March 31, 2014

Loser of the week...Florida's Rick Scott

Winner and loser of the week In Fla Politics

The first sentence states "There are no winners."


Picture from TBT Rick Scott and Carlos Lopez-Cantera, Lt. Governor

Loser of the week 1

Gov. Rick Scott. He lost co-finance chairman Mike Fernandez, who in resigning dumped a pile of dirty laundry about the internal operations of the campaign, while leveling the charge that campaign staffers faked Mexican accents on route to Chipotle. What Hispanic vote? The campaign denied that, but the damage was done; Democrats feasted all week.

Loser of the week 2

Lt. Gov. Carlos López-Cantera. This is not what he signed up for: having to deflect questions about what a powerful Cuban-American businessman had to say about the alleged Mexican accent incident. "There's no validity that we can find to any of those comments, or what was written," he said. Even if that were the case, it's highly awkward for López-Cantera, who is supposed to help Scott with Hispanics.

Rick Scott is planning to have 25 million to use in his campaign against Charlie Crist. Let's hope he continues to be a loser.

March 30, 2014

Arne Duncan complicit as forces of privatization take over public schools.

Silence shows complicity

March 30, 2014

NY legislature: Charter schools get free space in public schools. Hostile takeover of public arenas?

Of course some charter schools have been doing this for years. But now the legislature has made it all legal. Charter owners costly ads were successful. Their large donations to politicians paid off well.

New York Legislature: Billionaire-funded Charter Schools Will Not Have to Pay Rent for Public Space

The following just in as the New York State Legislature responds to the pressure of a $5 million advertising campaign demanding free space for privately-managed charters. Also, the billionaires behind this ad campaign have given handsome sums to Governor Cuomo and other key politicians. Cuomo has received at least $800,000 from the charter advocates. Under the legislation below, the charters are given the right to expand as much as they want, without paying rent, pushing out the public school that once was sited in the building. The charters can afford to pay their “CEO” half a million dollars, but they can’t pay the rent. They can pay millions for attack ads on television, but they can’t pay the rent. They can hire the politically-hot public relations firm SDK Knickerbocker more than $500,000 a year, but they can’t pay the rent. Their biggest boosters are billionaires, like Paul Tudor Jones, whose Robin Hood Foundation raises $80 million in a single night, but the charters can’t pay the rent. The charters are proving to be public parasites in New York City, invading the host and doing harm to the 94% of children who are not in charters.

So how has the takeover of public space been working out for the public schools?

Eva Moskowitz moves charter school into another public school's space, boots them from classrooms.

..."Staffers at the district schools say their new neighbors have booted them from classrooms and stairwells, while sharing the libraries, cafeterias and playgrounds.

...."Staffers at PS 30 say Bronx Success 1 sealed off the third floor to its staff and students - even taking over a stairwell - so Success students don't mingle with their district school neighbors.

"We are not allowed there," said one PS 30 teacher, noting the classrooms taken over by Success were formerly used for tutoring children with special needs. Now we have to do therapy sessions in the hallway."

Another NY public school was told by the charter school moving in that they could move to the basement.

Harlem Success Academy, whose current enrollment is 361, serves kindergarten through second grade; it eventually plans to expand to eighth grade. P.S. 123 has an enrollment of 630 students this year in pre-kindergarten through seventh grade.

The tensions began when the charter school first moved into the building, but increased this year when P.S. 123 lost its computer room to the charter school, as well as part of its teachers’ lounge and half its library, now devoted to Harlem Success Academy office space, said Hargraves.

P.S. 123 was offered basement rooms to replace some of the space Harlem Success Academy has commandeered, but “there’s no way a kid can learn in that environment,” Hargraves said, describing the basement as “no more than a storage area.” The school squeezed in classes elsewhere in the building.

Taking over classrooms, computer rooms, libraries, teachers' lounges....they've been doing it but now it's legal. Money to politicians, 5 million dollars in ads made sure of that.

