approval actually went up.

That's right - more people approve of Governor Cuomo's performance after the revelation of the scandal than before.

The Good-Grade Pills Fit Right In With The No Excuses Education Reform Philosophy

I remember seeing some fluff piece in the Times a while back about KIPP founder David Levin and how he works 75-90 hour weeks and only sees his own child on Sundays.

There's no time Monday to Saturday to see his kid, you see, because KIPP keeps him that busy and he just can't break away from his 12.5 to 15 hour work days to spend time with the family.

Nowhere in the fluff piece from the Times does anybody say "Uh, maybe you've got a problem, David. You'd rather work 90 hours a week rather than spend time with your family. Are you familiar with this condition called workaholism? It's similar to alcoholism and drug addiction, in that it allows sufferers to numb out from feelings and escape from anxiety and low self-esteem, only workaholism is a more socially respectable form of addiction and avoidance from uncomfortable emotions."

But no, the word "workaholism" never comes up in the Times piece. Instead David Levin and his 75-90 hour work weeks are fetishized as some grand thing.

I was thinking about that story when I saw this NY Times story about teens so obsessed with grades and achievements that they're loading up on stimulants and ADHD drugs to work longer and harder:

At high schools across the United States, pressure over grades and competition for college admissions are encouraging students to abuse prescription stimulants, according to interviews with students, parents and doctors. Pills that have been a staple in some college and graduate school circles are going from rare to routine in many academically competitive high schools, where teenagers say they get them from friends, buy them from student dealers or fake symptoms to their parents and doctors to get prescriptions.

...

The D.E.A. lists prescription stimulants like Adderall and Vyvanse (amphetamines) and Ritalin and Focalin (methylphenidates) as Class 2 controlled substances — the same as cocaine and morphine — because they rank among the most addictive substances that have a medical use. (By comparison, the long-abused anti-anxiety drug Valium is in the lower Class 4.) So they carry high legal risks, too, as few teenagers appreciate that merely giving a friend an Adderall or Vyvanse pill is the same as selling it and can be prosecuted as a felony.

While these medicines tend to calm people with A.D.H.D., those without the disorder find that just one pill can jolt them with the energy and focus to push through all-night homework binges and stay awake during exams afterward. “It’s like it does your work for you,” said William, a recent graduate of the Birch Wathen Lenox School on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

But abuse of prescription stimulants can lead to depression and mood swings (from sleep deprivation), heart irregularities and acute exhaustion or psychosis during withdrawal, doctors say. Little is known about the long-term effects of abuse of stimulants among the young. Drug counselors say that for some teenagers, the pills eventually become an entry to the abuse of painkillers and sleep aids.

“Once you break the seal on using pills, or any of that stuff, it’s not scary anymore — especially when you’re getting A’s,” said the boy who snorted Adderall in the parking lot. He spoke from the couch of his drug counselor, detailing how he later became addicted to the painkiller Percocet and eventually heroin.

...

The number of prescriptions for A.D.H.D. medications dispensed for young people ages 10 to 19 has risen 26 percent since 2007, to almost 21 million yearly, according to IMS Health, a health care information company — a number that experts estimate corresponds to more than two million individuals. But there is no reliable research on how many high school students take stimulants as a study aid. Doctors and teenagers from more than 15 schools across the nation with high academic standards estimated that the portion of students who do so ranges from 15 percent to 40 percent.

“They’re the A students, sometimes the B students, who are trying to get good grades,” said one senior at Lower Merion High School in Ardmore, a Philadelphia suburb, who said he makes hundreds of dollars a week selling prescription drugs, usually priced at $5 to $20 per pill, to classmates as young as freshmen. “They’re the quote-unquote good kids, basically.”

The trend was driven home last month to Nan Radulovic, a psychotherapist in Santa Monica, Calif. Within a few days, she said, an 11th grader, a ninth grader and an eighth grader asked for prescriptions for Adderall solely for better grades. From one girl, she recalled, it was not quite a request.

“If you don’t give me the prescription,” Dr. Radulovic said the girl told her, “I’ll just get it from kids at school.”

Read the rest of that story and tell me that you don't see a connection between these kids taking drugs to achieve higher grades and the founder of the KIPP schools who works 75-90 hours a week, sleeps just a few hours a night and brags about his addictive lifestyle like it's a badge of honor rather than an illness.

And tell me this isn't EXACTLY the kind of lifestyle the charter industry, especially KIPP, and the education reformers champion.

Work 75-90 hours a week, do whatever you have to do to overachieve and out-compete the competition - including putting your health at risk - these are the lessons so many in the charters and education reform movement try and teach kids.

And why not?

This is the lesson our corporate overlords want the kids to be taught - that in our neo-feudal future, everybody is going to have to work a lot longer and a lot harder to out-compete the competition and bring home an ever-diminishing paycheck.

It's survival of the fittest in a world where resources are decreasing because our corporate overlords are stealing them.

And it's our corporate overlords who fund the education reformers and their charter schools with the 75-90 hour work weeks.

Which brings me back to David Levin, our intrepid KIPP founder (corporate-sponsored, of course.)

If he's doing his 75-90 hour work week sans stimulants, more power to him.

But either way, the lifestyle he is leading isn't healthy for him, it isn't healthy for his kids or his marriage, and it definitely sends the wrong message to his son - you are what you work at and how long you work at it.

Nothing else in life matters - not children, not your spouse, not your other relationships, not hobbies, not time for reflection or meditation.

Nope - the only thing that matters is how well you do on your tests so you can get into a good college and get a good job and out-compete the crowd in our neo-feudal, survival of the fittest world.

Now go work 75-90 hours a week.

Cuomo's SuperPAC

The Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal has a pretty good article from May 11, 2012 detailing Andrew M. Cuomo's SuperPAC group, the Committee To Save New York.

CSNY failed to meet a tax deadline back in August of 2011 and didn't file until May of this year.

Some of the details we are seeing about CSNY's donor list, including the overseas gambling consortium that gave $2.4 million to Cuomo's SuperPAC as well as the building trade unions that gave CSNY $500,000, were filed in CSNY's overdue income-and-expense records.

We still don't know who else donated to CSNY and both the SuperPAC and Governor Cuomo himself refuse to release the list.

We do know that CSNY took in $17.4 million in 2011 and spent over $10 million on pro-Cuomo TV and radio ads.

The SuperPAC paid a total of "$9.7 million to ASGK Public Strategies, a public relations firm based in Chicago that was founded by David Axelrod and purchased in-state ads."

Axelrod left ASGK Public Strategies when he went to go work for the Obama campaign.

By law, CSNY is not supposed to coordinate with the Cuomo campaign or the Cuomo administration on these ads.

