Tom Davis

RIP:

In 2004, contestants on “Jeopardy!” were stumped by the clue “He was the comedy partner of Al Franken.”

Tom Davis, that comedy partner, sighed as he watched. He was so inured to playing second fiddle to Mr. Franken, now a Democratic senator from Minnesota, that he called himself Sonny to Mr. Franken’s Cher.

But the fact is that Mr. Davis helped shape Mr. Franken’s comedy, and vice versa, from the time they entertained students with rebellious, razor-edged humor at high school assemblies in Minnesota.

In 1975, Mr. Davis, brilliant at improvisational comedy, and Mr. Franken, a whiz at plotting funny sequences, became two of the first writers on a new show called “Saturday Night Live,” which has lasted 37 years. (The two should actually be called one of the show’s first writers: they accepted a single salary of $350 a week. Each, singly, was called “the guys.”)

Mr. Davis never lost the quirky, original tone that helped shape the show, and in his last months he referred to death as “deanimation.” He deanimated on Thursday at his home in Hudson, N.Y., at age 59. The cause was throat and neck cancer, his wife, Mimi Raleigh, said.

With Mr. Franken and others, Mr. Davis helped create the clan of extraterrestrials known as the Coneheads, who attributed their peculiarities to having come from France. He and Dan Aykroyd collaborated on Mr. Aykroyd’s impersonation of Julia Child, in which the television chef cuts herself and bleeds to death after grabbing a phone to dial 911, only to find it’s a prop. As she collapses she bids her audience “Bon appétit!”

In an interview on Thursday, Mr. Aykroyd spoke of Mr. Davis’s “massive contribution” to the show, characterizing him as “very disciplined” and able to herd less focused writers toward something concrete. “There was no frivolous waste of time,” he said.

Mr. Davis was present at the creation of Irwin Mainway (played by Mr. Aykroyd), head of a company that made “Bag o’ Glass” and other dangerous toys. He midwifed Theodoric of York, a medieval barber-surgeon, played by the guest host Steve Martin, who believed bloodletting cured everything. A famous sketch about a drunken President Richard M. Nixon stumbling around the White House conversing with past presidents’ portraits and spouting anti-Semitism? Mr. Davis and Mr. Franken wrote it.

They flirted with the margins of taste: a sketch about the Holocaust was rejected, but others about child abuse and the murder of lesbians made it onto the air.

In the early years of “Saturday Night Live,” Mr. Davis and Mr. Franken also appeared as a comic duo. One Franken and Davis routine was “The Brain Tumor Comedian,” in which Mr. Franken, his head bandaged, tried to tell jokes but kept forgetting the punch line. Mr. Davis fought tears as he implored the audience to applaud.

...

In addition to his wife and his brother, Robert, Mr. Davis is survived by his mother, Jean Davis.

In his last two years, Mr. Davis helped a friend write a book about Owsley Stanley, famed for handling sound for the Grateful Dead and supplying the group with LSD. He searched out objects like old barn doors and stones with which to make large sculptures. And he worked with Mr. Aykroyd on a script for a possible “Ghostbusters III” film.

As in his comedy, Mr. Davis said, “I’m improvising.”

Perhaps it's best Mr. Davis "deanimated" before finishing "Ghostbusters III".

I think it's probably for the best.

My favorite Franken/Davis thing - "A Limo for the Lamo."

Now that's guerilla comedy.

Let me just say - SUPERTRAIN!!!!

Imagine Bloomberg Had Gotten His Way On The 2012 NYC Olympics

Would have been a total, total nightmare.

Bob Babbitt, Funk Brothers Bassist, Dies

From the Washington Post:

Bob Babbitt, a bassist for Motown Records and key accompanist to some of the recording studio’s biggest stars, including Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye and the Temptations, died July 16at a hospice near his home in Nashville. He was 74.

His wife, Ann Kreinar, confirmed the death and said the cause was a brain tumor.

Mr. Babbitt was part of a core group of Motown musicians nicknamed the Funk Brothers for their dazzling way with hook-laden rhythms. The group — they were almost never credited on records — included bassist James Jamerson, guitarists Robert White and Joe Messina, keyboardists Joe Hunter and Earl Van Dyke, and drummers Benny Benjamin, Richard Allen and Uriel Jones.

Along with guitarists Messina and Dennis Coffey, Mr. Babbitt was one of the few white members among the predominantly African American group. In the acclaimed 2002 documentary “Standing in the Shadows of Motown,” which tells the saga of the Funk Brothers, Mr. Babbitt remarked, “There was such a closeness. When Martin Luther King died, they never expressed to me any kind of hostility. And I felt as sad as they did.”

Mr. Babbitt came to Motown in 1967, when the label was shifting away from its shuffle and cha-cha-based rhythms into more syncopation and psychedelic soul. He credited Jamerson with bringing him to the label’s staff. The two bassists met during sessions at Golden World, a studio that briefly competed with Motown in Detroit and was later purchased by Motown President Berry Gordy Jr.

Mr. Babbitt’s bass playing was featured on Smokey Robinson and the Miracles’ “Tears of a Clown,” Edwin Starr’s “War,” the Temptations’ “Ball of Confusion,” Marvin Gaye’s “Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)” and Stevie Wonder’s “Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours.”

In addition, his credits outside of the Motown studio included the Parliaments’ “(I Wanna) Testify” (1967), the first national hit for George Clinton’s P-Funk acts; the Capitols’ “Cool Jerk” (1967) and pop singer Del Shannon’s “Little Town Flirt” (1963).

Mr. Babbitt played solo for nearly 90 seconds on bass guitar on Coffey’s funk instrumental “Scorpio” (1971), a Top 40 radio hit.