March 28, 2014

Lazy sorry journalism in FL about reason for crisis in funding public schools.

The Lakeland Ledger and the Ocala Star Banner have articles discussing the lack of funding to public schools for maintenance and new buildings. They managed to write whole articles without a single mention of the fact that for at least two years only charter schools got maintenance money and public schools got none....zero...zilch.

Now that is lousy journalism. There is not a word in either article that tells the real reason public schools are in such poor condition.

Here's some background.

Florida charter schools get 91 million for facilities. Public school funding dwindles.

Charter schools will receive $91 million for their construction and maintenance needs, state lawmakers agreed late Sunday.

The figure represents a $36 million increase over last year's allocation. But it falls just short of the $100 million proposed by Gov. Rick Scott and the Florida House.

....The one-time allocation will come out of the Public Education Capital Outlay fund. PECO dollars are generated from the state's gross receipts tax on cable, electric and land-line telephone bills.

Doesn't indicate just how much public schools will get for that 2013-2014 year. They will finally get some I hear.

For 2011:

In 2011 public schools got nothing, while charter schools got 55 million.

Traditional public schools in Florida will get no money from the state this year for additions or needed repairs to thousands of aging buildings, but charter schools will score big.

For 2012-2013:

In 2013 charter schools received 64 million for maintenance, public schools got nothing. They must have upped it for the next year to 91 million.


The state Department of Education last week gave a Florida Senate subcommittee a report on the state Board of Education’s requested budget for next year. The budget includes a request for about $64 million for capital improvements at charter schools. Last year charters received about $55 million for school construction.

If approved, that budget would mark the third straight year the state has given capital outlay money to charter schools but no capital funding to districts to build and maintain traditional public schools

Now for the two articles that don't even mention the word charter.

Here is the Ledger article March 26 2014:

Some Funds for Florida Public School Maintenance in Works

Florida's public schools and universities will receive funding for repairs and maintenance for the first time in two years.

But deciding just how much they get and where the money comes from means House and Senate members of a conference committee must reconcile their widely different ideas on how to fund repairs to dilapidated education facilities.

House Appropriations Chairman Seth McKeel, R-Lakeland, said his full committee, which voted on its budget Wednesday, has a

recurring source of money for the Public Education Capital Outlay program, which funds school repairs.

The article fails to mention that the chairman, Seth McKeel is on the Board of Trustees of McKeel Charter schools

I am sure there is no conflict of interest there. No sarcasm tag needed it is so obvious.

From the Ocala Star Banner this week:

Editorial: Florida’s school maintenance crisis

Only a trickle of money is available from the Public Education Capital Outlay trust fund, which has been the longtime statewide source.

A December revenue-estimating conference of the Florida Office of Economic and Demographic Research put the PECO funding for this fiscal year at $294 million, $232 million for 2014-2015 and $126 million for 2015-2016.

The fund is based on the state’s gross receipts tax. The income from the tax is insufficient to sell new PECO bonds this fiscal year. But no bond sales are expected through the 2016-2017 fiscal year, said the revenue-estimating conference.

The PECO fund, established by the state in 1963, and once a gusher of funding for maintenance of educational facilities, is tapped out for the time being.

The article fails to even mention how many millions went to charter schools.

Kudos to the Orlando Sentinel. They did a lot better in pointing out the negligence of the state legislature's Rick Scott Republicans, but they still missed a few vital points.

Lawmakers stuffing more dollars into charter school construction

Yes, they are. Thanks for pointing out that fact while other papers definitely missed it.

Florida lawmakers are beefing up school construction dollars – both for charters and traditional public schools -- despite a steep drop-off in the funding source the state has historically relied on to pay for them.

The $75.3 billion House spending plan before the Appropriations Committee today devotes $596.8 million to public education capital projects (PECO), including $104 million for public university maintenance -- and a record $100 million provided to charter schools for repairing school buildings.