But of course with all of these corporate Democratic hacks hired by CSNY, the Cuomo administration doesn't have to coordinate with CSNY or ASGK Public Strategies on the ads.

The boys and girls at the Committee To Save New York and ASGK Public Strategies know exactly what kinds of ads to craft (i.e., anti-union, pro-Cuomo) and know just how to get them out to a wide audience to promote their business-friendly colleague in the governor's mansion.

In the latest poll, Governor Cuomo's approval rating stood at 71%, the highest of his term and the highest any governor has enjoyed since Governor Pataki in the days after 9/11.

This is modern politics and modern business in America for you.

Total coordination between business and political interests that manages to stay within the letter of the law but still works as a terrific propaganda ploy to advance both the career interests of the politicians and the business interests of the moneyed class.

Cuomo Leaks Building Trade Unions Donated To CSNY- Now He Needs To Reveal ALL The Donors

The NY Times is running a story this morning that reveals that private unions contributed to Governor Cuomo's lobbying group, the Committee To Save New York:

Backed with millions of dollars in contributions from business, the Committee to Save New York has been Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s most important ally in his battles with public-sector unions over government spending, pensions and teacher accountability.

But the committee turns out to have another source of money: a group of building trade unions who contributed $500,000 last year. Their decision to back Mr. Cuomo — and help finance an offensive against their public-sector brethren — illuminates a deepening fissure in the labor movement.

Labor officials said the union contributions to the business group in 2011, which were revealed in records filed with the federal Labor Department and interviews with people familiar with the donations, reflected workers’ deep unease about a slowdown in the construction industry in New York and their hope that Mr. Cuomo and the business committee could persuade voters and lawmakers to support publicly financed building projects and encourage growth.

Now this leak of the building trade unions donating $500,000 to the Committee To Save New York (out of the total $17.9 million CSNY raised in 2011) is very interesting, coming on the heels of the news that Governor Cuomo's CSNY took $2.4 million from an overseas gambling consortium just days before Governor Cuomo declared gambling to be a centerpiece of his economic agenda.

It's not an accident that someone leaked this story to the papers, of course, because it accomplishes a few things:

1. It supposedly shows that Cuomo's Committee To Save New York didn't just take money from business groups and Wall Street

2. It supposedly shows that the anti-union agenda CSNY has pushed is actually backed by some private trade unions (and therefore couldn't be actually anti-union at all)

3. It deflects from the gambling story

But I take something else from this leak.

Notice where the information came from:

Labor officials said the union contributions to the business group in 2011, which were revealed in records filed with the federal Labor Department and interviews with people familiar with the donations, reflected workers’ deep unease about a slowdown in the construction industry in New York and their hope that Mr. Cuomo and the business committee could persuade voters and lawmakers to support publicly financed building projects and encourage growth.

...

The unions contributing to the Committee to Save New York included the Mason Tenders’ District Council, which oversees local laborers’ unions in New York City, as well as affiliates of the Laborers Eastern Region, an organization of laborers unions in New York City, New Jersey and Delaware. Gary LaBarbera, president of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York, sits on the committee’s advisory board.

The leak came from the labor union leaders themselves who gave money to Cuomo's Committee To Save New York (or people close to them.)

Did they just decide to leak this information out of the goodness of their hearts and because they have such a close relationship with Governor Cuomo?

I suppose that could be.

But more likely, the story was leaked because Cuomo has been on the defensive since the Times story about the gambling bribes, er lobbying, broke and he wanted to start deflecting and/or mitigating some of the damage from the story.

What better way to deflect and/or mitigate the damage from the story than have private unions leak to the press that they too gave to Cuomo's Committee To Save New York?

This way, CSNY can say, "See, we didn't just take money from business interests. We also took money from unions. How anti-union and anti-worker can we be if the building trade unions gave us $500,000?"

But to me, that's not the important part of the story.

The important part is that Cuomo (or somebody close to Cuomo) wanted this particular piece of donor information leaked to the press.

The Committee To Save New York refuses to reveal its donor list, so the fact that Cuomo (or somebody close to him) asked/demanded that the building trade unions tell the press they donated to CSNY matters.

It matters because it means if Cuomo and CSNY are happy to reveal the building trades donated, then they can reveal the rest of the donors to CSNY too.

Now they won't want to do that because it won't serve their political purposes which is to

1. Put the unions and Cuomo's opponents on the defensive (except for the building trade unions, which are closely allied to the real estate industry and Cuomo himself)

2. Turn the story away from the overseas gambling bribes, er, donations

So I say, Governor Cuomo, if you can reveal that the building trade unions donated to your lobbying group, the Committee To Save New York, you can reveal the rest of the donor list as well.

You are always talking about the importance of transparency in Albany politics, governor.

You're always talking about the importance of holding others accountable.

Why don't you engage in some transparency and accountability yourself as well?

Cuomo's Committee To Save New York Is Supposed To Be A Lobbying Group For Social Welfare

From the NY Times editorial page:

The Times reported on Tuesday that an industry trade group donated $2 million last year to the Committee to Save New York, a group organized at Mr. Cuomo’s urging to promote the governor’s policies and praise his performance with campaign-style political ads. Genting, a gambling company that helped found the industry trade group, contributed an additional $400,000.

Through his spokesman, Mr. Cuomo has strongly denied that there is any connection between the gambling donations and his enthusiasm for legalizing Las Vegas-style casinos. The spokesman said the governor had been considering ways to manage and expand gambling in New York for months before the industry’s donations.

But even in the slush fields of Albany, $2.4 million is a lot of money. And because the Committee to Save New York is registered as a tax-exempt social welfare organization, called a 501(c)(4), it has not been required until now to publicly disclose its donors.

...

The Committee to Save New York raised $17 million last year and spent nearly $12 million — much of it on pro-Cuomo ads — making it the biggest spender on lobbying in Albany.

...

Under the Internal Revenue Code, all 501(c)(4)s are required to have a social welfare purpose that is not primarily political. We are eager to know what that purpose is for the committee, beyond supporting Mr. Cuomo and promoting the interests of its contributors.

There is no other social welfare purpose - the Committee To Save New York was set up by Cuomo's business and real estate backers to launder money for Governor Cuomo's benefit.

Cuomo can say, "Hey, I didn't run all those ads that touted my 'accomplishments' or attacked the unions last year during the budget battle - that was a group of 'concerned citizens and taxpayers' called the Committee To Save New York" all he wants.

The fact is, CSNY exists solely for big money donors to funnel cash to the governor and get things in return as well as give Cuomo a slush fund of ready cash to bludgeon enemies with.

I'd say this is very Nixonian of Andy, but really, this is just who Cuomo is.

There's a reason he never went after one banker responsible for the '08 financial collapse when he was attorney general - not one.