When the Motown company left Detroit for California in 1972, Mr. Babbitt came east, where his New York City credits included sessions with Elton John, Barry Manilow and Gladys Knight and the Pips’ “Midnight Train to Georgia” (1973). He later worked for producer Thom Bell as part of the studio group MSFB in Philadelphia and toured with folk entertainer Joan Baez and rock singer Robert Palmer.

Mr. Babbitt found that the key to his work in the studio was blending in — and not just musically. He recalled a three-week period in the early 1970s when he did sessions for soul vocal group the Spinners in Los Angeles, hard rocker Alice Cooper in Toronto and then the basic instrumental tracks for a Frank Sinatra record in New York.

“For Frank I wore a suit jacket,” he told a trade journal for New York musicians. “I had jogging clothes on in L.A., and in Toronto I wore a pair of pants that were ripped and some funky old rock-and-roll jacket.”

“Some of the [bass] lines might have been different,” he added. “But the main difference was in the styles, and the way I dressed, which had nothing to do with the record, of course.”

Worked with the Spinners, Alice Cooper and Sinatra all in the same month.

Now that's some track record.

And the songs he played bass on!

Again, some track record.

And yet, he had trouble getting work in Nashville...

It's been a very bad couple of days with Jon Lord, Kitty Wells and now Bob Babbitt dying.

What's Cuomo Hiding? (Continued)

The NY Times picks up the story of Cuomo's Nixonian need for secrecy:

ALBANY — Aides communicate with untraceable messages sent from BlackBerry to BlackBerry. Nothing delicate is shared using e-mail. And in-boxes are regularly wiped clean.

When he ran for office, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo vowed to operate the most transparent administration in New York State history. And his aides argue that he has: they say that their communication methods differ little from those of other elected officials, and that Mr. Cuomo will preserve more documents than any of his recent predecessors.

But while Mr. Cuomo has taken steps to improve citizen access to the State Capitol, literally as well as digitally, he and his aides have also set up an executive chamber that prides itself on leaving few footprints.

“It communicates a culture of — I don’t know if paranoia is the right word; maybe it’s control,” said Bill Samuels, a Democratic activist and the founder of the New Roosevelt Initiative, a government-reform group. “But it’s not healthy long-term.”

The Cuomo administration’s sensitivity to sunlight is well known. Aides in the governor’s office have been warned about discussing work matters at Albany haunts. On one occasion, Mr. Cuomo’s spokesman worried publicly that someone was rummaging through the office’s trash. And the administration has been aggressive in redacting documents before sharing them with the public; in June, when it turned over months of Mr. Cuomo’s schedules to The New York Times, even the daily weather forecast was blacked out. (The office has since pledged to release the forecasts.)

Nixon on the Hudson.

Transparency is for teachers and others.

Andrew Cuomo operates in the dark of night in absolute secrecy.

Bernanke Cannot Guarantee Reliability Of LIBOR Rate

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke just admitted in testimony before the Senate that he cannot guarantee the reliability of LIBOR and avoided answering whether U.S. banks are implicated in the rate fixing but did say "two US banks' have been asked to submit detailed information into the ongoing US inquiry into Libor."

Which is a roundabout way of saying "Of course U.S. banks are implicated in the LIBOR fixing scandal!"

It's all rigged.

All of it.

Kitty Wells

RIP:

Kitty Wells, the Queen of Country Music, who kicked in the door of the male-dominated genre with her 1952 smash “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels” and became a legend, has died. She was 92.

The pioneering singer died Monday of stroke complications at her Nashville-area home.

Wells was country’s first female superstar, racking up nearly three dozen Top 10 hits from 1952-65, including three No. 1s. She shattered long-held notions that women couldn’t sell country records or headline concerts, and her success blazed the trail for every superstar to come -- from Tammy Wynette and Loretta Lynn to Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris to Shania Twain and Taylor Swift.

The Hollywood Reporter piece on Wells is a good one and a fitting tribute.

Jon Lord

RIP:

English rocker Jon Lord, who founded Deep Purple and co-wrote their most famous song, Smoke On The Water, has died aged 71.

The Leicester-born keyboard player, who had pancreatic cancer, died in London on Monday.

A statement on his website said he had passed "from Darkness to Light", and that he was "surrounded by his loving family" when he died.

Last year, Lord told fans he was "fighting cancer and will therefore be taking a break from performing while getting the treatment and cure".

Please watch this in tribute:

What Did Andrew Cuomo Know About The LIBOR Scandal When He Was Attorney General?

The Guardian reports the following:

New York and Connecticut attorneys general have joined forces to investigate alleged manipulation of the Libor interest rates.

The scandal is already being investigated by the US justice department and financial regulators on both sides of the Atlantic. But the involvement of New York state is likely to ramp up the investigation.

New York state's Martin Act gives its attorney general the most wide-ranging investigative powers of any state. Eliot Spitzer used the act to force a massive settlement out of Wall Street following the analysts scandal of the early 2000s.

New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman and Connecticut attorney general George Jepsen are working together in the investigation. A spokeswoman for the Connecticut attorney general confirmed that two state lawyers had been working on the Libor issue "over the last several months" looking at "alleged anti-competitive conduct related to potential rigging and manipulation of benchmark interest rates."

"The attorney generals will follow the evidence wherever it leads and with the goal of providing restitution to state agencies, municipalities, school districts and not-for-profit entities nationwide that may have been harmed by any illegal conduct," she said.

Barclays, JP Morgan, Bank of America and UBS are among the banks being investigated over allegations that they colluded to fix rates between 2005 and 2007. Last month, Barclays paid a record $451m to settle charges it submitted false numbers for the benchmark rates, which are used as the basis for $500tn in securities including complex derivatives, car loans and 45% of US mortgages.

