Good for the School District

even though the chances of ever getting the settlement money paid back are slim to none.

Fraudulent civil suits against school districts, as I well know, happen all the time because plaintiffs' attorneys know they will never be held accountable for filing frivolous, fraudulent lawsuits, as those cases are almost always settled out of court. District insurance carriers refuse to pay the hundreds of thousands of dollars or even millions of dollars in attorney fees and court costs.

The difference in this case is a man was wrongly accused and actually went to prison for five years while the "victim" and her mother cashed in on a huge insurance claim.

This video from last June is good:

View more videos at: http://nbclosangeles.com.

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"The Bible Says You Know Them By Their Fruits."

So says embattled anti-gay ESPN commentator Chris Broussard, who has gotten some very vocal support from aging televangelist Pat Robertson, who forgot about the "fruits" of his own immorality (oldest child Tim):

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I See Red

I see it every single time when I read some stupid article whining about the imaginary problems of the children of a very tiny financial and political elite in this country who attend the hoity-toity boarding schools (which ought to be outlawed, by the way, as a form of child abuse) and want me to feel sorry for them. In this case, I am supposed to shed crocodile tears because the girls in these "exclusive" schools are not given leadership positions.

After all, if these girls don't have "leadership" roles in the "best" schools in the country, they might be forced to give up their Ivy League dreams and go to some shitty state school like the vast majority of the riff-raff who attend college in this country. Those poor girls will be scarred for life because they won't have the access to the connections those Ivies provide and be privileged enough to avoid dealing with their inferiors.

There is certainly something wrong with this picture, and it has nothing to do with girls versus boys and leadership. It's about writing an article focusing on a school catering exclusively to the rich, which doesn't have anything to do with virtually every other student in the United States. Over 90 percent of students go to those despised public schools, not to hoity-toity private schools that aren't any better but are merely the schools the kids of many of the financial and political elite attend. We don't care about their "problems" when there are millions of children and families who are living on the financial edge.

Ask me and virtually everybody else who doesn't live in NYC or D.C. if we care about Phillips Andover or how important it is to attend Ivy League schools. We don't. It's time we focus on the real problems of real people, not whining about the supposed problems of the children of the top one-hundredth of the top one percent of income earners.

The article is truly an insult to students and teachers everywhere in the country.

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Ain't It the Truth?

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Forgotten But Not Gone

While James W. Guthrie may have been "pressured" to quit his job as Nevada's first appointed state superintendent of instruction, he didn't keep his mouth shut about what he proposed as "reforms" in education.

He appears he is writing propaganda for the far right, Nevada-based Nevada Policy Research Institute.

Fat chance administrators would EVER allow teachers to make more money than they do. It would simply worsen the problems with favoritism and principal abuse of power which are rampant in education:

Guthrie said Nevada needs bold and audacious ideas.

“These little myopic changes aren’t going to do anything,” he said. “How in the world is a little reduction in class size going to make a difference?”

His paper proposed that the state use Gov. Sandoval’s proposed $200 million in each of the upcoming biennial years for roll ups and the $160 million a year in funds for smaller elementary school classes to identify and pay the state’s most outstanding teachers.

The "outstanding" teachers are the ones who are the best asskissers to the principals.

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Etc.

Prominent feminist writer Mary Thom, 68, died Friday from injuries sustained in a motorcycle crash.

She was one of the founders of Ms. magazine.
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Speaking of obituaries, is there anything that can be learned from the rise and crashing fall of one of the nation's leading sociopaths?

I am not kidding when I say Michelle Rhee is a sociopath. She fits the description to a "t."
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Tell me about it:

Forty-six percent of all US adults did not have insurance for the full year, or had coverage that provided insufficient protection from health costs. Nearly a third—55 million—were uninsured at some time in 2012. Some 30 million people—an additional 16 percent—were insured, but had such high out-of-pocket costs that they could be considered underinsured, according to the report.

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Whatever you do, don't do it.

Don't go into teaching anyway; you will be used and abused and tossed out like garbage if you are unlucky enough to have a bad administrator.

I had two terrible ones in a row, and they made my life hell.

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Whatever You Do, Don't Do It

That is, of course, become a teacher. Don't go into debt for thousands of dollars to go into a "profession" where you are demonized by politicians and "reformers" and treated like shit by administrators every single day of your life.

Especially don't do it as a midlife career change because age discrimination is rampant in the field.

Being fired or forced to resign or retire or non-renewed as a teacher, which is a firing but you are not given a continuing contract, has very little to do with whether you are a good, bad, or indifferent teacher. It has to do with whether or not an idiotic or vengeful principal "likes you."

Not good to be a lamb to the slaughter, especially if you are thinking about this field as a retirement career:

Young teachers from across the United States have told me they no longer have the ability to properly manage classrooms, not because of lack of training, not because of lack of ability, not because of lack of desire, but because of upper administration decisions to reduce statistics on classroom referrals and in-school and out-of-school suspensions. As any classroom teacher can tell you, when the students know there will be no repercussions for their actions, there will be no change in their behavior. When there is no change in their behavior, other students will have a more difficult time learning.

Teachers are being told over and over again that their job is not to teach, but to guide students to learning on their own. While I am fully in favor of students taking control of their learning, I also remember a long list of teachers whose knowledge and experience helped me to become a better student and a better person. They encouraged me to learn on my own, and I did, but they also taught me many things. In these days when virtual learning is being force-fed to public schools by those who will financially benefit, the classroom teacher is being increasingly devalued. The concept being pushed upon us is not of a teacher teaching, but one of who babysits while the thoroughly engaged students magically learn on their own.

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Ed Etc.

I seriously doubt that if union leader Al Shanker were alive today, he would support the Gates-pushed "Common Core" crap. He had learned his lesson about charter schools although he never should have come up with such a nonsensical idea about teachers and parents coming together and creating community schools that would give them more autonomy in the first place.