Because he wanted those guys to raise cash for him and promote him first to the governor's mansion in Albany and next to the White House.

There's a reason why his best friend in the media is Fred Dicker and his strongest media backer is Rupert Murdoch.

He gives Rupert what he wants too, in return for the support of the Post, the Journal and Fox News.

So far the governor, at 71% approval in the last poll I saw, has gotten away with this corruption.

But the CSNY/overseas gambling lobbyist story does real damage to Andy and he's going to have a difficult time using CSNY to run media interference for him in the future.

Saint Andy has sinned and he's going to have a difficult time throwing stones at others.

Are Cuomo And The Committee To Save New York On The Take From The Testing And Charter Industries?

When David Coleman, the man who helped craft the Common Core State Standards, goes off to work for a high stakes testing company and cashes in for $750,000 a year (before bonuses and other largesse), you know that there's gold in them there standardized testing hills for those who do the work of Pearson, the College Board, et al. in promoting the Endless Testing agenda.

Leonie Haimson touches on that in her Schoolbook piece on the ravages of Pearson and Endless Testing:

Many of us fear that our state and federal education bureaucracy is becoming inextricably tangled with for-profit testing companies and thus deeply compromised, like the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned of just before he retired. Their testing obsession is undermining our schools, not only in this city, but nationally, and it has got to stop. This is the ultimate lesson of Pineapplegate, and one that our political leaders should pay attention to, before it is too late.

This is always the danger when you have these very wealthy, powerful interests pushing their agendas and paying off the policymakers and the state education bureaucrats to do their bidding.

Remember, Pearson, the state's test vendor, is under investigation for bribing state officials (including former NYSED Commissioner David Steiner) with trips and other gifts in return for state testing contracts.

Any connection between the money Pearson spent on state ed officials and the fact Pearson won the state testing contract?

As Arsenio used to say, things that make you say "Hmmm..."

In a similar vein, it was revealed this week that Governor Cuomo's Committee To Save New York has taken $2 million dollars from overseas gambling interests at the same time that Governor Cuomo decided to legalize gambling in the state and push a pro-gambling agenda for those interests.

The Committee To Save New York then laundered that money from gambling interests (along with money from other business interests) for Cuomo's benefit, using it to run pro-Cuomo, anti-union ads during the budget fight.

Given how pro-testing and pro-charter Governor Cuomo is, it behooves us to ask how much money has the Committee To Save New York (a group run by business and real estate interests that is nothing but a front for Cuomo) taken from the for-profit testing and charter companies to promote their agendas?

It's not as if Cuomo hasn't taken millions from business interests to do their bidding before.

Remember, Cuomo had said little about education when he was attorney general of the state and running for governor - until he met the hedge fund managers and business interests who make up the Democrats For Education Reform and took a suitcase full of cash from them.

Right after that, Cuomo began promoting an agenda that was very much the same one Democrats For Education Reform push.

It's not out of the realm of possibility that what has happened with the gambling interests has also happened with the testing and charter interests too, but we can't know how much money the Committee To Save New York (and thus Governor Cuomo) has taken from the testing and charter interests because the group does not have to disclose where they get their donations from.

In other words, the governor who loves to point out all the unethical behavior in Albany and who set up a group of business and real estate interests to help him "clean up Albany" refuses to disclose who is funding that group or what agendas these donors are pushing.

How non-transparent and hypocritical that is!

New York State's Joint Commission on Public Ethics is looking to change that and force Cuomo to reveal who's paying CSNY (and thus Cuomo) to promote their agendas:

ALBANY —New York state's Joint Commission on Public Ethics is scheduled to hold a public hearing that goes to the heart of a conflict involving Gov. Andrew Cuomo and a $2 million check from casino operators to a lobbying that supports him.

Good-government groups and lobbyists' attorneys are expected to testify at Thursday's hearing in Albany as JCOPE (JAYE'-kohp) draws up regulations that will divulge the six- and seven-figure donors for the Committee to Save New York.

That's the group of business leaders that became Albany's most powerful lobbying force and runs TV ad campaigns supporting Cuomo's policies and accomplishments.

Cuomo of course opposes having to disclose where the CSNY money is coming from.

Transparency, like accountability, is for the little people, not Governor Cuomo.

We do know that the Committee To Save New York has pulled in $17.5 million in donations in 2011 alone, far more than any other lobbying group in the state.

Under the ethics law passed last year, groups are supposed to reveal their donors, but NYPIRG says it's not clear when these new regulations will take effect, so we may never know who gave money to CSNY (particularly if Cuomo decides to close them before the regulations take effect.)

Businessweek reports that it's most probable that Cuomo will never have to reveal who gave money to him through CSNY.

Until we get a glimpse of who is donating to CSNY and helping the group run pro-Cuomo ads, we can't know if Cuomo is on the take from the pro-testing and pro-charter interests, as he has been on the take from the overseas gambling interests.

But we do know that the Committee To Save New York board is loaded with business and real estate interests who often support and/or profit from the testing and charter industries, so it is certainly a good possibility that the testing and charter industries have either directly contributed to CSNY or steered money to the group through some subsidiary in order to get Cuomo to do their bidding for them.

The website the Committee To Save New York runs is called "LetsFixAlbany.org".

If we want to fix Albany, the first thing we ought to do is force CSNY and Cuomo to reveal who's paying them.

The next thing we ought to do is watch Governor Cuomo very, very closely.

There's a reason why the hedge fundies and Wall Streeters and business interests wanted Eliot Spitzter destroyed but wanted to set up a PAC to praise Andrew Cuomo and run ads for him.

And it's not because Andy is such a good guy.

It's because he does what the hedge fundies and Wall Streeters and business interests want.

Cuomo Hid Lobbying By Gambling Group

This smells bad:

After Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s State of State speech in January, the political world wondered where he got the idea for a huge, Malaysian-financed convention center.

Now it appears clear. The idea originated at a fund-raiser for Mr. Cuomo in Westchester County, where gambling executives from a Malaysian company, Genting, presented to the governor a proposal for a convention center and casino complex at the Aqueduct racetrack in Queens.

On Monday night, The New York Times reported that Genting, a subsidiary of Southeast Asia’s largest gambling company, gave $400,000 to an advocacy group that was set up at Mr. Cuomo’s urging, and that the New York Gaming Association gave $2 million to the group as the governor was developing plans to legalize casino gambling and create the Queens convention center.

On Tuesday night, The Wall Street Journal reported that senior Genting executives put forth the idea for the convention center at a fund-raiser in October at the Westchester estate of Barry Gosin, a commercial property broker. The event was attended by a number of real estate and gambling executives; the convention proposal was made by K. T. Lim, the chairman of Genting, as well as by Christian Goode, the company’s lobbyist. Jennifer Cunningham, a communications strategist who consults for Genting, was also on hand.