New York and Connecticut are investigating whether they lost money in their own investments as a result of the alleged manipulation. The city of Baltimore has already filed a lawsuit against many of the banks allegedly involved, claiming that the alleged manipulation cost them money.

As The Guardian article notes, New York's attorney general has the most wide-ranging investigative powers of any state.

Spitzer used those powers when he was attorney general.

Andrew Cuomo, who was attorney general during the financial crisis and the aftermath, did not - at least not in any meaningful way. Not one banker responsible for the financial crisis of 2008 was brought up on charges by Andrew Cuomo when he was attorney general.

If Tim Geithner knew of the LIBOR fixing when he was head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, then you have to think Andrew Cuomo knew of the LIBOR fixing when he was attorney general.

After all, Geithner's tenure at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York overlaps Cuomo's tenure as attorney general.

Since Cuomo refuses to release his attorney general papers, we can't know just how much Cuomo actually knew of the LIBOR fixing scandal.

And since Cuomo refuses to release the donor list for his SuperPAC, the Committee To Save New York, we can't know if his SuperPAC took cash from any of the banks or bankers involved in the rate fixing.

In addition, since Cuomo only uses untraceable communication methods as governor, we will probably never know what it is he wants to do about he scandal now - there is no paper trail.

But we do know one thing about Cuomo and the LIBOR scandal.

He did nothing about it when seemingly everybody in positions of power on Wall Street, the Federal Reserve and government seemed to know about the corruption.

And Eliot Spitzer, for all his faults, certainly would have.

A Two-Tiered Justice System

Glenn Greenwald has a book out called With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful that looks at the dual justice system we have in the United States - one for the elite and one for everybody else.

Here is how the book is described:

From "the most important voice to have entered the political discourse in years" (Bill Moyers), a scathing critique of the two-tiered system of justice that has emerged in America

From the nation's beginnings, the law was to be the great equalizer in American life, the guarantor of a common set of rules for all. But over the past four decades, the principle of equality before the law has been effectively abolished. Instead, a two-tiered system of justice ensures that the country's political and financial class is virtually immune from prosecution, licensed to act without restraint, while the politically powerless are imprisoned with greater ease and in greater numbers than in any other country in the world.

Starting with Watergate, continuing on through the Iran-Contra scandal, and culminating with Obama's shielding of Bush-era officials from prosecution, Glenn Greenwald lays bare the mechanisms that have come to shield the elite from accountability. He shows how the media, both political parties, and the courts have abetted a process that has produced torture, war crimes, domestic spying, and financial fraud.

Cogent, sharp, and urgent, this is a no-holds-barred indictment of a profoundly un-American system that sanctions immunity at the top and mercilessness for everyone else.

I couldn't help but think about Glenn's book as I watched the merciless treatment of teacher Christine Rubino by the system.

For those of you who don't know the case, Assailed Teacher has an excellent round-up here.

Rubino made inappropriate remark about her students on her Facebook page.

This remark came out of the day-to-day frustration she felt as a teacher.

She took that remark down soon after she posted it and expressed remorse for having made it.

Sometimes this kind of thing happens - people say things they don't mean out of frustration, then express remorse for them.

And yet, the justice system put in place to handle circumstances like this treated her mercilessly.

At first she was fired.

She appealed and was instead given a two-year suspension without pay.

As this process played out for Rubino, I couldn't help but think about Mayor Mike and the EEOC case that was brought against his company Bloomberg LP as well as several other sexual discrimination cases that had been brought against his company in the past.

It seems Mayor Mike has a track record of saying inappropriate things to female employees even as his company has engaged in harassment and discrimination against women that come awfully close to looking systematic.

In one instance, Bloomberg told a female employee of Bloomberg LP who was pregnant that she should "kill" the baby if she expected to remain with the company, adding "Great! Number 16!", a statement that referenced the number of employees out on maternity leave at the company.

According to court documents brought during a lawsuit, Bloomberg denied making the statement "Kill it!" to the employee but was heard to acknowledge in a voice mail that he had upset this employee with something he had said to her and he never meant anything by it.

Here we have Mayor Mike, our intrepid leader in NYC, the man who wanted Christine Rubino fired for posting an inappropriate remark on her Facebook page, making a venomous statement to a pregnant female employee that comes pretty close to being an actual threat ("Abort the fetus or be fired!"), then refusing to admit he had made the statement even as he acknowledged that he had upset the woman.

Of course Bloomberg never apologized.

Michael Bloomberg NEVER apologizes.

Bloomberg LP eventually settled the case without admitting any wrongdoing and put a non-disclosure clause in it so that the former Bloomberg LP employee could not talk about the case.

The EEOC case brought against Bloomberg LP for systematic sexual discrimination was dismissed by a judge.

This seems like a clear example of the double standards we see in America today, the two-tiered justice system that allows the rich and powerful like Mayor Mike to skirt accountability and the mercilessness with which the rest of us our treated.

If you are rich and powerful, you can say whatever you like and pay off the people you hurt and hire enough high powered lawyers to get a federal case against you dismissed.

And if you're a working class teacher, you can scrape together the money you need to appeal an unfair and unjust decision from a NYCDOE kangaroo court and see your job dismissal "lightened" to a two year suspension without pay.

Welcome to 21st century America where the police fire rubber bullets against Occupy protesters armed with chalk even as the bankers who fixed LIBOR walk away relatively unscathed, with non-prosecution agreements in their pockets.

All the bank had to do was a pay a fine that comes from money they stole anyway.

America - Land of the Not-So-Free, Home of an Unaccountable Elite.

NOTE: You can help Christine Rubino out here.

What's Cuomo Hiding?

The Daily News reports the following:

Cuomo refuses to communicate with his staff by email, sources close to the governor revealed to the Daily News.