The total for charters, including those managed by for-profit companies, is more than the $91 million they landed last year. Public school districts and Democrats have raised concerns about the larger dollar amount being steered to charter schools. House Democrats questioned whether the split was fair on Wednesday when many public school systems had buildings falling apart.

Guess we should be thankful the public schools are finally getting something.

March 25, 2014

"We Don't Need Two Wall Street Parties" Markos responds to Third Way attack at Politico.

The Third Way is at it again. On March 19th they put up an op ed at Politico accusing Markos of Daily Kos of folding up the big tent. Politico gave Markos a chance to respond today.

Here is the Third Way attack on the 19th.

Kos folds up the big tent

If Markos Moulitsas had his way there’d be no Affordable Care Act, no Dodd-Frank, no economic stimulus package. That’s the price when purity tests are applied to Democrats.

In a remarkable post yesterday, Moulitsas, founder and publisher of the progressive community site DailyKos, celebrates the departure from the Senate of 10 moderate Democrats over the last decade, and makes clear his hope that Senators Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) and Mary Landrieu (D-La.) lose their tough reelection battles this year. He doesn’t name some other moderates in tight races, like Mark Begich (D-Alaska) and Kay Hagan (D-N.C.), but his logic suggests that he’d be only too happy to say goodbye to them as well.

And once again they used the words "politics of purity".

We have all witnessed the devastating effect that the politics of purity can have, as the Republicans grapple with the toxic impact of the Tea Party on their candidates, their congressional leadership and their governing philosophy. Let’s not become them.

I hate that term. Through the years they have called us fringe, elitists and worse. They should not be accusing others of purity politics.

Here is Markos' response today.

We Don’t Need Two Wall Street Parties

It’s tough to be a “Third Way” corporatist in today’s Democratic Party. Sure, the numerically small faction of Wall Street and Beltway Democrats has long enjoyed an outsized influence on public policy, but all the hedge fund money in the world can’t change the fact that the party is in the midst of a dramatic reorientation toward a new progressive populism. And it turns out that populism is popular! Voters across the country are increasingly concerned about the pressing issues of income inequality and economic security, and elected Democrats have responded with a renewed focus on solutions for working Americans.

...Apparently, the answer is to lash out at me and others who simply want to see the Democratic Party work for Democratic values. Third Way’s Matt Bennett and Jim Kessler took to this site last week to charge me with the apparent sin of celebrating the party’s current Senate majority, one that is finally starting to function thanks to the absence of corrosive elements like Zell Miller and Joe Lieberman, who tied the Democratic caucus in knots just 10 years ago.

....Still, let’s look at the question of whether our populist approach is compromising the party’s ability to win across the country. Bennett and Kessler lament that seven of the 10 right-wing Democrats that I celebrated for no longer being in the Senate were replaced by Republicans—but what was then a Democratic two-seat minority is now a Democratic 10-seat majority. If you’re genuinely a Democrat, you have to admit that a 55-seat caucus reinforced with strong progressive voices is objectively preferable to a 49-seat caucus packed with corporatist Democrats who voted for the disastrous Iraq war and George W. Bush’s budget-busting tax cuts. If you’re genuinely a Democrat.

.....Indeed, it was September 2012, just months before election day, when Third Way’s Bennett claimed that Elizabeth Warren was “catastrophically antibusiness” and that her economic populism was “not a winning strategy.” It would make sense for Third Way to prefer Sen. Scott Brown over Warren, given that 27 of the organization’s 29 board members are current or former CEOs, corporate lawyers or principals at financial service institutions.But you don’t get to whine about big tents after undermining Democratic candidates in the heat of an election.

March 24, 2014

These TN Momma Bears support public education, call out Rhee's group, say it buys "likes" on FB

I really got a big chuckle out of this post. The funny part is that Students First, the group founded by Michelle Rhee to attack public education, blames the suspicious "likes" on public school advocates.

It's either laugh or cry, and I think I will laugh at the absurdity.