The fund-raiser was not originally disclosed on the governor’s public schedules, The Journal reported; the omission, a spokesman for Mr. Cuomo told the newspaper, was “inadvertent.”

The Cuomo administration offered no comment on Wednesday morning. A spokesman for Genting did not return a call for comment, and Ms. Cunningham said she had no comment.

Of the three Genting representatives present at the fund-raiser, only Mr. Goode was registered as a lobbyist at the time, according to state records. It is not clear, however, who said what to Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat.

A few weeks after the fund-raiser, the gaming association, of which Genting is a member, contributed the $2 million to the Committee to Save New York, the private lobbying group that Mr. Cuomo pushed to be set up. And a review of state records showed that by the end of the year, Genting was lobbying in support of his effort to legalize casinos in New York, noting its support of the governor’s legislation in a state record filed at the end of 2011.

New York Magazine puts this story into context:

Yet even well short of outright corruption, Cuomo has a significant problem: He looks too clever for using the Committee to dance around disclosure requirements, and the mess damages the image he’s built since his days as New York attorney general: a reform politician taking on Albany’s pay-to-pay culture. Yesterday Cuomo’s office sent the Times a 2,200-word letter defending the relationship, but it isn’t enough to argue legalities when the whole thing smells bad. The governor knows this. So was it a coincidence, or more cleverness — a preemptive attempt to restore his can’t-be-bought brand — that Cuomo jumped out of bed with Genting, the company behind the Queens mega-casino proposal, days before the Times ran its casino money story?

This is the first real damage we've seen on Governor Transparency and it's a doozy.

Cuomo is now exposed as just another Albany politician up for sale who hides that the fact behind lies, non-disclosures and half-truths.

The next time this hypocrite calls some politician in the Assembly a shill for the unions, the natural response will be "Whose paying you, Andrew? The gamblers? The bankers? The real estate industry? Big Pharma? The hedge fundies?

Actually it is all of the above - those are the contributors to the Committee To Save New York, CSNY.

This is the modern Democratic Party, where a Democratic governor is bought and sold by the gambling industry, the banking industry, the real estate industry and other business interests, refuses to disclose the payoffs and then has the audacity to point at the unions for their lobbying.

Compared to the cash Cuomo is raking in under the table, the union lobbying is small time.

We'll see if this dents Cuomo's vaunted 71% approval rating.

It's not a difficult story to understand - governor meets with gamblers, takes $2 million in gambler cash, promotes plan to legalize gambling in the state and hand a race track over to a contributor.

Yeah, that's a pretty easy story to understand with a very simple moral:

Cuomo is a crook.

NYSED Commissioner King Can't Understand All The Acrimony Over The Error-Riddled State Tests

New York State Educaton Department Commissioner John King talking about the hostility the NYSED, the NY State Regents and Pearson Education have received over the error-riddled 2012 4th-8th ELA and math exams:

When asked by WNYC’s Beth Fertig, who moderated the panel, Dr. King acknowledged the problems in this year’s state tests designed by Pearson. Because of some faulty test questions, the state and Pearson came under withering attack by critics and the news media. He vowed improvements going forward but also decried the tone of the testing debate.“The tenor of the discourse is so acrimonious, and there is such a sort-of gotcha culture around assessment,” he said, “in part because we are asking more of the assessment system.”

Let's dig through this pile of jive from our illustrious Dr. King, shall we?

First, he acknowledges the problems with this year's tests, including the infamous Pineapple and Hare passage and all the questions the state had to pull from the tests because they had no right answers or too many right answers or the questions didn't make sense or the passages didn't make sense or the translations didn't make sense or, well, you get the idea.

But despite all of these problems with the tests, King, along with his colleague in education reform at the Regents, Merryl Tisch, refuses to pull the tests from high stakes use.

So the state and the local districts will be using these flawed "assessments" to hold back students, declare teachers "ineffective" and eventually fire them and close schools down so that they can be reopened as charters and yet Dr. King can't understand why "the tenor of the discourse is so acrimonious" around the tests.

Really, Dr. King?

You can't understand why the tenor of the discourse over the tests is so acrimonious?

Well, try this on for size - most humans resent dishonest and flawed measures used on them for high stakes decisions that affect their reputations or livelihoods

It's really that simple.

People don't mind being "held accountable" so long as they feel the system is fair.

But the one you and your colleagues in reform have set up definitely does not seem fair.

Dr. King goes on to say that "there is sort of a gotcha culture around assessment in part because we are asking more of the assessment system."

Indeed, there is a "gotcha culture" around assessment because you and your colleagues at the NYSED and the Regents, along with Governor Cuomo and his union collaborators, set up a "gotcha assessment culture" in which you use highly flawed tests filtered through an even more flawed value added measurement system (the one NYC used for ELA teachers had a 52% median margin of error, an 87% maximum margin of error) to play "gotcha" with teachers, declare them "ineffective" and fire them after two years.

What's worse, as has been pointed out by Carol Burris, a teacher can be declared "effective" on all three parts of the new state teacher evaluation system (the 20% based on state test scores, the 20% based on local test scores, the 60% based on classroom observations and other subjective measurements) and STILL be declared "ineffective" overall.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that the state keeps the tests secret now, so even if there are problems with the tests, as there were this year, teachers will be unable to point out the problems in public without risking legal action against themselves by the state and Pearson, the testing company.

What could be more emblematic of a "gotcha culture" than using flawed state tests filtered through a value added measurement system with huge margins of error and wide swings in stability and keeping those tests secret so that any problems with them will likely not be revealed until long after the high stakes decisions based on these tests are already made?

In fact, the "gotcha culture" in education began with the reform movement that has looked to scapegoat teachers for all the problems in the public education system and indeed, often looks to scapegoat teachers for all the problems in society (witness Joel Klein and Condi Rice claiming "bad teachers" are putting the nation's security at risk.)

That "gotcha culture" has continued through two presidential administrations, from No Child Left Behind through Race to the Top, and has seen its end game in the Cuomo education reform movement that has brought us Dr. King's vaunted new (and deeply flawed, if not outright dishonest) "assessment system."

If Dr. King doesn't want to face scrutiny for the flaws in his "assessment system" or deal with the hostility it has engendered, then he shouldn't put a deeply flawed "assessment system" into place to begin with and shouldn't use such a system for high stakes decisions that will ruin careers and reputations.

It's that simple.

But Dr. King likes to make believe he doesn't understand this and instead likes to pretend the critics of his highly flawed "assessment system" are the ones who have the problem.

Take a look in the mirror, Dr. King and hold up a copy of both the Pineapple and the Hare and the VAM you're going to use on NY State teachers.

There in the mirror you will see where the fault lies.