Although Shanker has long since died, he's never been able to live down the naive bullshit he peddled in the late 1980s.
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She's Sorry Only Because She Got Caught

Former USSC justice Sandra Day O'Connor has a few regrets about her role in the outrageous Bush v. Gore case, where the high court basically picked the popular vote loser over the winner and thus undermined our system of elections.

No, the high court had NO business whatsoever taking on this case:

Looking back, O'Connor said, she isn't sure the high court should have taken the case.

"It took the case and decided it at a time when it was still a big election issue," O'Connor said during a talk with the Chicago Tribune's Editorial Board on Friday. "Maybe the court should have said, 'We're not going to take it, goodbye.' "

The case, she said, "stirred up the public" and "gave the court a less than perfect reputation."

"Obviously the court did reach a decision and thought it had to reach a decision," she said. "It turned out the election authorities in Florida hadn't done a real good job there and kind of messed it up. And probably the Supreme Court added to the problem at the end of the day."

It helped wreck the court's already shot reputation when it simply made up shit out of whole cloth.

However, we no longer have to worry about rigged elections, since the economic elites have decided to infiltrated the Democratic Party with puppets like Obama.

No election fraud necessary, only fraudulent candidates and presidents.

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A Buckraker and Her Attorney Clean Up Against WCSD

It looks like the Washoe County School District Board of Trustees may have to cough up, or rather approve an insurance settlement payout, to a former employee who resigned from the district years ago and filed a lawsuit in federal court.

I had a much better case than that woman did, but I could get nowhere in Nevada.

Snip:

The board will also vote on whether to pay Kathleen Nichols, who was reassigned to Human Resources in 2004, $250,000. Nichols was the executive assistant to then general council [sic--you'd think reporters would learn how to spell "counsel"] Jeff Blanck. Blanck was terminated and Nichols was transferred. She resigned from the district and filed a lawsuit against the district in federal court according to the school board agenda.

The law firm Maupin, Cox & LeGoy represented the district in the case. The federal court dismissed Nichols’ case on summary judgment. Outside legal feels cost the district $350,000 according to the agenda.

The school board agenda says that because this is a constitutional rights case, any liability found against the district would trigger attorney’s fees on behalf of the plaintiff. In March a federal court conducted a mandatory settlement conference and $250,000 was agreed by all parties.

The district’s excess coverage carrier, Genesis Insurance, will pay the $250,000.

Nice to know somebody whose case was relatively minor compared to my situation would be handsomely compensated, but that is because she had connections to the attorney who represented her. Her connections to him is why she sued, while his suit against WCSD was thrown out. Anybody who has a real case against WCSD is up against a brick wall and can't get anywhere thanks to not being told by Washoe Education Association about EEOC or other such avenues, not to mention the reluctance of most attorneys in Washoe County to even take on teacher lawsuits. Disgraceful. It's even more disgraceful being told by the state attorney general that there is nothing you can do against the union, either, for its negligence, for the same tiny window of six months SOL in filing a complaint applies to the public employee-management relations board as it does to EEOC. In short, the district and the bogus union can do whatever the hell they want to teachers, while the teachers become permanently impoverished when illegally fired. Yes, I will beat this dead horse until I die or the district makes it right, which it never will. The district needs to be outed as the corrupt organization that it is.

You can read the facts about the case here, and you don't have to pay for it. This document, which threw out the summary judgment request by the district, explains the background of the case.

Just think: If you have the right connections, you can cash in with a big settlement on something that is relatively minor (sitting in a public school board meeting next to the person you work for and was being fired and then being reassigned).

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Etc.

Student loan debt continues to go through the roof:

The FRBNY report emphasizes the effect this indebtedness has had on “post-schooling economic activity” by examining the former’s correlation to other borrowing trends. In one striking illustration, it found that since 2008, just before the recession, the rate of home ownership for 30-year-olds has dropped twice as fast for those with student debt compared to those without.

Before the recession, 34 percent of 30-year-olds with student debt owned their homes, compared to about 30 percent of those with no student debt. Between 2009 and 2012, the rate of home ownership dropped for both groups, but by twice as much for the student debtors. Their home ownership rate fell almost 12 percentage points, compared to those free from student debt, which fell slightly less than 6 percentage points. In 2011 the trend-lines crossed, resulting in today’s figure, where 24 percent of 30-year-olds with no student debt own homes, compared to less than 23 percent of those with student debt.

The new feudalism.
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Obituary: George Jones

Country music great George Jones, 81, has died following hospitalization from a fever and irregular blood pressure.

More details are here:

“Definitely, unequivocally, the best there ever was or will be, period,” is how the Village Voice’s Patrick Carr assessed Mr. Jones’ contribution. Producer Cowboy Jack Clement, a 50-year friend of Jones who has also worked with Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Dolly Parton and many others said, “I think George is probably the greatest country singer who ever lived. And I’m not alone in that opinion. All the artists loved him. The music just flows out of him. It’s the most natural thing.”

Mr. Jones’ signature song was the Bobby Braddock and Curly Putman-penned “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” which regularly lands atop critics’ lists of greatest country recordings. In it, the King of Broken Hearts sang of a man whose death signaled the end of his unrequited love. In the studio, the song was difficult to capture, exacerbated by Mr. Jones’ slurring of the spoken-word portion: When inebriated, he sung more clearly than he spoke. When the recording was finally concluded, Mr. Jones told producer Billy Sherrill, “It ain’t gonna sell. Nobody’ll buy that morbid son of a bitch.”

But they did. Mr. Jones consistently credited Sherrill with the song’s success, but it was the empathy in Mr. Jones’ voice that made the song’s abject sadness somehow palatable.

This is a good, long obituary.

Of course one of his wives was Tammy Wynette.

Clip:



I doubt anybody will fill his.

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Miscellaneous Reads

As far as I am concerned, as long as the top one percent control both political parties, nothing is going to be done to reverse the failed "austerity" nonsense because they profit from it.