If aides can’t talk in person or by phone, they are told to use the BlackBerry PIN-to-PIN messaging system — a function that leaves no lasting trail because it bypasses data-saving email servers. It allows users to connect directly through their devices using Personal Identification Numbers.

Only members of Cuomo’s inner circle are told his PIN, sources say.

A message sent over a data server can always be recovered, even when deleted. Not so for PIN messages, which are gone forever once killed, a spokesman for BlackBerry operator Research In Motion said.

And while much of the back-and-forth communication between the governor and his aides is private, it could be subject to subpoena by ethics investigators, prosecutors and possibly members of the Legislature in the event of a probe.

“He told me directly to use the PIN and that was the way to do it,” said one former administration official.

Cuomo — who promised to have the most open and transparent administration in state history — did not tell the former official the reason to use PIN communication, but the message was clear, the source said.

“It doesn’t have a paper trail,” the official said. “If he gets a new phone, he gets a new PIN, even if he has the same phone number. Every phone has a specific PIN.”

“If you want to exclude folks from having it, you get a new phone and distribute the PIN to a smaller or different group,” the official added.

I would also remind readers that Cuomo still hasn't released his official papers from his time as attorney general.

Those papers are important, since Cuomo was supposed to be "Sheriff of Wall Street" in that position.

Cuomo did not bring any charges against any of the Wall Street figures responsible for the collapse of '08.

Not even one.

It has been alleged that his office did lots of investigations around the activities that led to the financial collapse, so it is odd that Cuomo ultimately decided not to bring any charges at all.

Or perhaps not so odd - many of those same figures like to donate to political campaigns and Cuomo sure does like donations from Wall Street figures.

That's why he currently has a $19.3 million dollar warchest to use against unions and other political enemies.

Could there be a quid pro quo between who Cuomo raises funds from and who he gave a pass to as attorney general?

Dunno, but since Cuomo refuses to release his official papers from his time as attorney general, we can't say for certain either way, can we?

And since Cuomo now only communicates using untraceable messaging systems, it is clear that he wants the same unaccountability as governor that he has enjoyed as attorney general.

He sure does like to operate in the dark.

That penchant isn't a smoking gun that he's doing something crooked and unseemly, but it sure does smell bad.

And it does mean he's hiding something.

So I ask the governor again, what are you hiding?

Why won't you release your papers from your time as attorney general?

Why do you only communicate using untraceable systems?

Why do you refuse to release the donors who have raised money for you as part of the Committee To Save New York superPAC?

Why do you like the dark so much?

Just How Much Damage To The World Can Bill Gates Do?

Lots:

In a decision outraging campaigners for food sovereignty and agroecological approaches, the Gates Foundation has awarded a $10 million grant to develop genetically modified (GM) crops for use in sub-Saharan Africa.

The grant is for the John Innes Centre in Norwich, which hopes to engineer seeds for corn, wheat and rice that will fix nitrogen (take nitrogen from the air) so that the crops would not need fertilizers. But GM Freeze, which campaigns against GM food, crops and patents, says that "nitrogen fixing wheat and other cereals have been promised by the GM industry for several decades" and that other, non-GM methods are the solution. Pete Riley, campaign director GM Freeze, adds that "GM is failing to deliver."

This approach sets up a highly profitable scenario for seed makers, as farmers would be reliant upon these companies to continue buying their seeds, and would not be able to save the patented, modified seeds.

Commenting on the Gates Foundation grant, Mariam Mayet of the African Centre for Biosafety in South Africa said: "GM nitrogen fixing crops are not the answer to improving the fertility of Africa's soils. African farmers are the last people to be asked about such projects. This often results in the wrong technologies being developed, which many farmers simply cannot afford. We need methods that we can control aimed at building up resilient soils that are both fertile and able to cope with extreme weather. We also want our knowledge and skills to be respected and not to have inappropriate solutions imposed on us by distant institutions, charitable bodies or governments."

Speaking to Bill Moyers on Moyers & Company, eco-activist Vandana Shiva said that Bill Gates is "so totally wrong on this assumption that genetically modified seeds produce more. In India, Monsanto came in with a claim of 1,500 kilograms of cotton per acre with their genetically engineered cotton. The average yields are 400 kilograms. Our studies show that. The government studies confirm this."

As a teacher who has watched Gates upend my profession and the institutions I work in, ditto to what Mariam Mayet said:

We also want our knowledge and skills to be respected and not to have inappropriate solutions imposed on us by distant institutions, charitable bodies or governments."

This is what teachers want too.

But all knowing Bill Gates, the man behind such vaunted innovations as the Zune and Windows Vista, will not respect the knowledge and skills of people but he will help impose inappropriate solutions from distant institutions, charitable bodies and governments.

All in the name of making the world a better place, of course.

Or aggrandizing his own ego as the Godlike figure he thinks he is.

And Now This System Comes To Education

Steven Pearlstein writes the following in the Washington Post:

By now you’ve probably heard the story of the young Florida lifeguard, Tomas Lopez, who was fired earlier this month because he left his station unmanned to help with a rescue in an unguarded section of the beach, in violation of his company’s standard operating procedures.

Over the Fourth of July holiday, this story played out in the national media as a parable about the foolish rigidity of business managers. Lopez, along with six other guards who were fired or quit as part of the imbroglio, were all offered their jobs back by an apologetic owner of the lifeguard management firm (they declined). And last week, Lopez was awarded the key to the city by Hallandale Beach’s elected leaders who vowed to not renew the contract with Jeff Ellis Management, the lifeguard firm that had brought such unwelcome attention.

From another angle, this is also a parable about outsourcing and how it is reshaping large swaths of the economy.