StudentsFirst's "likes" on Facebook: Pathetic Popularity Contest

StudentsFirst's "likes" on Facebook: Pathetic Popularity Contest

03/18/2014

Picture
Momma Bears has often wondered about the gullible people who fall for the StudentsFirst sales pitch. StudentsFirst is an underhanded, astroturf organization funded by corporate billionaires HERE and HERE. This is Michelle Rhee's group. Yes, the same Michelle Rhee that legislators don't want to be associated with because she has such a bad reputation. How on earth do they have over 75,000 "likes" on Facebook? The people commenting on their posts obviously don't agree with them (read them when you need a laugh, it is pretty funny). They rarely get any "likes" at all on their posts despite having 75,000 "members" on their facebook page.

Well, we found the answer... those gullible people were really not people at all!!!

StudentsFirst's Facebook "likes" were bought from Bangladesh!!!

See the red circle around "Dhaka, Bangladesh"? It is listed as the "Most Popular City" for likes on this page.

Search on Facebook for "We Sell Likes in Bangladesh." You'll see that anyone can buy 1000 likes for about $15 bucks. (Click HERE to go buy likes or fake friends for yourself.) Click HERE to read an article that tells about the dishonest business of buying popularity on social media sites.

FAUX Parents
This is what we Momma Bears now like to affectionately call, "Faux Parents." See, when Commissioner Kevin Huffman told a group of rich Chamber of Commerce people that he couldn't possibly listen to parents because there are many "Faux Parent" groups in TN with ulterior motives, we thought he was talking about Momma Bears and groups like ours. Obviously, we were wrong. He was talking about his ex-wife's organization, StudentsFirst! (Okay, he really was probably talking about us and trying to discredit our voices, but still, you gotta note the irony of his claim and the truth of StudentsFirst's purchased popularity!) Check out the Twitter storm (#fauxparent) to see pictures of real parents holding signs about being a "faux parent." Parents, sure do have great senses of humor!

I love the way a site from Nashville Scene covers it, a site called Pith in the Wind.

Rhee Sees Fishy Bangladeshi Like Spike As Anti-Reform Swarm

We're still investigating why we were targeted and how some folks who oppose our education reform platform curiously brought attention to this issue within such a short time frame of it happening. We'll keep you posted as soon as we learn more.

Yes, blame it on the suspicious moves of those who oppose you.

Pith in the Wind sums it up:

The possible explanations seem to be these:

A. StudentsFirst, an organization seen by many as an astroturf operation, paid for Facebook likes to strengthen the appearance of "grassroots" support for "reform."

B. StudentsFirst opponents, who see little, if any, good faith in the "reform movement" or groups like Rhees, buy or otherwise acquire the fraudulent likes for the StudentsFirst page in an act of sabotage, figuring the ends justify the means.

C. The StudentsFirst page was hacked or spammed in some way that had nothing to do with either side of the education debate.

D. LOTS of people in Bangladesh like StudentsFirst.

I choose A or D.

March 23, 2014

Voting for Dems shouldn't be "a defensive crouch to prevent the insane sociopaths from taking over."

I am not sure I completely agree with that statement, but I am pretty close to doing so.

I will vote for Democrats because I know the dangers of not doing so. I have always voted. I don't remember a time when I did not vote. I am an informed voter who sometimes votes for the better of two candidates because one is likely over the edge and the other is far better.

It is not those like me we need to worry about. It is the apolitical, uninformed, mostly unconcerned voter who doesn't keep up with issues and the news.

A Hullaballoo post says it better than I can.

Alternatively, Democrats could give midterm voters something to believe in

Obama was totally correct in what he said recently:

“The challenge is that our politics in Washington have become so toxic that people just lose faith,” Obama told a group of top Democratic donors gathered at the home of former Miami Heat star Alonzo Mourning. “They say, ‘Y’know what, it doesn’t matter, I’m not that interested, I’m not gonna vote.’ And that’s especially true during the midterms.”