Anything to steal from the masses to further enrich themselves.
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We know now what happened with Juror 8 in the Jodi Arias trial:

ABC15 has now confirmed a man arrested over the weekend on a DUI charge was the most recent juror dismissed in the Jodi Arias trial.

According to Gilbert police, Daniel Gibb was arrested on Saturday and told the arresting officer he was a member of the jury.

On Tuesday, the officer was called into a "sealed proceeding" with the judge, the prosecutor and the defense attorneys.

What was discussed in the secret meeting is confidential.

Two days later, juror #8 was dismissed and the judge gave no reason.

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Etc.

The whole point of the "recovery" is to lower living standards and further income inequality.
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A damned fool thinks he has rights as a teacher.
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Obama has been nothing short of a disaster for the African American community.

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Jodi Arias Trial: Day 53

More rebuttal witnesses for the prosecution today. Trial resumes at 9:30.

Only one witness, ME Kevin Horn, was on the stand today, and he couldn't keep his story straight.

It sounds as if somebody coached him to say what he said in hopes the jury wouldn't notice.

Speaking of which, yet another juror was dismissed today.


Trial can be viewed at the Arizona Republic website, among live streams or can be viewed here on the blog:

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Etc.

It's been thirty years of lies since the fraudulent A Nation at Risk was published.
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Goodbye and Good Riddance

It's goodbye and good riddance to Margaret Thatcher.

Her beliefs were based on the crackpot Austrian economic school, the forerunners to the "philosophy" of American crackpot Milton Friedman:

Hayek had started after World War I as a hack writer in the pay of rent-gouging Viennese landlords who wanted propaganda articles condemning the evils of rent control. He was considered a very marginal academic, almost a crackpot, until he attracted the attention of economic illiterate David Rockefeller, who hired Hayek to help him in cramming for exams at the London School of Economics.

Hayek, like his co-thinker Ludwig von Mises, was an exponent of the backward and primitive Austrian school of economic theory, which had been concocted by feudal-reactionary quackademics in the Habsburg empire to undercut the prestigious German-American school of dirigism and protectionism exemplified by figures like Friedrich List, one of the main inspirations for the recent economic success of places like Japan, Taiwan, and China.

For the Austrian school, any government intervention in or regulation of economic life is automatically classed as totalitarianism. The Austrian school relies on crude slogans of deregulation, privatization, and the free market. The Austrian school is sometimes called the psychological school, since it rejects as collectivist analyses which tried to grasp the broad objectivity of a national economy. The theoretical vantage point of the Austrian school is always the sociopathic urges and desires of the individual predatory speculator.

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Jodi Arias Trial: Day 52

More prosecution rebuttal witnesses today. Trial is scheduled to start at around 1:30 PDT.

There may be hearings earlier in the day, but I won't be around to watch them if they occur.

Edit 4:00 PDT: Trial is over for the day and will resume tomorrow.

Detective Esteban Flores was once again on the stand, and the judge did allow for the defense to put on its rebuttal witness, Dr, Robert Geffner.

Supposedly the trial itself will be over with by the end of next week and go to the jury.

Still, insane people claiming they support Travis Alexander, though they really don't, are making death threats against people connected with the defense.



Trial can be viewed at the Arizona Republic website, among live streams or can be viewed here on the blog:

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WCSD Etc.

Interesting to note that for WCSD principal openings, the Double Diamond principal job is open to transfer applicants.

I wonder what happened to the incumbent principal. Did he resign or transfer to another job?

The Moss E.S. job is open, too, so Rick Harris will not remain as a principal there. I wonder if he will be back in the job he had in the executive cabinet or if he will retire?

No opening as of yet for the Lemmon Valley Elementary School principal.
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In more WCSD gossip, former CFO James Masias, who lasted a mere seven months on the job, went to take a job in Santa Clara instead, according to his LinkedIn profile.

He's working for Santa Clara County.
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It Figures

As a way to help his bankster and billionaire buddies, the so-called "Democrat" plans not only to gut the New Deal programs like Social Security, but he actually plans to sell a key symbol of the era, the Tennessee Valley Authority.

He should be run out of town, period.

In its budget, the White House makes clear that the scrapping of the TVA is only the first in a general selloff of federal assets that “have achieved their original objectives and no longer require federal participation.”

To pursue this goal, the budget proposes an independent commission with the specific task of selling off social programs and infrastructure, which would “create an independent board of experts to identify opportunities to consolidate, reduce, and realign the Federal footprint, as well as expedite the disposal of properties.”

The selloff of government assets such as the TVA parallels events in Greece, where key government infrastructure has been stripped off to pay government bondholders.

The creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) was a historical watershed. Referred to as the “great experiment,” the TVA remains one of the largest public works programs ever undertaken by the United States government.

Try to make the argument with a straight face Obama isn't a Manchurian or Trojan horse.

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Jodi Arias Trial: Day 51

The prosecution will continue with its rebuttal at around 9:30 PDT.

Edit: 4:05 p.m.: Trial will resume tomorrow at 1:30. Since defendant Jodi Arias and her counsel Jennifer Willmott looked happy, I wonder if they got the surrebuttal witness or witnesses approved.

Today was a weird day, with various witnesses including people from Tesoro and Wal-Mart talking about purchases and return policies and the like. The prosecution is using smoke and mirrors trying to make it look like the gas cans are a big deal, but they are only a big deal if you are driving in some of the most remote country in the lower 48 states. Those gas cans aren't proof of anything.

One of Travis's ex-girlfriends, Deanna Reid, also testified for the prosecution, but she came off as a rather sad figure. She loved Travis, but Travis really wasn't much "into her" at all and strung her along for years on end with no intention of marrying her. She admitted on the stand that she and Travis had sex, which wasn't very good for her since I believe she is still LDS and single. I feel for somebody having to get up there on the stand and admit not only in open court but to MILLIONS of people around the world on live television you were having sex with somebody in violation of LDS standards.

