Below is the email. Come on Tuesday, get the details. Representative Assembly is open to all teachers to listen and participate in discussion, but only elected Site Reps may vote.
VTA Members:
Late Thursday afternoon we were able to come to a tentative agreement for our contract for the next three years. Details of the agreement will be made available for the membership to read and discuss pending approval by the VTA Executive Board and Rep Council in the next week.
Let us remind you of the procedure for formal acceptance of the tentative agreement.
1) VTA Executive Board will meet Friday to formally send the agreement to the VTA Rep Council.
2) VTA Rep Council will vote whether or not to send the offer to the general membership. Attention VTA Reps: Tuesday, June 1st we will have an emergency rep council meeting to discuss the tentative agreement
3) Pending VTA Rep Council approval, the membership vote on acceptance of the tentative agreement will take place within the next 2 weeks.
As of Thursday, May 27, 2010, our “Work to Rule” action has been cancelled. Please resume your regular activities at your site.
We would like to thank all of our reps, the crisis team and the entire VTA membership. We would not have reached this tentative agreement without the support and action of all of our members.
Sincerely,
Jan O' Reilly
VTA President
Friday, May 28, 2010
TENTATIVE AGREEMENT! Work action canceled.
Last night a tentative agreement of the contract dispute was reached. Work to rule has ended. The job action is over.
Next Tuesday afternoon, the first day after Memorial Day break, there will be an emergency Representative Assembly meeting to look at the Tentative Agreement and to decide if it should be sent to the membership for a vote.
Good job, all! Your unity has helped to make this Tenative Agreement possible.
Next Tuesday afternoon, the first day after Memorial Day break, there will be an emergency Representative Assembly meeting to look at the Tentative Agreement and to decide if it should be sent to the membership for a vote.
Good job, all! Your unity has helped to make this Tenative Agreement possible.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
"Greedy, Union, Thug" OK with North County Times but not ANTI
Our friends at the North County Times on the censor board, aka ACE, ostensibly are supposed to be "even highhandedly" in their removal of posts that violate their "Web comment policy." Of course the censor leanings are anything but fair.
Here is a part of rule 3 of their 'web comment policy": "Comments may not contain misleading information, unconfirmed statement of fact or defamatory statements."
Did you know that calling teachers, "greedy, union thugs" does not violate that rule? However, when we use an accurate describtive term, ANTI, based on our angry friends' philosophy of opposition to public schools, fact based science, sex ed and history, the word ANTI does "violate" the way ACE enforces the rule. Our posts are taken down for that single word. Can we all say double standard? "Even handed?" yeah right.
I guess we should just be glad that we are allowed to post at all on a such an anti union, anti middle class site. The editorial staff has NEVER written any editorial that supported worker safety, worker pay or benefits or pensions. The point of view of North County Times is exclusively the point of view of those who think middle class workers should be seen as expendable parts to be discarded when they ask for more money or benefits. Welcome to the third world.
The following post does not violate the North County Times standards. I know because I pushed the abuse button and pointed out rule 3. The post was not taken down. I monitored for two days. Many other posts were pulled in that time but not this one by "Right-Wing":
Right_wing said on: May 22, 2010, 12:17 am
The district's back IS against the wall, because the greedy union thugs pushed them there. The district has no choice, but do some more bloodletting. As long as the teachers' unions keep soaking the neighborhood tax base, there will be lot more bloodletting. It is so sad that teachers prefer union meetings and walkouts instead of doing their jobs and teaching kids.
Here is a part of rule 3 of their 'web comment policy": "Comments may not contain misleading information, unconfirmed statement of fact or defamatory statements."
Did you know that calling teachers, "greedy, union thugs" does not violate that rule? However, when we use an accurate describtive term, ANTI, based on our angry friends' philosophy of opposition to public schools, fact based science, sex ed and history, the word ANTI does "violate" the way ACE enforces the rule. Our posts are taken down for that single word. Can we all say double standard? "Even handed?" yeah right.
I guess we should just be glad that we are allowed to post at all on a such an anti union, anti middle class site. The editorial staff has NEVER written any editorial that supported worker safety, worker pay or benefits or pensions. The point of view of North County Times is exclusively the point of view of those who think middle class workers should be seen as expendable parts to be discarded when they ask for more money or benefits. Welcome to the third world.
The following post does not violate the North County Times standards. I know because I pushed the abuse button and pointed out rule 3. The post was not taken down. I monitored for two days. Many other posts were pulled in that time but not this one by "Right-Wing":
Right_wing said on: May 22, 2010, 12:17 am
The district's back IS against the wall, because the greedy union thugs pushed them there. The district has no choice, but do some more bloodletting. As long as the teachers' unions keep soaking the neighborhood tax base, there will be lot more bloodletting. It is so sad that teachers prefer union meetings and walkouts instead of doing their jobs and teaching kids.