Jeff Ellis, it turns out, is something of a pioneer in the lifeguard business. He started out as a consultant to water parks, clubs and municipalities, training lifeguards and performing annual audits of equipment and procedures that include simulated drownings to test the guards and the equipment. Today that business has nearly 700 clients in 50 states and 14 countries. Insurers have been known to give discounts on liability policies to operators who use Ellis’s services.

About a decade ago, Ellis moved to extend his franchise by offering to hire, train and manage lifeguards for water parks, municipalities and pool owners that wanted to outsource that function. One of his first customers was Hallandale, which had up to that time put beach protection operations under its fire department. In the first year, Ellis says, his company cut the city’s annual $700,000 tab for lifeguards in half. In the nine years since, Ellis says there have been no drownings and his contract has been routinely renewed.

Hallandale is like many public and private enterprises that decided to outsource to contractors work that is not part of their core missions or competencies.

Because they are generally free from union contracts and the unwritten norms of pay equality that exist within any enterprise, contractors are able to pay lower wages and benefits — in many cases, a lot lower. That was certainly the case with Ellis and the Hallandale lifeguards.

The second big advantage that outsourcing firms enjoy is the economies of scale. A firm that specializes in one function and does a lot of it can generally do it at a lower cost simply by spreading fixed costs over a much larger base of business.

Simply by having more experience, a specialty contractor is also more likely to hit upon the most efficient and effective ways of doing things and can quickly adopt those improvements throughout its operations. Unlike in-house operations, outside contractors are also subject to the discipline of competition when contracts are up for renewal.

There is, however, an important trade-off that is made by outsourcing that contractors reflexively deny but is inherent in any firm that derives its competitive advantage from having carefully constructed systems for doing just about everything.

It is these systems — the rules, the procedures, in effect the operational software — that allow companies to take relatively low-skilled, low-paid workers with relatively little experience and have them do tasks that were once done by people with higher skills, higher pay and more experience. And it is the very nature of these systems that workers are discouraged, if not prohibited, from exercising their own discretion. Their only job is to follow rules, stick to the script and leverage the experience and expertise that are embedded in the system.

...

The reason these various systems can deliver reliable service at lower cost most of the time is precisely because front-line workers are willing and able to act like cogs in a machine. So when two of Lopez’s colleagues later told supervisors they would have done the same thing, they were fired as well.

If you want discretion and judgment, if you want workers who really understand and relate to customers, if you want the flexibility necessary to respond to individual needs or unforeseen circumstances, then you can go back to paying twice as much to have your own, longtime employees doing the work. That’s the outsourcing trade-off. It may be a good trade-off — most of the time I suspect it is. But it is an unavoidable trade-off, no matter how good the contractors or their systems.

You can see how this process bifurcates labor markets and increases income inequality. At the low end are the low-cost expendable cogs. At the high end are those whose experience and intelligence and training allow them to demand very good salaries for designing, creating and managing these systems. There’s not much in between — or even much of a ladder for getting from one to the other.

And now, the geniuses at the Gates Foundation and the Broad Foundation and the USDOE and the NYCDOE and the "non-profits" like StudentsFirst and other education reform groups and the education management organizations and the consulting companies are bringing this kind of system - designed by people who think they have the experience, intelligence, training and skill to develop curricula, tests, and evaluation systems that can be used by low trained, unskilled cogs in the machine who can be tossed aside every few years for fresh cogs.

But as Pearlstein says, if you want discretion and judgment, if you want workers who really understand and relate to people, if you want the flexibility necessary to respond to individual needs or unforeseen circumstances, then you can go back to paying twice as much to have your own, longtime employees doing the work.

Or in the case of education, allowing the highly skilled, highly educated teaching workforce to do what it is quite capable of doing.

There is the meme out there, perpetrated by the hucksters in the privatization movement and their allies in the media and government, that teachers are morons, some of the dumbest people on the planet, the least educated and skilled of the "educated classes."

This meme is there so that they can convince the public that schools are "failing" and teachers are "bad" and the system needs to be changed.

This is why they say they have "outsourced" administration in schools to "business people" as opposed to "educators" - educators are not "smart" enough to do this work.

But I have seen, time and time again, teachers who really know how to teach, who really know how to relate to students, who know how to reflect upon their practices and are flexible enough to change when needed who are told "THIS IS THE WAY YOU WILL TEACH!!!"

We are seeing this now with the new Danielson evaluation rubric which the UFT, for some reason, seems to believe is a good way to evaluate teachers.

A teacher is only effective if she/he teaches the way Danielson, a trained economist who has little teaching experience though lots of consulting experience, wants her/him to teach.

One way fits all, one method fits all, one system to rule them all.

That's what education reform is all about.

Gates, Bloomberg, Obama, Duncan, Klein, Rhee et al. do not want teachers with discretion and judgment, they do not want teachers who really understand and relate to people, they do not want teachers with the flexibility to respond to individual needs and unforeseen circumstances.

They want cogs in the machine who can and will unquestioningly follow a script given to them by their corporate education reform leaders

The consequences of this kind of "reform" will be stark and destructive for the country.

But I think, in the end, that has always been the point.

In a social, political and economic system that is so rigged and corrupt, as noted here, the powers that be want a dehumanized education system taught by cogs in the machine, attended by future cogs in the machine that rewards one thing and one thing only - obeying the rules.

No Wonder Occupy Was So Threatening To Them

Naomi Wolf:

Last fall, I argued that the violent reaction to Occupy and other protests around the world had to do with the 1%ers' fear of the rank and file exposing massive fraud if they ever managed get their hands on the books. At that time, I had no evidence of this motivation beyond the fact that financial system reform and increased transparency were at the top of many protesters' list of demands.