The defense treated her far better than persecutor Juan Martinez did.


Trial can be viewed at the Arizona Republic website, among live streams or can be viewed here on the blog:

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Dr. Robert Geffner Talk

The reason I am putting this embed on this blog is that it is rumored this expert on domestic violence will be testifying for the defense in the Jodi Arias case as a surrebuttal witness to the prosecution's expert witness Dr. Janeen DeMarte, who made a fool out of herself on national television last week.

Geffner is considered to be one of the top experts in the United States in this field.

This speech is from 2006:




Even if the rumors prove false, his talk is still interesting.

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Obituaries

Folk singer Ritchie Havens, 72, has died of a sudden heart attack.

He was the opening act for the Woodstock festival a million years ago.

Havens retired from show business three years ago.
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Singer Chrissy Amphlett, 53, died from complications of breast cancer and multiple sclerosis.
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Somebody Had a Bad Day

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They Won't Do One Thing About It

Our politicians have NO intention of doing one damned thing about joblessness because both political parties subscribe to the discredited and debunked "globalism" peddled by the neoliberals. "Globalism" is a race to the bottom, with "first world" countries being forced to "compete" with third world countries for labor, and therefore the "first world" countries must depress pay to third world levels in order to remain "competitive" in the neolibs' eyes.

This completely overlooks the simple fact that the cost of living in the third world is FAR cheaper than in countries such as the United States.

However, high unemployment is considered a good thing to our politicians, for desperate millions help keep those who are still working in line.

I can tell you, once you are kicked to the curb after 50, it is basically over, as I noted in my blog post yesterday about what I went through in Nevada.

Economist Paul Krugman finally notes the simple truth, which is that high unemployment isn't an unfortunate side effect of a bad economy but is a deliberate policy though he seems to think our politicians are misguided in their pursuit of government cuts in the name of austerity:

It goes without saying that the explosion of long-term unemployment is a tragedy for the unemployed themselves. But it may also be a broader economic disaster.

The key question is whether workers who have been unemployed for a long time eventually come to be seen as unemployable, tainted goods that nobody will buy. This could happen because their work skills atrophy, but a more likely reason is that potential employers assume that something must be wrong with people who can’t find a job, even if the real reason is simply the terrible economy. And there is, unfortunately, growing evidence that the tainting of the long-term unemployed is happening as we speak.

One piece of evidence comes from the relationship between job openings and unemployment. Normally these two numbers move inversely: the more job openings, the fewer Americans out of work. And this traditional relationship remains true if we look at short-term unemployment. But as William Dickens and Rand Ghayad of Northeastern University recently showed, the relationship has broken down for the long-term unemployed: a rising number of job openings doesn’t seem to do much to reduce their numbers. It’s as if employers don’t even bother looking at anyone who has been out of work for a long time.

You think?

Don't expect either political party to reverse course. After all, the billionaires and banksters like it just fine that they stole from the rest of us, and they have ensured that nobody will do one thing to reverse the economic redistribution upward.

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FUBAR Economics

If it weren't for the fact "austerity" policies have created so much human misery, the Reinhart-Rogoff scandal would be hilarious.

Unfortunately, it isn't.

Paul Krugman has been rubbing this in for the past few days.

In a new paper, "Does High Public Debt Consistently Stifle Economic Growth? A Critique of Reinhart and Rogoff," Thomas Herndon, Michael Ash, and Robert Pollin of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst successfully replicate the results. After trying to replicate the Reinhart-Rogoff results and failing, they reached out to Reinhart and Rogoff and they were willing to share their data spreadhseet. This allowed Herndon et al. to see how how Reinhart and Rogoff's data was constructed.

They find that three main issues stand out. First, Reinhart and Rogoff selectively exclude years of high debt and average growth. Second, they use a debatable method to weight the countries. Third, there also appears to be a coding error that excludes high-debt and average-growth countries. All three bias in favor of their result, and without them you don't get their controversial result.

They fucked up. They could have published their findings in the National Enquirer, but even that publication would want something to back it up.

This is just a minor blip, however; it won't matter when there are ideologues who insist on screwing over everybody to enrich the few.

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Too Much Money and Too Much Time on Their Hands

This is what happens when our wonderful Congress and presidents allow even more redistribution of wealth to the very top of the economic heap instead of taxing them to the hilt. These people create "foundations" that are nothing more than lobbying arms, and they turn around and buy the media to further their attempts to buy opinion.

The Koch brothers aren't the only ones who are doing it, but I am so sick of them I can hardly see:

Other than financing a few fringe libertarian publications, the Kochs have mostly avoided media investments. Now, Koch Industries, the sprawling private company of which Charles G. Koch serves as chairman and chief executive, is exploring a bid to buy the Tribune Company’s eight regional newspapers, including The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun, The Orlando Sentinel and The Hartford Courant.

By early May, the Tribune Company is expected to send financial data to serious suitors in what will be among the largest sales of newspapers by circulation in the country. Koch Industries is among those interested, said several people with direct knowledge of the sale who spoke on the condition they not be named. Tribune emerged from bankruptcy on Dec. 31 and has hired JPMorgan Chase and Evercore Partners to sell its print properties.

The media keep calling these guys "libertarian," but in truth they are actually fascist.

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An Anniversary to Note

Today marks five years since the last day I ever worked full time ever again. Today marks the day those assholes at WCSD fired me illegally so that I would never work full-time ever again, or even regular part-time ever again, in any kind of job, in any kind of field.

It was five years ago today that the "union," Washoe Education Association, deliberately neglected to tell me about filing a complaint with the EEOC. Five years ago the "union's" head decided to take a quid pro quo job offered by the head of human resources as a way for her not to be a witness for me at my sham "due process" hearing.

Five long years and I cannot get back on my feet financially. Five long years when this economy went into the shitter and has never recovered.