Monday, May 24, 2010
John and Ken, AM Con Men, bully local district on air
Los Angeles hired gun con men, John and Ken of KFI AM 640 decided to bully a local School district that had to cancel a band's overnight trip to the Fiesta Bowl in Arizona due to monetary problems that John and Ken largely caused.
You see last Spring when Schwarzenegger's budget fixes were set to be on the June ballot (Props 1A through 1F), the evil duo spent hour after hour on one of the most powerful radio broadcast signal in Southern California (50,000 watts) urging listeners to vote against the fixes. They wanted to bankrupt the state and force massive cutbacks in needed state programs and public education. They prevailed. There were massive cutbacks including at the public school district they now are using hours of air time to spread false charges about.
When they are on the air, they allow no other point of view on their four hour afternoon daily broadcast which has the largest square mileage range of any station and a massive audience. According to Arbitron more than one and half million listen. Perfect set up for the bullies and cowards that John and Ken are. They control what is said, who says i,t and for how long. No equal time allowed. Not even unequal time for rebuttals. Bullies don't like fairness of any kind.
John and Ken used their massive gift of air time to organize a giant rally in Corona in Riverside against the budget fixes in the Spring of 2009. Thousands came. Some of their brain addled followers said things like, 'My daughter is in college and we need Cal Grant money to afford to keep her there, so we are voting against Prop 1A through 1F.'* Never considering that Cal Grant money comes from the state budget and if the Propositions were not passed, then there would not be enough money. Sure enough Cal Grants were drastically slashed when the props failed.
John and Ken did the job they were paid to do. They stirred their audience into frenzies of non thinking actions and chanting slogans.** Their foolish followers listened. They followed the instruction of the paid agitators and voted against the Props. They all hurt themselves and their families while making sure that those ricos, who pay John and Ken to tell the lies the ricos want the public to hear, do not have to pay their fair share of taxes for public education or services and benefits for the middle class and poor.
Now in rich irony, the hypocrites John and Ken heavily criticize, on the PUBLIC airwaves, a public school district that had to make cuts as a result of John and Ken being successful in their paid job as "opinion makers". They successfully moved their listeners to defeat the proposition fix.
The good folks at the public school district were inundated by calls and complaints from John and Ken listeners based on the the misinformation John and Ken crafted. Imagine how awful it must have been for some sweet phone receptionist at the district office. Hit by a broadside that she did not expect. How much school business was not finished that day? How much did that loss of effective time cost taxpayers? Wasted taxpayer monies, how could that be when the hired guns, John and Ken, tell us daily that they are on the taxpayers side? Do liars lie? Do conmen con?
Here is the URL of the article about the baseless attack that the radio bullies and conmen John and Ken perpetrated on an innocent public school district:
http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/swcounty/article_d3461199-2fa2-5ac5-8cde-c37b5c16a4f0.html
REGION: Sometimes no news is good news for school districts School districts deal with outside publicity By CRAIG SHULTZ - cshultz@californian.com | Posted: May 22, 2010 8:49 pm The Temecula Valley Unified School District was lambasted on the radio earlier this month after the Great Oak High School band pulled out of the Fiesta Bowl National Band Championships. The district said the withdrawal was financially driven, while KFI 640 AM's "The John and Ken" show questioned whether the school made a political decision based on Arizona's new immigration law.
--------------------------------------
*From the article about the rally and its lame participants found here:
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2009/05/16/news/californian/riverside/z15d6b5ab0a89e0e0882575b700672eaa.txt
Debbie Adams said the issue is personal for her because she is an English teacher who is trying to help put her daughter through college. Just recently, her daughter's state grant money was cut by 15 percent. "Where am I going to get that 15 percent?" she asked.
We know Cal Grants funds were drastically cut after the defeat of 1A through 1F. But don't you just wonder how much Debbie Adams English teacher salary was cut this year because the state did not have money to pay her full salary?
How ironic. The liars John and Ken can motivate folks to hurt themselves just by carefully conceived and delivered propaganda that is bought and paid for by the wealthy. Scary the power of disinformation.
**
At one point during the rally, the crowd, cheered on by the radio show hosts, chanted in unison: "Liars, thieves and whores! Liars, thieves and whores! Liars, thieves and whores!"
The fools were chanting about the elected Democrats in the State Assembly and Senate in Sacramento. Those Democrats have been the only ones and I do me only ones that have tried to do anything to stop the giant cuts in school budgets.
The new breed of Republicans in the Assembly and State Senate just say no to every budget fix. They vote in 100% unison with no dissent, I am sad to say.