But this week presents a sick-making trove of new data that abundantly fills in this hypothesis and confirms this picture. The notion that the entire global financial system is riddled with systemic fraud – and that key players in the gatekeeper roles, both in finance and in government, including regulatory bodies, know it and choose to quietly sustain this reality – is one that would have only recently seemed like the frenzied hypothesis of tinhat-wearers, but this week's headlines make such a conclusion, sadly, inevitable.

Indeed - the fixing of LIBOR and the fact that regulators including the current Secretary of the Treasury and then head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York did nothing serious to stop it and never exposed it to the public is the biggest example of a system that is rigged beyond measure.

If they fixed LIBOR and the regulators knew it and did little to nothing to stop it, then frankly nothing in the financial system can be trusted, no one in the financial world can be trusted, no one in regulation or government can be trusted to put things right.

The system is rigged and rotten to the core.

Naomi Wolf is quite right when she says no wonders the criminals in power reacted so violently to the Occupy protests.

They know they're standing on dominoes that are tottering.

The crookedness and criminality are so widespread that they are too difficult to hide anymore.

And so the oligarchs respond with violence and repression and control.

Expect to see much more of this from the elite and their security apparatus as the rot at the core of the system continues to become apparent:

Hundreds of Los Angeles police in riot gear, shooting rubber bullets, clashed with Occupy L.A. protesters and street artists attending a sidewalk chalk-drawing event dubbed "Free Chalk for Free Speech" as part of the monthly L.A. ArtWalk. Several injuries and 19 arrests, mostly for "vandalism." For drawing in chalk, in the rain? Overreact much?

Ah yes - using rubber bullets on protesters armed with chalk.

That's where we're at today.

And soon, the drones.

A Nation With A Fraudulent, Unaccountable Elite

Top stories this morning:

New Fraud Inquiry as JPMorgan’s Loss Mounts:

JPMorgan Chase disclosed on Friday that losses on its botched credit bet could climb to more than $7 billion and that the bank’s traders may have intentionally tried to obscure the full extent of the red ink on the disastrous trades.

Mounting concerns about valuing the trades led the company to announce that its earnings for the first quarter were no longer reliable and would be restated. Federal regulators, who were already examining the trades, are now looking at whether employees of the nation’s biggest bank by assets intended to defraud investors, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

The revelations left Jamie Dimon, the bank’s chief executive, scrambling for the second time within two months to contain the fallout from the trading debacle. It has already claimed one of his most trusted lieutenants, compelled Mr. Dimon to appear before Congress to account for the blunder and prompted the bank to claw back millions in compensation from three traders in London at the heart of the losses. A top bank official said that the board could also seize pay from Mr. Dimon, but did not indicate that it would do so.

And this one:

Paterno Won Sweeter Deal Even as Scandal Played Out

In January 2011, Joe Paterno learned prosecutors were investigating his longtime assistant coach Jerry Sandusky for sexually assaulting young boys. Soon, Mr. Paterno had testified before a grand jury, and the rough outlines of what would become a giant scandal had been published in a local newspaper.

That same month, Mr. Paterno, the football coach at Penn State, began negotiating with his superiors to amend his contract, with the timing something of a surprise because the contract was not set to expire until the end of 2012, according to university documents and people with knowledge of the discussions. By August, Mr. Paterno and the university’s president, both of whom were by then embroiled in the Sandusky investigation, had reached an agreement.

Mr. Paterno was to be paid $3 million at the end of the 2011 season if he agreed it would be his last. Interest-free loans totaling $350,000 that the university had made to Mr. Paterno over the years would be forgiven as part of the retirement package. He would also have the use of the university’s private plane and a luxury box at Beaver Stadium for him and his family to use over the next 25 years.

The university’s full board of trustees was kept in the dark about the arrangement until November, when Mr. Sandusky was arrested and the contract arrangements, along with so much else at Penn State, were upended. Mr. Paterno was fired, two of the university’s top officials were indicted in connection with the scandal, and the trustees, who held Mr. Paterno’s financial fate in their hands, came under verbal assault from the coach’s angry supporters.

Board members who raised questions about whether the university ought to go forward with the payments were quickly shut down, according to two people with direct knowledge of the negotiations.

In the end, the board of trustees — bombarded with hate mail and threatened with a defamation lawsuit by Mr. Paterno’s family — gave the family virtually everything it wanted, with a package worth roughly $5.5 million. Documents show that the board even tossed in some extras that the family demanded, like the use of specialized hydrotherapy massage equipment for Mr. Paterno’s wife at the university’s Lasch Building, where Mr. Sandusky had molested a number of his victims.

The details of Mr. Paterno and his family’s fight for money seem to deepen one of the lasting truths of the Sandusky scandal: the significant power that Mr. Paterno exerted on the state institution, its officials, its alumni and its purse strings.

And of course this:

New York Fed Knew of False Barclays Reports on Rates

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York learned in April 2008, as the financial crisis was brewing, that at least one bank was reporting false interest rates.

At the time, a Barclays employee told a New York Fed official that “we know that we’re not posting um, an honest” rate, according to documents released by the regulator on Friday. The employee indicated that other big banks made similarly bogus reports, saying that the British institution wanted to “fit in with the rest of the crowd.”

Although the New York Fed conferred with Britain and American regulators about the problems and recommended reforms, it failed to stop the illegal activity, which persisted through 2009.

British regulators have said that they did not have explicit proof then of wrongdoing by banks. But the Fed’s documents, which were released at the request of lawmakers, appear to undermine those claims.

The revelations fuel concerns that regulators are ill-equipped to police big banks and that financial institutions can game the system for their own purposes.

Even after authorities have beefed up oversight and lawmakers have enacted new rules, blowups on Wall Street continue to occur with some regularity. Amid the rate-manipulation scandal, regulators are also dealing with the fallout from the multibillion-dollar trading losses at JP Morgan Chase and the collapse of a second brokerage firm, just months after the failure of MF Global.