People like me are literally "aged out" of the workforce. Now I expect my student loan will go into default unless I can talk to them.

I can't begin to even HOPE to get back on my feet for at least another three years when I can get Social Security and then perhaps be able to make enough at substitute teaching so I can get my own place and pay back Sallie Mae.

Right now it is impossible. There is no money to go back to school, no money to set up a business, no money for anything. I have to nickel and dime EVERYTHING.

Meanwhile, the cunt (only the vilest of words is reserved for the vilest of people) who stuck the "recommendation for dismissal" under my nose five years ago has a cushy little job in the central office at WCSD being in charge of the "teacher incentive fund" which is a federal program designed to help railroad teachers deemed "too expensive" from their jobs by creating evaluation schemes rigged against teachers. This was the asshole who completely failed to follow district protocol in my case, yet she is supposed to be in charge of evaluations! That was former sup Heath Morrison's sick sense of humor in action, just as his sick sense of humor was responsible for the human resources chief officer to be demoted to supervisor of janitorial or that my former Sparks Middle School principal was demoted to teacher at Reed High, a school which suffered from sex-related scandals involving teachers and students (though the SMS ex-principal didn't diddle with kids, he was screwing with subordinates and had a long, long history of doing it on and off school campuses).

If I had had some employment opportunities, I could move past this nightmare, but it continues to affect my life all these years later. I am not alone in this; many people in my age bracket are finding out they are being "retired" LONG before they are capable of doing so.

The piece of shit who used to be principal at Sun Valley, later Whitehead, now TIF grant coordinator,has hardly suffered at all for her misconduct, while I am having to pay every fucking day of my life for her treachery.

Life isn't fair. It isn't right. She and the others responsible should have been fired years ago.

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Jacksonville Woodlands Trail 2013

No animals of note, but lots of wildflowers:

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Indeed, This is Obama's Education Policy

just as Diane Ravitch notes. All of the usual suspects were behind this proposal, written just after the Fake in Chief was inaugurated.

All of the shit is there, from "common core" to trashing teachers via evaluations to upping "standards" to the point few kids can meet them and so forth.

It closes with a quote from the teacher-hating asshole in the White House:

Despite resources that are unmatched anywhere in the world, we’ve let our grades slip, our schools crumble, our teacher quality fall short, and other nations outpace us. Let me give you a few statistics. In 8th grade math, we’ve fallen to 9th place. Singapore’s middle schoolers outperform ours three to one. Just a third of our 13- and 14-year-olds can read as well as they should. And year after year, a
stubborn gap persists between how well white students are doing compared to their African American and Latino classmates. The relative decline of American education is untenable for our economy, it’s unsustainable for our democracy, it’s unacceptable for our children — and we
can’t afford to let it continue.
— President Barack Obama
Remarks to the United States Hispanic Chamber
of Commerce, March 10, 2009

He is a lying, ignorant son of a bitch.

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Etc.

Tragedies like what happened in Texas are as a result of lax safety enforcement standards.
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This gal is engaging in slut-shaming for fun and profit.

The bad thing is too many public schools are asking her to speak though it is clear she approaches the "abstinance-only" sex ed issue from a religious stance without mentioning religion.
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Etc.

One of many updates of the manhunt for the second Boston Marathon bombing suspect is here.

The other suspect was shot dead.

Police said one suspect is dead and a manhunt was underway for a second suspect after a police officer was killed at MIT and the suspects led police on a chase and into a violent confrontation involving explosions and gunfire in Watertown, Mass. a about 10 miles west of Boston.

The suspects were linked to the Boston Marathon bombings that killed three people and injured 176 near the race finish line Monday.They are brothers, law enforcement officials said Friday morning. The one still at large was identified by law enforcement authorities as Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, 19, of Cambridge.Law enforcement officials said they believe Tsarnaev may be strapped with explosives. They are taking extreme precautions in Watertown and other nearby suburbs

5:45 PDT: Police captured Dzhokhar Tsarnaev tonight.
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God help us all if this is the future of education in this country.

Inferior curriculum, no way to know if cheating is going on, and teachers who are little more than call center workers.
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Got news for you: Michelle Rhee is the end result of a thirty-year war waged by neoliberals saying public schools are no good simply because they are public.

It has nothing to do with teacher "quality" but is an attempt to destroy public institutions for private gain.

John Merrow should know better, but he doesn't. After all, he was one of Rhee's biggest cheerleaders.
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Obituary: McPaper founder Al Neuharth, 89, has died:

Allen H. Neuharth, the newspaper visionary and former Gannett chairman who founded USA TODAY, helped create a museum dedicated to news and became one of the industry's most influential and sometimes controversial figures, died Friday at his home in Cocoa Beach, Fla. He was 89.

"As a journalist, I had a wonderful window on the world'' Neuharth wrote in "Plain Talk," a final column he said should be published in USA TODAY after his death. "For nearly 50 years as a reporter and editor, I tried to tell stories accurately and fairly, without opinion."

It was fitting that Neuharth would try to have the last word, even on the topic of his own passing. The longtime newspaperman, media executive and columnist died after sustaining injuries in a fall at his home.

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All About the Recent Cheating Scandals

Good report I saw on YouTube:

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The Mask is Completely Off

The African American community was the strongest constituency of voters for Obama, but to date he hasn't done one goddamned thing for them.

One of the points of his presidency was to neutralize all opposition to his ruinous economic and education policies from that community while those policies decimated it.

It was pure genius to put forward this guy and have people fall over themselves over his "historic" candidacy while at the same time not look too closely at what this jerk was proposing.

What a total fraud:

The Obama Hangover has begun. The drunken delirium that descended on Black America after the pale Democratic caucuses of Iowa endorsed a brown-skinned corporatist just after New Years Day, 2008 – conveying white “viability” on a Great Black Hope – is definitively over. It’s the morning-after in Black America, a scene of economic and political ruin bathed in the searing daylight of Obama’s second term and umpteenth betrayal.