....“But in midterms, we get clobbered, either because we don’t think it’s important or because we get so discouraged about what’s happening in Washington that we think it’s not worth our while. And the reason today is so important, and the reason that I’m so appreciative for all of you being here is because we’re going to have to get over that. This is a top priority.”

Here are some ideas offered by the poster. Good ones.

Right now the conversation on healthcare is between one side that wants slightly less expensive corporate healthcare, and one side that wants much more expensive corporate healthcare. It's between one side that wants to cut Social Security and Medicare just a little bit, and another that wants to cut it a lot. It's between one side that wants to implement some very gradual climate change policies that won't stop us from crossing runaway greenhouse barriers, and another side that doesn't believe in climate change at all. It's between one side that wants a very slow, painful set of immigration reforms, and another side that wants no reforms at all. It's between one side that wants to raise the minimum wage to something that still doesn't meet what it was back in the 1970s, and another side that wants to eliminate it.

For a young voter or voter of color, voting for Democrats isn't a matter of hope for a better future. It's basically a defensive crouch to prevent the insane sociopaths from taking over.

I will vote. I always do. My concern is that we need to have more sharply defined issues that have been loudly communicated to the voters....issues that are more than just being a little better on serious things.

My personal addition to what the blogger said....let's stand for public education. Having both parties pushing the agenda of George Bush is really a bad idea. Lets start giving the resources back to the public schools instead of diverting them to private companies to enrich their coffers.

On Edit:

To clarify. Many very informed voters will take another path.

I should have made that clear in the OP. I speak for myself only.

It's not too late to get them on board though. TPP is just one example. Back away from it.

Take a firm stand that the safety nets for seniors and the poor and needy ARE sacred cows. They should be.

March 21, 2014

"Heavily financed by the most powerful corporations in the world" they sat 54 floors above...

the Democratic convention hall. Setting policy. A few men.

This is John Nichols' unforgettable column in the Progressive 2000. This is the archived version with all the dates above the article.

Behind the DLC Takeover

At the national convention of a major political party, an ideologically rigid sectarian clique secures the ultimate triumph. It inserts two of its own as nominees for the Presidency and the Vice Presidency. Heavily financed by the most powerful corporations in the world, the group's leaders gather in a private club fifty-four floors above the convention hall, apart from the delegates of the party they had infiltrated. There, they carefully monitor the convention's acceptance of a platform the organization had drafted almost in its entirety. Then, with the ticket secured and with the policy course of the party set, they introduce a team of 100 shock troops to deploy across the country to lock up the party's grassroots.

This is not some fantastic political thriller starring Harrison Ford or Sharon Stone. This is the real-life version of Invasion of the Party Snatchers--with the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) burrowing into the pod that is the Democratic Party.

Founded in the mid-1980s with essentially the same purpose as the Christian Coalition--to pull a broad political party dramatically to the right--the DLC has been far more successful than its headline-grabbing Republican counterpart. After Walter Mondale's 1984 defeat at the hands of Ronald Reagan, a group of mostly Southern, conservative Democrats hatched the theory that their party was in trouble because it had grown too sympathetic to the agendas of organized labor, feminists, African Americans, Latinos, gays and lesbians, peace activists, and egalitarians.

....A day is soon coming when "we'll finally be able to proclaim that all Democrats are, indeed, New Democrats," declared DLC President Al From on the eve of this year's Democratic National Convention.

They closed their doors in 2011 proclaiming that their purposes had been achieved. Some days it's hard to find argument with that.

I think the most disheartening thing this group ever did was to have a press conference in 2003 to declare that Howard Dean was not the man to be president.

What the DLC said about Dean in 2003

More than 50 centrist Democrats, including Virginia Gov. Mark R. Warner, met here yesterday to plot strategy for the "New Democrat" movement. To help get the ball rolling they read a memo by Al From and Bruce Reed, the chairman and president of the Democratic Leadership Council. The memo dismissed Dean as an elitist liberal from the "McGovern-Mondale wing" of the party -- "the wing that lost 49 states in two elections, and transformed Democrats from a strong national party into a much weaker regional one."