It's all rigged, folks.

All rigged.

And it's not fixable.

It's not.

Worldwide elites have a stranglehold on power, wealth, and weaponry.

They're not going to be taken down.

You can see the brazenness in the actions of a sociopath like Paterno.

Even as he is lying to a grand jury about Sandusky, he's rigging a new deal that will make sure he and his family are taken care financially no matter what happens.

Sure, he's dead now, so ultimately he didn't get anything out of it.

But his family did.

A perfect example of an elite rigging the system.

Why is Jamie Dimon still in charge at JP Morgan Chase?

Why isn't he in jail?

Why isn't anybody from Barclays in jail for LIBOR rigging?

Why did the government sign a non-prosecutorial agreement with Barclays?

Why isn't Geithner in jail, if not for sitting on the LIBOR rigging, than for the sweetheart deals he gave Goldman Sachs via the AIG bailout?

Why isn't Hank Paulsen in jail?

Or Dick Fuld?

Or Angelo Mozilo?

Or anybody who rigged the Big Casino that is "The Street"?

You know why, I know why, and they know why.

Because it's all rigged.

And it ain't going to get fixed.

The system is too rotten and corrupted to be fixed.

This is the Roman Empire, circa 300 AD, but we're moving a lot faster to dissolution than they ever did.

We can make believe like the "election" in November is some referendum on things, but nearly everybody but the most partisan know none of that shit matters.

Whether Romney or Obama is elected, we are continuing down the Road to Plutocracy.

But even as they try and distract us from the gravity and reality of the situation with bread and circuses and reality TV and politics and mythology and the rest, there are people looking to build a road to the future.

There is no map there, no directions.

But from the Occupy movement to the recovery movement to the restorative justice movement, there are glimpses of what the future could like - after we hit "bottom" and Global Warming puts a final nail in the coffin of capitalism and the market-based ideologies that currently are poisoning our air, our water, our communities, our families, our spirits, our minds and our souls.

I am not hopeful that this is something I will see, but I am hopeful that I can be a part of building that future so that two, three, five or ten generations down the road from now, there is some kind of human society on this planet that is sustainable and worthwhile.

Because what we are viewing right now as it crumbles around us sure isn't it.

How Low Will They Go?

Ah, yes - giving a college readiness test to five year olds.

That makes sense.

Why stop there?

Why not go even earlier?

How about pre-school?

Or day care?

Hell, why start with the college readiness assessments after they're already born ?

Everybody knows that's too damned late.

Let's start in the womb.

And the third trimester is just way too late to start college readiness assessment.

Let's start in the second trimester.

No, screw it, let's start in the first trimester!

You know what, scratch that- let's start right after fertilization!

Yeah, that's the perfect time for a college readiness assessment.

But wait - what if that's too late???!!!

Maybe we should start before fertilization.

Maybe we should start with the egg and the sperm by themselves and see if they're acquiring the skills necessary for college?

Maybe we should assess when little Johnny is just glint in Big Johnny's eye and he's setting the Barry White record onto the turn table?

Maybe that's the best time to start college readiness assessment!

But wait, what if that's too late!

Maybe we need to start even earlier...

Rupert Murdoch's "The Daily" Put On Death Watch

Well, that didn't take long:

Rupert Murdoch's 'The Daily' may not be long for this world.

The iPad-only magazine launched to great fanfare in early 2011, but has languished ever since -- chiefly because you can only access it on an iPad. This time last year, a weary Chase Carey (News Corp's COO) told Adweek that the Daily "would a very different business a year from now . . . and will continue to evolve."

The evolution could come to an end after the election, however. New York Observer's Kat Stoeffel reports today on "internal rumors that The Daily has been put 'on watch,'" following news of News Corp's decision to split its publishing and entertainment properties.

"According to a source the status of the groundbreaking iPad tabloid—which loses $30 million a year—will be reassessed after the November 6 election," Stoeffel writes.

It isn't a hard rumor to believe -- one source at News Corp tells me that talk of The Daily's death is so common as to be taken for granted -- but the November 6 deadline is new, and probably cause for some concern around the watercooler.

The Daily will be the first Murdoch news outlet to die.

With the newspapers having to stand alone without the entertainment division to hold them up, there will be other closings.

Watch out, Posties.

If The Daily is getting closed for losing $30 million a year, how do you guys survive losing $110 million a year?

Wall Street Execs Think Criminal Activity Is Part Of Job Description

No surprises here:

A survey of senior executives at financial firms in the U.S. and the U.K., released Monday, found that nearly a quarter of respondents, or 24%, said they consider engaging in unethical or illegal conduct as a necessary ingredient for success in the financial world.

Another 26% said they had either seen or had direct knowledge of wrongdoing.

Worse, 16% of execs admitted they would willingly step over the legal line and commit insider trading — if they knew they could get away with it.

Results of the study, commissioned by law firm Labaton Sucharow, were compiled by anonymously interviewing 500 financial professionals online.

...

The study also found that 30% of respondents felt pressured by their big-buck salaries and bonuses to compromise their ethics or even break the law.

And nearly four in 10, or 39%, felt that their competitors are likely to engage in illegal or unethical activities to get ahead.

No wonder they felt cool to rig LIBOR.

No wonder they get pissed whenever anybody says it's time to "reform" the financial system.

A quarter of Wall Streeters admit that breaking the law is crucial to success in the financial world.

And another 26% said they had either seen or had direct knowledge of criminal activity on the Street.

And those are the ones who admit the truth.

You have to think some of those surveyed didn't.

A rotten, filthy cesspool.

And now they bring their ethics, compensation structure, and evaluation systems to public education.