It would be easy to say that the Great Nausea of 2013 was occasioned by Obama’s blunt object assault on Social Security and the whole array of entitlements. However, the First Black President’s obituary is not written in his budget. The onset of post-Obamaism has more to do with the calendar than anything else. Since Election Day, November 6, Black folks have been forced to come to grips with the finality of Obama’s second term – the impending emergence from the dream. There is the sound of a finger snapping. “In a few moments, you will wake up.”

I'll bet this constituency won't be fooled again.

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Economic Etc.

Since there is little chance for upward mobility in this country anymore, thanks to the assholes in Washington, our country is being more and more segregated along class lines.
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Along those lines, child poverty in the United States is among the highest in the "developed" world.

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Like a good Republican, Obama wants to put forward the interests of the top one percent at the expense of everybody else.

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Jodi Arias Trial: Day 50

Trial will resume at 9:30 this morning PDT. There will be no trial tomorrow or Monday.

Dr. Janeen "Baby Doc" DeMarte will once again have her credentials and her opinions placed under the microscope by defense counsel Jennifer Willmott.

Update: Trial is over for today, and DeMarte is finished, in more ways than one. I don't think the jury even bought her spin.

What was funny was the results of her testing Jodi Arias on the MMPI actually backed the defense's contention Arias suffered from PTSD and was battered. DeMarte tried to spin it, but it really didn't work. After all, psychologists cannot pick and choose which parts of an assessment to use; the test would not be valid.

DeMarte was trying to push the prosecution narrative, and she totally failed.

HLN is probably calling her for a gig since her psychology career is on the ropes.

Trial can be viewed at the Arizona Republic website, among live streams or can be viewed here on the blog:

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Of Course They Will Get Make-Work Jobs

Teachers will be demonized and run out of their jobs because their students live in poverty or the students' families are transient, but the principals are always protected, no matter how lousy they are or "low performing" they are.

They simply get make-work jobs in the central office if any of them fail to get the six open positions:

Principals being replaced at Anderson, Corbett, Mathews, Sun Valley, Warner and Sparks High School will either be moved to other principal jobs or to other district positions, Martinez said. He said all would have jobs with the district if they wanted.

It never fails with good ol' WCSD. Once you are part of the in-crowd, you have a job for life.

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Obituaries

A couple of deaths of prominent people:

Gospel singer George Beverly Shea, at 104 one of the oldest people in the United States and certainly one of the oldest in show business history, has died after a brief illness. Shea is best remembered for his association with evangelist Billy Graham:

Shea's rendition of "How Great Thou Art" came to define the faith of a Protestant generation that Graham helped bring to Jesus Christ. He performed live before an estimated 200 million people at crusades over the years - taking him from North Dakota to North Korea and beyond.

He joined Graham's crusade team in 1947 and stayed until Graham's declining health ended most of the evangelist's public appearances nearly 60 years later.

"As a young man starting my ministry, I asked Bev if he would join me," Graham said then. "He said yes and for over 60 years we had the privilege of ministering together across the country and around the world. Bev was one of the most humble, gracious men I have ever known and one of my closest friends. I loved him as a brother."

Clip from 1969:



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NFL player and sportscaster Pat Summerall, 82, died yesterday in Dallas:

Summerall played 10 NFL seasons (1952-61) with the Chicago Cardinals and New York Giants. In his second career, he became a voice so familiar to several generations of sports fans, not only those of the NFL.

He started doing NFL games for CBS in 1964, and became a play-by-play guy 10 years later. He was also part of CBS's coverage of the PGA Tour, including the Masters from 1968-94, and the U.S. Open tennis tournament.

When CBS lost its NFL deal after the 1993 season, Summerall switched to Fox to keep calling NFL games with Madden. He had hoped to keep working with CBS for other events like the Masters, but network executives saw it otherwise. At the time, CBS Sports anchor Jim Nantz said he was "very saddened" that Summerall didn't get to leave CBS un der his own terms.

"He is CBS Sports. I always thought he could work here until he was 75 or 80 years old," Nantz told The Philadelphia Daily News then. "He's been a much larger influence on my career than I think he realizes. There will be a piece of Pat Summerall on the air as long as I do golf for this network."

He successfully battled alcoholism but still had to get a liver transplant nine years ago.

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There is a Silver Lining After All

Actually a gold lining as billionaire hedge fund crooks are doing better than ever while millions more are falling through the cracks and descending into destitution.

It doesn't matter if the poor even have jobs, provided they can find any at all:

More than 46 million people, or about 15 percent of the US population, lived below the official poverty level in 2011, according to the US Census Bureau. A new report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shows that the “working poor” account for 10.4 million of this number, or nearly a quarter of all those living in poverty according to government guidelines.


The statistics revealed by the BLS report are a stunning indictment of the current state of the US economy and demonstrate how the so-called recovery is playing out in the everyday lives of workers and their families. Corporations, backed by the policies of the Obama administration and both big business parties, have seized on the jobs crisis in the wake of the recession to drive down workers’ wages and boost productivity.

That last point is important to note because that is why "Democrat" Barack Obama hasn't done one damned thing about the economy other than a half-assed "stimulus package" which didn't do squat.

What we really have is another Great Depression.

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Jodi Arias Trial: Day 49

Trial will resume at around 9:30 this morning with the cross-examination of prosecution rebuttal witness Dr. Janeen "Baby Doc" DeMarte.

It was painful listening to her lie on the stand under the direct from prosecutor Juan Martinez, not to mention the fact he didn't spend anywhere near as much time with her as he did with defense witnesses Dr. Richard Samuels and Alyce LaViolette.

DeMarte tries very hard to make it look like she has extensive experience as a psychologist, but she's a newbie, period.

Moreover, if I were on that jury I would be asking myself WHY the prosecution couldn't find anybody anywhere in the United States who had experience comparable to Samuels or LaViolette to testify on the state's behalf.