Crooked Cuomo

Before Andrew Cuomo met with members of the Democrats For Education Reform when he was running for governor, he had said little about his potential education plans if he was elected.

After he met with them and received campaign donations and promises of future donations, he issued an education plan that sounded as if it had been written by the Democrats For Education Reform - the plan was heavy on charter school expansion, teacher evaluations tied to test scores, expanded testing, etc.

At the time, I said this was a clear quid pro quo, that the DFER's had bought Cuomo off and Cuomo, ever the skillful politician, was able to play the entire transaction off as politics, not crime.

But make no mistake, it was crime.

Cuomo took money from some wealthy backers to subsequently push their policies.

That's why the story that broke last night about the Cuomo-supporting PAC taking $2 million in gambling money at the same time that Cuomo started to push legalized gambling in the state sounded eerily familiar to my ears.

Here's the story:

A lobbying group controlled by Genting Bhd. and other gambling interests donated $2 million to a powerful committee that backs New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo at around the same time that the governor announced he would push to legalize casinos.

The New York Gaming Association made the donation in early December to the Committee to Save New York, a business and trade union group that has spent $12 million to support Mr. Cuomo's agenda—more than any other lobbying group in the state. Around the same time, the committee began backing a constitutional amendment to legalize casino gambling.

"It was my understanding that [the Committee to Save New York was] going to be somewhat supportive of the general concept of the expansion of gaming," said association president James Featherstonhaugh, a veteran state lobbyist. "Otherwise, we wouldn't have done it."

On Dec. 4, Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, wrote in a newspaper opinion piece that new casinos would be part of his economic agenda. In January, he announced a partnership with Genting to develop a $4 billion convention center and casino at Aqueduct racetrack in Queens.

Throughout December, the Committee to Save New York ran television ads praising Mr. Cuomo.

News of the donation came as Mr. Cuomo announced Monday that casino developers would compete to build a gambling hall in or around New York City, now that the Genting deal for the Aqueduct project had collapsed.

A Cuomo administration official said there was no connection between the donation to the Committee to Save New York and the governor's support for casino gambling. The official said Mr. Cuomo hasn't adopted the gambling association's position that new casinos should be located at existing race tracks.

Mr. Cuomo had long said he was open to casino gambling in New York but didn't announce his full support until December.

...

Mr. Featherstonhaugh said he didn't discuss donations with the governor. He said he dealt with Michelle Adams, a managing director at Tishman Speyer and treasurer for Save New York.

"I don't think they thought much about the gaming issue until I reached out to them," said Mr. Featherstonhaugh.

Now that Cuomo has walked away from the quid pro quo deal with the gambling interests, they're fighting back by giving this story to the media.

But the fact that Cuomo ultimately didn't follow through on the deal doesn't lessen the crookedness of the deal itself or the way Cuomo and the Committee To Save New York (an Orwellian name for a PAC if ever there was one) went about pushing it back in December and January.

Just as Cuomo was bought off by the hedge fund managers who make up the Democrats For Education Reform to promote their education agenda, Cuomo was bought off by the gambling industry to promote their agenda.

How many other business interests have bought off the governor and his Committee To Save New York to promote their agendas?

For example, why do business interests charter planes for Cuomo to take to various government events in places like Puerto Rico, California, New York City and around the State of New York?

Are they doing this out of the goodness of their hearts, or do they expect something back in return?

This governor likes to make it seem like he's the only clean politician in a dirty, dirty state capital full of crooks and liars.

But it is clear from the both the DFER case and the gambling case that Andrew Cuomo is as crooked as any other politician in Albany, he's simply more skilled at hiding his criminality and getting his wealthy business interests to run ads and stories in the media that push him as some Elliot Ness character above the Albany cesspool.

Andrew Cuomo On The Take

The NY Times reports the following:

A group closely allied with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo received $2 million from gambling interests last December as he developed a proposal to expand casino gambling in New York.

Mr. Cuomo’s support for expanded gambling, which he made a centerpiece of his State of the State address in January, had a profound impact. Within weeks, the Legislature endorsed a constitutional amendment that, if approved once more by lawmakers and then by voters, would allow for seven full-scale, privately owned casinos, potentially worth billions of dollars.

Genting, a subsidiary of Southeast Asia’s largest gambling company, made an additional contribution of approximately $400,000 to the group allied with Mr. Cuomo during 2011. The New York Gaming Association, a trade group founded by Genting and other companies that operate racetracks and electronic slot machines, chipped in the $2 million.

Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, strongly disputed any suggestion that he was influenced by money from the gambling industry. He noted that he had expressed support for an expansion of casino gambling months before the contributions were made, and that he had diverged from the gaming association on several key issues.

“To try to suggest an improper relationship between the governor and gaming interests is to distort the facts in a malicious or reckless manner,” Richard Bamberger, a spokesman for Mr. Cuomo, said in an e-mail.

Uh, huh - sure all that money had no influence on Cuomo.

Except that the non-profit group Cuomo had his business cronies create for him sure did get a lot of that yummy yummy gambling money:

The contributions went to the Committee to Save New York, a business and labor coalition that raised $17 million and spent nearly $12 million in 2011, much of it on campaign-style television and radio advertisements praising Mr. Cuomo and supporting his proposals to cap property taxes and slash state spending.

Founded by real estate developers and business executives at Mr. Cuomo’s urging shortly after he was elected governor, the committee has rapidly become the biggest spender on lobbying in Albany, providing not only critical backing for Mr. Cuomo but also a counterweight to the labor unions whose money and political muscle have traditionally dominated the Capitol.

The Committee to Save New York defended its fast-growing role in Albany.

“From the inception of C.S.N.Y., we have focused on a reform agenda designed to help create jobs, improve the economy of our state and get state government working for the people again,” said Michael McKeon, a spokesman for the committee. “We are proud of our track record, and if there are people who felt they were getting something more for contributing to C.S.N.Y., then they are simply wrong.”

Because it is organized as a nonprofit social advocacy group, called a 501(c)4, the Committee to Save New York is not required to disclose the sources of its money publicly. But The New York Times learned some details of the group’s financing through a review of public records and interviews with more than two dozen individuals familiar with the group’s activities.

The $2 million from the gaming association appears to have made it the committee’s second largest contributor in 2011, according to a tax return released by the committee last month, which included information on donation amounts but did not identify donors.

The largest donor to the Committee To Save New York was another business-funded organization, the Partnership for New York City.

You can see why Cuomo pursues the policies he does - he is completely beholden to the Wall Street criminals.

But the gambling money, well, that's just like old time graft, really.