"It is a shame that the DLC is trying to divide the party along these lines," said Dean spokesman Joe Trippi. "Governor Dean's record as a centrist on health care and balancing the budget speaks for itself."

As founder of the DLC, From has been pushing the Democratic Party to the right for nearly 20 years. He was in tall cotton, philosophically speaking, when an early leader of the DLC, Bill Clinton, was elected president in 1992. As Clinton's domestic policy guru, Reed pushed New Democrat ideas -- such as welfare reform -- that were often unpopular with party liberals.

"We are increasingly confident that President Bush can be beaten next year, but Dean is not the man to do it," Reed and From wrote. "Most Democrats aren't elitists who think they know better than everyone else."

That article by a David Von Drehle is no longer available at the WP as far as I can see.

See how easy it all was? Lots of rich donors, overlooking the convention floor from 54 stories high? Not bad.

March 21, 2014

"Daily Kos will not enable those who enable Third Way" By Markos at DKos. Names names.

Daily Kos will not enable those who enable Third Way

With Reps. Allyson Schwarz and Ron Kind speaking out against that nutso Third Way Wall Street Journal op-ed, it's clear that even the organization's "co-chairs" aren't happy with the explicit stating of their agenda. They apparently prefer Third Way keep operating in secret, with their Social Security-cutting agenda off the front pages.

But neither will quit the organization. For Schwartz, running in what will be a crowded Democratic gubernatorial primary in Pennsylvania, that's awesome. It'll make for a fun primary. It's not every day we get to electorally beat up on a Third Way stooge. For Kind, well, he's always been obnoxious, so the fact he said anything at all is surprising. Again, I think they're pissed having to defend being part of a corporatist Wall Street front group determined to destroy Social Security.

So who else is enabling Third Way's destructive agenda? Why, let's name names!
House members
James Clyburn (Southern South Carolina)
John Dingell (Ann Arbor, Detroit's western suburbs, Michigan)
Ron Kind (Southwestern Wisconsin, La Crosse, Eau Claire)
Joseph Crowley (NYC, Bronx, Queens)
Allyson Schwartz (Northeast Philly, eastern Montgomery County, Pennsylvania)
Jared Polis (Boulder, Colorado)

Senators
Thomas Carper (Delaware)
Claire McCaskill (Missouri)
Mark Udall (Colorado)
Jeanne Shaheen (New Hampshire)
Kay Hagan (North Carolina)
Chris Coons (Delaware)

Here is the chart he posts about the Board of Trustees.

March 20, 2014

Build an F-Rated Charter School? WITHOUT Approval? Only in Florida. From Daily Kos today.

Interesting post up at Daily Kos by SemDem about the ease of building unregulated charter schools in Florida. With taxpayer money. Without approval.

Want to Build an F-Rated Charter School? WITHOUT Approval? Only in Florida

Orange County, Florida, home of Orlando, is the 12th largest school district in the US. It has over 115 elementary schools. Since 1999, we have been grading our schools. Last year, only three schools received an "F" rating.

One of them was Renaissance Charter School.

The County has made it very clear they DO NOT WANT Charter Schools USA building another failed Renaissance Charter School. They are suing to stop the decision from the Florida Dept. of Education, stacked with Scott cronies, that is trying to force them to build THREE campuses in Orange County. The owner of Charter Schools USA, John Hage, is just appalled that anyone would sue to stop him.

The County is opposed to these schools based on their past performance. They have a good case, and the judge is weighing his options. In the meantime, Hage said screw it.

Charter Schools USA has started construction, despite not having approval yet for the school.

Charter Schools USA isn't waiting for a judge to decide if it can open a disputed school in Orange County.

They are just building it anyway.