Defense counsel Jennifer Willmott was still going through DeMarte's cv when court was dismissed yesterday. She has a long way to go before she finishes with this witness.

Update: DeMarte admitted under cross she was not qualified in the area of domestic abuse. Her cv was taken apart. She also mentioned how she referred to the work of Lenore Walker, a pioneer in the study of battered women and the cycle of abuse, but what wasn't brought out is Walker wrote the introduction or preface to the textbook Alyce LaViolette co-wrote that is widely read in the field but unread by the Jodi Arias haters although they continue to "review" it at Amazon.com.

Anyway, the trial did not resume after lunch. I don't know if it is because Jodi Arias was sick or something else happened.

It will resume at 9:30 tomorrow morning PDT.




Trial can be viewed at the Arizona Republic website, among live streams or can be viewed here on the blog:

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Dance of the Lemons, WCSD Style

It appears WCSD sup Pedro Martinez is putting a lot of pressure on the district's current principals to try and get those silly school rankings "up" by shuffling many of them around and probably giving those who are displaced make-work jobs in the district office if they can't retire:

The 10 elementary schools and one high school under the plan received one and two stars on the performance framework the district released earlier this year.

Schools and principals in the acceleration zone include Anderson, Booth, Corbett, Duncan, Loder, Mathews, Stead, Sun Valley, Veterans, Warner and Sparks High School.

New principals have been named at Anderson, Corbett, Mathews, Sun Valley, Warner and Sparks High School. The remaining five will keep current principals.

Principals from Taylor, Maxwell, Allen, Spanish Springs, Towels and Sparks Middle School will take over at six of the schools in the new improvement plan.

Of course, the schools can't improve on the scores because of factors that go way beyond the school, namely poverty and transience.

There will be tremendous pressure on teachers to "perform." I don't doubt cheating will be done.

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Etc.

No suspects yet in the horrendous Boston Marathon bombing:

The day after two powerful bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, a mile-square area around Copley Square here remained cordoned off as a crime scene, and officials still had no one in custody. Investigators searched a house in a nearby suburb late Monday night, but later said the search had proved fruitless.

Hundreds of runners who had expected to leave Boston on Tuesday morning with a sense of triumph after a night of celebration left instead with heavy hearts after at least three people were killed. The bombings also sent 176 people to area hospitals, including 17 who were critically injured, Police Commissioner Edward Davis of Boston said Tuesday.

Among the dead was an 8-year-old boy, Martin Richard, of Dorchester, according to Conor Yunits, a family spokesman. Friends and family gathered Monday night at a restaurant to mourn him; he had been watching the marathon with his family, and his mother and a sister were badly injured. The names of the other victims have not been made public.

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There is more fallout from the El Paso test cheating scandal.
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Because, Bob, We Have the Worst President on Record

The economy continues to be in the shitter, and it is all by design. One can't continue to blame Bush II the for the problems--the economy is all Obama's baby now, and he has no intention of doing one damned thing about it.

We have a depression here for all intents and purposes--NOT a recovery. Obama is doing the job his masters like Robert Rubin always wanted him to do.

You don't have to subscribe to conspiracies to know his run for the presidency was a "plot" right out of the 1962 film The Manchurian Candidate. He was never vetted by the media yet pushed 24/7. He was yammering right-wing talking points about cutting entitlements and privatizing public education while running for president and singing the praises of Ronald Reagan, just for starters, but few people saw the warning signs. He had no real national political experience to speak of--his term in the U.S. Senate wasn't anything notable, and his 2004 Democratic convention keynote address wasn't anything to write home about--yet he was being peddled as the next Lincoln, FDR, JFK, MLK all wrapped in one package.

I tried to warn people on this blog and elsewhere this guy was little more than a ringer, a fraud, but nobody listened.

Now the question remains WHO initially bankrolled his candidacy. I don't think it was just the Chicago machine or EVEN the Chicago machine. Somebody selected him for the purpose of destroying the Democratic Party from within. I mean, this is outright destruction of the party, not little chipping away at the edges like Clinton and others. The fact he is African American effectively neutralizes any opposition from that constituency despite his policies doing nothing but HARM to that constituency. The fact he has a "D" after his name effectively neutralizes opposition within his own party for his brazenly right-wing policies (the most right-wing in American history).

SOMEBODY was behind this. Rubin I think is one likely suspect, but there have to be others.

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Despite Being Discredit by Scandal,

Michelle Rhee is still flitting around from legislature to legislature trying to pull her anti-public education scam on people. She is trying to get a "parent trigger" law enacted all the while she has a likely prison term hanging over her head thanks to the D.C. testing scandal which occurred on her watch.

I know the term "sociopath" gets thrown around a lot, but I truly believe Michelle Rhee IS one. There is no hint of a conscience or of appropriate boundaries.

Rhee bragged about duct taping students--a firing and license revocation offense--when she was a "teacher." She allowed filming of her firing a principal, which was shown on national television. She's outright lied on her resume about her "achievements" as a "teacher" (she was a TFA, hence the quotation marks around the word "teacher"). In interviews she comes across as somebody totally soulless.

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Jodi Arias Trial: Day 48

Trial will resume at 9:30 this morning or thereabouts.

I believe the defense is now done presenting its case and the prosecution will try to rebut it.

Given the fact the media have peddled the bullshit narrative that Jodi was a crazy stalker who premeditated this killing, the jury might actually fall for it despite there being NO EVIDENCE of premeditation.

Trial can be viewed at the Arizona Republic website, among live streams or can be viewed here on the blog:

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"Juan Martinez Doesn't Have the Right Skill Set"

That's putting it mildly.

Too bad Judge Stephens didn't see this video.




The judge is incompetent.

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Bad News in Boston

I would think this is an act of domestic terrorism:

The A.P. said that a loud explosion was heard on the north side of Boylston Street, near a photo bridge that marks the finish line. Another explosion was heard several seconds later.