Obama Offered Bloomberg World Bank Job

From Political Wire:

New York magazine reports that Bill Daley, then President Obama's chief of staff,
"discreetly called" New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg "and asked him if he
wanted to be head of the World Bank -- Robert Zoellick was stepping down. But
Bloomberg did not want to have a boss, and he'd already begun to retool his life
for his post-mayoralty. He turned the job down."

Bloomberg of course was already into his quasi-legal, totally bought third term as mayor and had too many plans to erode the rights of New Yorkers to say yes to the job.

Plus no none tells Bloomberg what to do.

Bloomberg answers to no one.

No one.

Not the president.

Not the electorate.

Not even God.

He's in charge, okay, and don't you forget it.

Note To Andrea Peyser: More Criminals Work For Your Boss, Rupert Murdoch, Than As Teachers

Andrea Peyser is out with one of her usual over-the-top morality tales that declares

The past week will go down as a depraved chapter in public-school history. It’s the week of Teachers Gone Wild.

She says there is a "pedophilia crisis" in the New York City public school system that is enabled by the teachers union, that "the number of teachers caught having sex with students is climbing."

How many alleged cases of sexual misconduct by teachers does she list in her column?

Four.

Uh, huh - four cases of alleged sexual misconduct out of 75,000+ NYCDOE employees.

Now let me make clear, even one case of sexual misconduct involving a teacher is too many, but nonetheless to declare a "pedophilia crisis" on the basis of the four cases of alleged sexual misconduct Ms. Peyser lists in her column for the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post is quite absurd.

In fact, a much higher percentage of employees at her own company, News Corporation, have been arrested on crimes ranging from illegal phone hacking, bribery, extortion, conspiracy to cover up criminal activities and perversion of justice than the number of cases of alleged sexual misconduct cases by NYCDOE employees she lists in her column.

So far, at least forty News Corporation employees, most of whom worked at either the Rupert Murdoch-owned News of the World or the Rupert Murdoch-owned The Sun, have been arrested in the News Corporation phone hacking/bribery/corruption scandal.

It is true that crimes ranging from illegal phone hacking, bribery, extortion, conspiracy to cover up criminal activities and perversion of justice are not quite on the same level as sexual misconduct, but seriously, if any organization has a "crisis" involving the criminality of its employees, it would be the company Ms. Peyser works for - News Corporation.

Of course, you'd never know that if you read only the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post or the Rupert Murdoch-owned Andrea Peyser.

Comparing Obama's Drone Bombing Campaign To Nixon's Bombing Of Cambodia And Laos

Barack Obama continuing an age-old American policy of bombing as many black and brown people as possible:

Last October I was at a jirga in Islamabad where 80 people from Waziristan had assembled to talk about the US Predator drones that buzz around overhead, periodically delivering death by Hellfire missile. A jirga is the traditional forum for discussing and resolving disputes, part parliament, part court of law. The turbaned tribal elders were joined by their young sons on a rare foray out of their region to meet outsiders and discuss the killing. The isolation of the Waziris is almost total – no western journalist has been to Miranshah for several years.

At our meeting I spoke as the representative westerner. I reported the CIA claim that not one single innocent civilian had been killed in over a year. I did not need to understand Pashtu to translate the snorts of derision when this claim was translated.

During the day I shook the hand of a 16-year-old kid from Waziristan named Tariq Aziz. One of his cousins had died in a missile strike, and he wanted to know what he could do to bring the truth to the west. At the Reprieve charity, we have a transparency project: importing cameras to the region to try to export the truth back out. Tariq wanted to take part, but I thought him too young.

Then, three days later, the CIA announced that it had eliminated "four militants". In truth there were only two victims: Tariq had been driving his 12-year-old cousin to their aunt's house when the Hellfire missile killed them both. This came just 24 hours after the CIA boasted of eliminating six other "militants" – actually, four chromite workers driving home from work. In both cases a local informant apparently tagged the car with a GPS monitor and lied to earn his fee.

Last week officials in the Obama administration talked to the New York Times about the "Secret Kill List" drawn up for drone assassinations. Democratic strategists in an election year calculate that the article will prove a vote-winner, dispelling any notion that Barack Obama is soft on terror. The administration voices wanted to leave the impression of an involved and committed president who reads Thomas Aquinas's theory of the "just war" in between personally vetting the kill list.

...

It is easy to understand how the CIA slaughtered Tariq and many other innocent victims. Those who press the Hellfire buttons are 8,000 miles away in Nevada and are dependent on local "intelligence". Just as with Guantánamo Bay, the CIA is paying bounties to those who will identify "terrorists". Five thousand dollars is an enormous sum for a Waziri informant, translating to perhaps £250,000 in London terms. The informant has a calculation to make: is it safer to place a GPS tag on the car of a truly dangerous terrorist, or to call down death on a Nobody (with the beginnings of a beard), reporting that he is a militant? Too many "militants" are just young men with stubble. At least 174 have been children.

The New York Times reports that Obama first embraced a policy of taking no prisoners in order to avoid the embarrassing sore of Guantánamo. Then he accepted a method for assessing casualties that "counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants" unless there is explicit posthumous proof of their innocence – because they are probably "up to no good".

While Obama's policies may go down a treat in the US, they are fomenting radicalism abroad, the very policy not only undermining our way of life but provoking an extremist hydra with many more heads.

Some sane voices penetrate the gloom. Starting last summer, Cameron Munter, Obama's ambassador to Islamabad, was required to give a thumbs up or down assessment of each drone attack on Pakistani turf, as if he were an emperor in the Colosseum. "He didn't realise his main job was to kill people," said a colleague. Munter is quitting his job early this month because his diplomatic mission has been rendered impossible.

The dearth of US domestic criticism is astounding. The last time a president indulged in an illegal bombing campaign in the sovereign territory of allies (Richard Nixon in 1969, in Cambodia and Laos), the policy nearly got included in the articles of impeachment. We should remember that history, as the Vietnamese capitalised on the backlash, helping to impose the genocidal Khmer Rouge on Cambodia, and a single-party regime that endures 40 years later in Laos.

Can you imagine if George W. Bush were engaging in this kind of slaughter?

How about if Nixon and Kissinger were engaging in it?

Or Reagan?

But this is the Nobel Peace Price Winning Barack Obama, so mostly what we get from the liberal left is silence on this, or worse, rationalization.

I'll say it again - Obama belongs in Gitmo with Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Yoo, et al.

These are evil people doing evil deeds for their own ends.

Obama hold a Terror Tuesday meeting each week and invites his political team to it.

Then they leak details of the meetings and how "cool and collected" Obama is while ordering these drone killings.

It's all a political calculation to sell Obama as a "strong leader".

So what if some 12 year olds are killed in the process.

They're just foreigners anyway.

Probably will grow up to be terrorists in any case.

Ah, the irony of Obama finally making a note how Trayvon Martin could have been his own son on the same weekend he orders U.S. drones to kill black and brown kids in Yemen and Pakistan.