Lawyer Says Feds Tried To "Manufacture" Case Against John Liu

The allegation against the feds was made in court today:

An indicted fund-raiser for city Comptroller John Liu claims the feds wanted him to help "manufacture" charges against the embattled mayoral hopeful.

In court this morning, a lawyer for Xing Wu "Oliver" Pan said "the facts here are so unique and disturbing" that he would seek the unprecedented dismissal of campaign-finance charges against Pan.

Defense lawyer Irwin Rochman cited the "highly improper manner in which the government dealt with Mr. Pan" prior to his arrest following a sting operation last year.

Rochman said the feds tried "to pressure Mr. Pan to help the government manufacture a case against Mr. Liu."

Rochman didn't elaborate on his allegations, and refused to do so outside court, saying more details would be contained in a motion due Sept. 10.

But he specified that the feds wanted to build a criminal case against the Queens Democrat, and "possibly some of his associates."

A spokeswoman for the Manhattan US Attorney's Office declined comment.

Liu's campaign spokesman also declined to comment.

Pan is charged with scheming with an undercover FBI agent to use phony "straw" donors to funnel $16,000 into Liu's 2013 campaign account.

The amount is more than three times the legal limit of $4,950 in contributions from a single individual.

Earlier this year, Liu all but dared the feds to bring charges against him in the case, in which his former campaign treasurer, Jia "Jenny" Hou has also been charged.

"If there is anything that my campaign is guilty of, or my supporters or my staff or by extension me, then prove it," Liu said at the time.

So far, the feds haven't proven anything, although the allegations against Liu have been damaging enough to short circuit any chance he might have had to win a race for City Hall in 2013.

Interestingly enough, one politician has been caught in a money laundering scheme to pay an associate $1.1 million dollars from his own personal account to a political operative in order to campaign finance rules.

That politician's name is Michael Bloomberg.

Funny how the politician who serves the interests of the elite 1% pays nothing for breaking campaign finance law while the politician who seems to try and serve the 99% is destroyed by campaign finance fraud allegations from a case that so far hasn't even been brought by the feds, let alone proven.

If it turns out the feds were putting pressure on Pan to "manufacture" a case against Liu, that makes this even worse.

But in a country where you are rewarded for serving the interests of the elite and punished if you try and serve the interests of the 99%, I guess none of this should be a surprise.

Bloomberg Wants Lots Of People Living In 275 Square Foot Apartments

No, not at Rikers - in New York City!

Mayor Bloomberg launched a contest Monday to stir development of teeny-tiny apartments — called micro units — for young singles willing to cram themselves into shoebox-sized digs.

The new closetlike flats will be just 275 to 300 square feet — larger than a jail cell but smaller than a mobile home — and will have special permission to ignore city rules requiring newly built apartments to exceed 400 square feet.

“The city’s demographics have changed,” Bloomberg said. “It used to be the average household was a family, a couple of adults and some children.”

That meant that the city was filled with larger dwellings, leaving just 1 million studios and one bedrooms — not nearly enough for the 1.8 million one-and two-person households.

At a news conference Monday, the mayor announced a contest seeking a developer for about 80 micro units at a city-owned parking lot on E. 27th St. in Kips Bay.

The ministudios will be just big enough for a bathroom, kitchen and sleeping and dining areas — but Bloomberg said tenants shouldn’t plan on doing much entertaining.

Or keep any possessions.

This will be the new norm - work 12 hour days, live in a 275 square foot apartment, slave until they put you in a costly hospice to die.

All so Bloomberg and his business and corporate cronies can live in 80,000 square foot houses, own tropical islands and have two SUV's idling on the corner waiting to take them for their ride on the subway.

Welcome to 21st century New York.

This Is EXACTLY What The Common Core Has Been Designed To Do

Chris Hedges:

Cultures that endure carve out a protected space for those who question and challenge national myths. Artists, writers, poets, activists, journalists, philosophers, dancers, musicians, actors, directors and renegades must be tolerated if a culture is to be pulled back from disaster. Members of this intellectual and artistic class, who are usually not welcome in the stultifying halls of academia where mediocrity is triumphant, serve as prophets. They are dismissed, or labeled by the power elites as subversive, because they do not embrace collective self-worship. They force us to confront unexamined assumptions, ones that, if not challenged, lead to destruction. They expose the ruling elites as hollow and corrupt. They articulate the senselessness of a system built on the ideology of endless growth, ceaseless exploitation and constant expansion. They warn us about the poison of careerism and the futility of the search for happiness in the accumulation of wealth. They make us face ourselves, from the bitter reality of slavery and Jim Crow to the genocidal slaughter of Native Americans to the repression of working-class movements to the atrocities carried out in imperial wars to the assault on the ecosystem. They make us unsure of our virtue. They challenge the easy clichés we use to describe the nation—the land of the free, the greatest country on earth, the beacon of liberty—to expose our darkness, crimes and ignorance. They offer the possibility of a life of meaning and the capacity for transformation.

Human societies see what they want to see. They create national myths of identity out of a composite of historical events and fantasy. They ignore unpleasant facts that intrude on self-glorification. They trust naively in the notion of linear progress and in assured national dominance. This is what nationalism is about—lies. And if a culture loses its ability for thought and expression, if it effectively silences dissident voices, if it retreats into what Sigmund Freud called “screen memories,” those reassuring mixtures of fact and fiction, it dies. It surrenders its internal mechanism for puncturing self-delusion. It makes war on beauty and truth. It abolishes the sacred. It turns education into vocational training. It leaves us blind. And this is what has occurred. We are lost at sea in a great tempest. We do not know where we are. We do not know where we are going. And we do not know what is about to happen to us.

Yes, but at least Johnson can get us a market analysis by Friday.

Because what's more important to a society than getting a market analysis by Friday - and college and career readiness as measured by standardized testing?