Local television showed ambulances at the scene. Pictures posted online showed several injured runners being attended to and smoke around the finish line.

The headquarters for the organizers of the marathon, one of the world’s oldest, was reportedly locked down while authorities investigate. Reporters inside the Copley Plaza Hotel, where the media center is and where many elite athletes are staying, were unable to leave.

The explosions went off more than four hours after the start of the men’s race, which meant that there were still several thousand runners yet to finish the race.

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Etc.

By the way, you dolts twittering about North Korea, the country didn't come into existence until AFTER World War II.

I guess all Asians "look alike" to them.
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At least one state Democratic Party is acting like a Democratic Party instead of corporate shills.
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This is sad news: One-time actor Frank Bank, 71, best remembered for playing the character of "Lumpy" in the classic sitcom Leave It to Beaver, has died. He had just had a birthday the day before he died.

I met him a couple of times at the Hot August Nights event in Reno. He appeared there for many years, often with co-star Ken Osmond ("Eddie Haskell"). I had gotten autographs from both of them at the Peppermill Casino.

Snip:

His co-star on “Beaver” Jerry Mathers, announced the news of his passing on Facebook: "I was so sad to hear today of the passing of my dear friend and business associate Frank Bank, who played Lumpy on Leave it to Beaver. He was a character and always kept us laughing. My deepest condolences to Frank's family."

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Jodi Arias Trial: Day 47, or, Can This Trial Be Saved?

Today is a scheduled hearing about the defense motions of prosecutorial misconduct, and I believe there is a hearing of defense witness Alyce LaViolette over what is likely the outrageous witness intimidation by the so-called Travis Alexander supporters.

Witness intimidation is a serious crime, and this case could be dismissed with prejudice, meaning it can never be tried again, because of it. I think Jodi Arias should be acquitted anyway, but this would end the circus once and for all. Declaring a mistrial and forcing a plea deal with Jodi serving a minimal amount of time or credit for time served is another alternative that should be considered.

I hope some people are prosecuted over their relentless bullying and intimidation tactics, and if that includes Travis Alexander's family and friends, so be it.

You just can't do this in American criminal law. The sixth amendment is SO important, and it overrides any argument about "free speech."
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HLN's Grace Wong is on the stand being asked about "rock star" Juan Martinez's encounter with his groupies outside of the courthouse. A photographic expert talked about the reflection in Travis's left eye which showed that somebody took the picture, i.e., Jodi, and that she had no gun or knife with her when she took that picture of Travis sitting down in the shower.

JM tried to claim he saw a "dog" in the picture when he argued for it not being admitted because it was trace over since the equipment in the courtroom couldn't enhance the way equipment in the lab could enchance. The expert, Neumeister, had a hard time keeping a straight face. The judge will rule on this later.

The judge denied motion for mistrial on the basis of JM's encounter with his fans in front of the courthouse.

She is clearly a puppet for the prosecution. More and more appellate issues.

Now we have witness intimidation issues. However these issues have to do with the closed chamber hearings, not with the outrageous antics outside of the courtroom.

That motion was denied, predictably enough. Martinez tried to get her to take action on the Twitter issue, but she refused to rule in his favor on that, saying it was up to the sheriff's department to enforce anything along those lines. Martinez was upset because he was told by "somebody" that among other things, the tweets mocked his height.

At 1:15 will be the closed hearing with LaViolette. That I suspect has to do with the intimidation outside of the courtroom, but we won't know.

Update: 3:15 p.m.: The jury was in the courtroom for maybe one minute when Judge Stephens announced both sides reached a stipulation that the reflection shown in Travis's left eye in the last picture of him alive does NOT show Jodi Arias with a gun or a knife. She was using both hands to hold Travis's camera.

This helps blow another hole in the prosecution's premeditation theory.





Trial can be viewed at the Arizona Republic website, among live streams or can be viewed here on the blog:

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A Boon for Online "Education" and Teach for America

In California, at least, fewer young people are interested in teaching as a career choice.

Gee, I wonder why. It couldn't be the terrible working conditions and the constant trashing of the profession by the media, "reformers," and politicians, could it?

The number of students enrolling in teacher preparation programs has also decreased, to 34,838 in 2010-11 from 51,744 in 2006-07.

Dean Vogel, president of the California Teachers Assn., said several factors have made teaching careers less attractive.

Steep budget cuts since 2008 have brought widespread layoffs, increased class sizes and less money for art, music, science and other programs. And the 2001 No Child Left Behind federal law has led to a greater emphasis on standardized test scores to measure school and teacher performance, which many educators believe is destroying the joy of learning and teaching, Vogel said.

“I don’t think people have given up hope on teaching, but they are really questioning it,” he said.

They should question the aims of the "reform" movement.

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Wonderful Color Depression Era Photos

I just saw these pictures although they have been around for a couple of years on the site:


http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2010/07/26/captured-america-in-color-from-1939-1943/2363/

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How They Did It

A more accurate headline should read how Michelle Rhee did it, since teachers never risk their licenses to manipulate standardized testing results.

They are always pressured to do so at the risk of losing their careers.

Anyway, more info about the cheating scandal in D.C.:

What may be the most most egregious case is at Langdon Education Center, where there are also allegations of cheating in years prior to 2012, the year that is the focus of the new report. Concerns about widespread cheating over the years on high-stakes tests in D.C. schools were heightened late last week with the publication of a 2009 memo that raised suspicions about nearly 200 educators cheating on the 2008 test, when Michelle Rhee was schools chancellor.

The report mentioned in the article

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Education Etc.

It isn't a shock that the use of "turnaround" in schools is designed to get rid of veteran teachers because they cost "too much money."
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I Call It CYA

Supposedly this is the story of prosecutor Juan Martinez's encounter with his "fans" that has gotten him into hot water:

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