These are truly, truly evil people, no better than the war criminals in the Nixon, Reagan or Bush administrations.

Obama Kills 12 People This Weekend

Our Nobel Peace Prize Winning President continues to slaughter "terrorists":

Ten more people have been killed by a US drone strike against suspected militants in Pakistan, with the aircraft firing its missiles into a gathering mourning one of two fighters killed in a similar atttack the previous day.

Two Pakistani intelligence officials say four missiles were fired at the village of Mana Raghzai in South Waziristan near the border with Afghanistan on Sunday morning.

At the time of the attack, suspected militants had gathered to offer condolences to the brother of a militant commander killed during another US unmanned drone attack on Saturday. The brother was one of those who died in the Sunday morning attack. The Pakistani officials said two of the dead were foreigners and the rest were Pakistani.

It brought to 12 the total number of people killed in two days and was the sixth American drone strike over the last two weeks. The US government considers the drone campaign a vital tool in the war against al-Qaida and the Taliban.

Paul Harris of The Guardian puts the president's slaughter of civilians in some context:

Yet it is the drone programme and "kill list" that have emerged as most central to Obama's hardline national security policy. In January 2009, when Obama came to power, the drone programme existed only for Pakistan and had seen 44 strikes in five years. With Obama in office it expanded to Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia with more than 250 strikes. Since April there have been 14 strikes in Yemen alone.

Civilian casualties are common. Obama's first strike in Yemen killed two families who were neighbours of the target. One in Pakistan missed and blew up a respected tribal leader and a peace delegation. He has deliberately killed American citizens, including the radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in September last year, and accidentally killed others, such as Awlaki's 16-year-old son, Abdul-Rahman.

The drone operation now operates out of two main bases in the US, dozens of smaller installations and at least six foreign countries. There are "terror Tuesday" meetings to discuss targets which Obama's campaign manager, David Axelrod, sometimes attends, lending credence to those who see naked political calculation involved.

Yet for some, politics seems moot. Obama has shown himself to be a ruthless projector of national security powers at home and abroad, but the alternative in the coming election is Republican Mitt Romney.

"Whoever gets elected, whether it's Obama or Romney, they are going to continue this very dangerous path," said Radack. "It creates a constitutional crisis for our country. A crisis of who we are as Americans. You can't be a free society when all this happens in secret."

Those of you prepared to re-elect Barack Obama because he is the lesser of two evils in an election match-up with Mitt Romney should note that even the lesser of two evils is still "evil."

And given the slaughter Barack Obama orders on a weekly basis, given the Bush administration surveillance state apparatus Obama has expanded, given the fascistic and secretive tendencies this man has, he is most definitely evil and belongs in a Gitmo jail cell next to George Bush, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice and Donald Rumsfeld.

Axelrod, the political operative, attending the "Terror Tuesday" meetings.

That tells you everything you need to know about the policy and the people involved.

Time To Put Facebook Out Of Business

It's looking more like Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg and the underwriters of the Facebook IPO swindled gullible investors, and not just the mom and pop kind who bought into the IPO hype the day the company started selling shares, but also "sophisticated" private market investors who bought before the company went public:

Those sophisticated pros include GSV Capital, a publicly traded investment company that bought a bunch of shares at a $70 billion valuation in June 2011, when the move was seen as such a coup that GSV’s own stock price went up as a result.

By January of this year, private market investors were buying shares at a valuation of about $100 billion.

Whoever bought at that price has now lost almost half of their money.

Worse, this stock seems capable of going lower. Henry Blodget, a former Wall Street analyst turned tech blogger, estimates that a fair price for Facebook stock is somewhere between $16 and $24 per share.

The Washington Post reports the scope of the investigations Facebook and its underwriters now face and why, even if its found that no laws were broken by the parties involved, the Facebook IPO has become the poster child of what's wrong with modern capitalism:

The Securities and Exchange Commission is examining how the company, its underwriters and the NASDAQ stock market executed Facebook’s IPO, according to Capitol Hill staffers and members of Congress who’ve been briefed by regulators.

SEC officials would neither confirm nor deny whether the agency is conducting an investigation. But there are three major questions swirling around the troubled IPO: what caused the technical glitches that disrupted Facebook’s NASDAQ debut; whether Facebook gave privileged information to certain analysts and investors; and whether Morgan Stanley, the IPO’s lead underwriter, gave conflicting messages to different kinds of investors before the offering.

For some in Congress, if federal regulators come up empty-handed, that could be an even greater cause for concern. “This IPO is a poster child for all that’s wrong with current practices,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said in an interview. Whether or not the SEC or other regulators bring down the hammer, he believes that Facebook’s IPO is a clear sign that capital markets are rigged against ordinary “mom and pop” retail investors.

Now the best way to handle this, in my humble, naive opinion, is for people disgusted by the Facebook swindle to simply end their association with Facebook.

Stop using it.

Close your account.

Don't reopen it.

Send Zuckerberg and the other crooks at Facebook into a desperate scramble to save the company as it bleeds hundreds of thousands of accounts a month.

Remember, Facebook is already playing fast and loose with your information, selling it to the highest bidder, making money off of your data.

And remember, too, that if you have signed into your account even once since 2009, you have then signed a terms of service agreement that said Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook own all of your data and information forever, that you cannot take it back from them once you've posted anything.

This is a slimy, crooked company run by a slimy, crooked sociopath.

The way the IPO was handled, with some connected investors getting privileged information while others were lied to by the company, is not an aberration of company behavior - it is exactly how this company operates.

So make Zuckerberg and Facebook pay for their crimes and ethical breaches.

Stop using Facebook.

Close your account.

Don't reopen it.

If you can't quit the social network habit, then migrate to one of those alternative, open source social networks.

You know, the ones where you own your information and data and take it with you when you go.

Believe me, that kind of action will get the notice of Mr. Zuckerberg and his financial associates.

It will get the notice of Wall Street as well.

And maybe, just maybe, this kind of action can bring about the kind "reform" the world really needs - fewer slimy, crooked businesses run by slimy, crooked sociopaths.

After all, they're only in business of making billions because people use their systems.

But if you tune out, drop out and opt out, well, they won't be in the business of making billions anymore.

Not until they figure out the next scam, at any rate.

NOTE: I do not have a Facebook account.

I have never opened a Facebook account.

I will never open a Facebook account.

Not Adding Value

Barack Obama is a "No Excuses!" education reformer.

He believes teachers have to increase test scores and graduation rates of all students or be fired.

Obama was quite open about that when he cheered the firing of the teachers in Central Falls, Rhode Island back in 2010:

Speaking at an event intended to highlight his strategy for turning around struggling schools by offering an increase in federal funding for local districts that shake up their lowest-achieving campuses, Obama called the controversial firings justified.

"If a school continues to fail its students year after year after year, if it doesn't show signs of improvement, then there's got to be a sense of accountability," he said. "And that's what happened in Rhode Island last week at a chronically troubled school, when just 7 percent of 11th-graders passed state math tests -- 7 percent."

Central Falls is one of the poorest towns in the state of Rhode Island.

As of 2010, 26% of families and nearly 30% of individuals lived below the poverty line in Central Falls.

The town declared itself insolvent in 2010 and declared bankruptcy in 2011.

It can't afford to pay its pensioners, it had to lay off most of its municipal employees.

The factories in the town long ago closed.

Central Falls has all the ancillary problems that come with high rates of poverty - alcoholism, drug abuse, domestic abuse, homelessness, depression, etc.

But Barack Obama doesn't care about any of that.

All he cares is that the teachers in that town increase students' test scores and graduation rates, regardless of what is happening outside of school.

When teachers couldn't do that, Obama wanted the school "turned around" and much of the staff fired.

You see, teachers cannot make excuses when it comes to kids' lives.

Doesn't matter how bad the economy is, how depressed the town is.

NO EXCUSES!!!

Given Obama's "No Excuses!" education policies, what are we to make of the president's own economic record as of today?

(Reuters) - U.S. job growth braked sharply for a third straight month in May and the unemployment rate rose for the first time in nearly a year, raising chances of further monetary stimulus from the Federal Reserve to support the sputtering recovery.

Employers added a paltry 69,000 jobs to their payrolls last month, the least since May of last year, and 49,000 fewer jobs were created in the previous two months than had been thought, the Labor Department said on Friday.

The report is troubling for President Barack Obama, whose prospects of winning re-election in November could hinge on the economy's health. Republican opponent Mitt Romney called the report "a harsh indictment" of Obama's policies.

The jobless rate rose to 8.2 percent in May from 8.1 percent in April, although the increase reflected more people entering the labor force to look for work, a possible sign of growing confidence.

The data offered the clearest evidence yet that the deepening debt crisis in Europe and a slowdown in China were starting to dampen an already lackluster U.S. recovery. Concerns over the course of U.S. fiscal policy may also be weighing.

...

Stocks on Wall Street ended down more than 2 percent, extending May's rout. The Dow Jones industrial average sank into negative territory for the year.

Gee, that seems like a pretty dismal record.

Unemployment is heading back up, fewer people are finding work as we roll toward summer, the stock market is now in negative territory for the year and GDP has fallen below 2%.

While the country is not yet in imminent danger of a double dip recession, it is in danger of one.

It surely doesn't look like our intrepid Obama is adding much value to the American economy, does it?

Uh, uh - it sure doesn't.

Barack Obama is a "No Excuses!" kind of guy, so I bet he manned up and took ownership of these serious economic problems.

I bet Obama didn't try to blame the country's economic woes on outside forces like the Eurozone crisis or China's slowing economy or political gridlock in Washington.

After all, if Central Falls, Rhode Island teachers and teachers all over this country aren't afforded any excuses, why should Obama be afforded any?

He must see that, right?

Wrong:

(Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama told his supporters on Friday he could break Washington's gridlock in a second term, and pushed Congress to enact his "to-do list" prescriptions to heal the economy in spite of it being an election year.

...

The Democratic president has repeatedly blamed his opponents on Capitol Hill for blindly opposing his efforts to kick-start growth and job creation in the hopes that bad economic news would hurt his re-election drive.

Earlier on Friday, responding to a disappointing jobs report that drove down stock markets, he also pointed to high gasoline prices and Europe's brewing economic crisis as factors getting in the way of recovery.

So much for "No Excuses!"

The piss-poor jobs report, the falling GDP - these aren't Obama's fault.

They're China's fault! They're the Eurozone's fault! They're the Republicans' fault!

I guess the president's "No Excuses!" philosophy only counts for teachers, not for presidents with shabby economic records.

If the Obama White House was a school in Rhode Island, Obama himself would call for it to be "turned around" and all the employees fired.

I think America needs to hold Obama to his "No Excuses!" rhetoric.

Bloomberg To Ban All Freedoms In New York City

Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced today that he is declaring the American Constitution null and void in the borders of New York City.

Bloomberg, who overturned term limits to run a third time in New York City back in 2009, stated on WOR radio yesterday that "Democracy and freedom are just unworkable these days, they make trying to control people just too damned difficult, and so we have decided to do away with both in New York City."

Bloomberg stated that recent protests over his education policies, his stop-and-frisk policing policies, and food and restaurant regulation policies had sent him over the edge.

"We just can't have people in this city telling the mayor they won't do what he wants," Bloomberg told WOR radio host John Gambling Jr. "This is an oligarchy, John, and people have got to follow the rules and regulations I make, whether they like it or not."

"Except for my friends at Goldman Sachs, of course, " the mayor added with a chuckle. "They can do whatever the hell they want."

Bloomberg's controversial decree, essentially declaring martial law in the city, will take effect this Sunday, June 3 at 12:00 AM.

WOR radio host Gambling, normally a passive interviewer who lets Bloomberg have his say without much pushback, seemed nonplussed by the mayor's decree.

"Mr. Mayor, are you sure you have the power to do this? I'm no constitutional law scholar, but it sounds vaguely unconstitutional."

Bloomberg seemed annoyed with Gambling. "Listen, John, don't fuck with me, okay. I'm telling you, I've had it up to here with people trying my patience and not listening to what I say or doing what I want. I've got my own army in the NYPD, I've got my own General Patton in Commissioner Ray Kelly and I will do whatever the fuck I want when I want to whomever I want and if any NYCLU commie pinko liberal wants to say differently, I will have them orange netted and in a cell so fast it will make their birkenstocks spin off."

Legal experts say that while Bloomberg's decree seems unconstitutional on the face of it, if he uses the veneer of "terrorism" as a reason for declaring martial law within the borders of the city, he just might get away with it.

"It's very disturbing, to tell you the truth," said Jonathan Turley, law professor at George Washington University Law School, "but ever since 9/11, these people in government can pretty much do whatever they want, so long as they say it's to keep us safe from terrorism. I mean, who'd have thought an American president would say he has the legal right to assassinate any American citizen suspected of terrorism at any time in any place? And yet, Obama has done just that. So why shouldn't Bloomberg be able to get away with declaring martial law in New York? It's just the kind of thing the right wing nuts on the Supreme Court will love."

Turley, who was visiting MSNBC studios at 3o Rockefeller Center at the time of his comment, was later arrested by NYPD officers on terrorism charges and is currently being held in a Riker's Island jail cell until he can be transferred to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba for questioning.