There was a time not long ago when the Republican Party consisted of mostly decent well educated folks. No more. The easily led mob demands that elected Republicans do whatever John and Ken, Rush Limbaugh, and FOX tell them to do. That well manipulated mob now controls the Republican Party, my party, the party of my father, grandfather, and great grandfather. How tragic!
***
More about the massive propaganda machine that is KF-lie
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KFI
In the Spring 2006 quarter Arbitron rating, KFI was the most listened to radio station in Los Angeles, averaging approximately 1.5 million listeners during any given weekday. The station was the most listened to AM radio station as well as the most listened to news/talk radio station in the country, beating out WABC in New York City.
KFI is a talk radio station owned by Clear Channel Communications, the largest U.S. radio owner. KFI is a member of the Fox News Radio network and Fox News reporters appear on the statio
On Sunday, December 19, 2004 at 9:45 a.m. Pacific Standard Time, Jim and Mary Ghosoph were killed when their rented Cessna 182P single engine airplane, travelling from the El Monte Airport to Fullerton Municipal Airport, struck KFI's transmission tower, located in the City of La Mirada. KFI and Clear Channel Communications management responded by saying the tower was in compliance with FCC and FAA regulations and that it did not need to make any changes.
Read more about John and Ken here:
http://vistaschools.blogspot.com/2009/03/unions-provide-american-dream.html
and here:
http://vistaschools.blogspot.com/2009/05/kfi-am-640-john-and-ken-bully-and.html
and here:
http://vistaschools.blogspot.com/2009/05/massive-pay-cut-for-vista-teachers-if.html
and here:
http://vistaschools.blogspot.com/2009/05/baby-sitters-make-more-money-than.html
You see last Spring when Schwarzenegger's budget fixes were set to be on the June ballot (Props 1A through 1F), the evil duo spent hour after hour on one of the most powerful radio broadcast signal in Southern California (50,000 watts) urging listeners to vote against the fixes. They wanted to bankrupt the state and force massive cutbacks in needed state programs and public education. They prevailed. There were massive cutbacks including at the public school district they now are using hours of air time to spread false charges about.
When they are on the air, they allow no other point of view on their four hour afternoon daily broadcast which has the largest square mileage range of any station and a massive audience. According to Arbitron more than one and half million listen. Perfect set up for the bullies and cowards that John and Ken are. They control what is said, who says i,t and for how long. No equal time allowed. Not even unequal time for rebuttals. Bullies don't like fairness of any kind.
John and Ken used their massive gift of air time to organize a giant rally in Corona in Riverside against the budget fixes in the Spring of 2009. Thousands came. Some of their brain addled followers said things like, 'My daughter is in college and we need Cal Grant money to afford to keep her there, so we are voting against Prop 1A through 1F.'* Never considering that Cal Grant money comes from the state budget and if the Propositions were not passed, then there would not be enough money. Sure enough Cal Grants were drastically slashed when the props failed.
John and Ken did the job they were paid to do. They stirred their audience into frenzies of non thinking actions and chanting slogans.** Their foolish followers listened. They followed the instruction of the paid agitators and voted against the Props. They all hurt themselves and their families while making sure that those ricos, who pay John and Ken to tell the lies the ricos want the public to hear, do not have to pay their fair share of taxes for public education or services and benefits for the middle class and poor.
Now in rich irony, the hypocrites John and Ken heavily criticize, on the PUBLIC airwaves, a public school district that had to make cuts as a result of John and Ken being successful in their paid job as "opinion makers". They successfully moved their listeners to defeat the proposition fix.
The good folks at the public school district were inundated by calls and complaints from John and Ken listeners based on the the misinformation John and Ken crafted. Imagine how awful it must have been for some sweet phone receptionist at the district office. Hit by a broadside that she did not expect. How much school business was not finished that day? How much did that loss of effective time cost taxpayers? Wasted taxpayer monies, how could that be when the hired guns, John and Ken, tell us daily that they are on the taxpayers side? Do liars lie? Do conmen con?
Here is the URL of the article about the baseless attack that the radio bullies and conmen John and Ken perpetrated on an innocent public school district:
http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/swcounty/article_d3461199-2fa2-5ac5-8cde-c37b5c16a4f0.html
REGION: Sometimes no news is good news for school districts School districts deal with outside publicity By CRAIG SHULTZ - cshultz@californian.com | Posted: May 22, 2010 8:49 pm The Temecula Valley Unified School District was lambasted on the radio earlier this month after the Great Oak High School band pulled out of the Fiesta Bowl National Band Championships. The district said the withdrawal was financially driven, while KFI 640 AM's "The John and Ken" show questioned whether the school made a political decision based on Arizona's new immigration law.
--------------------------------------
*From the article about the rally and its lame participants found here:
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2009/05/16/news/californian/riverside/z15d6b5ab0a89e0e0882575b700672eaa.txt
Debbie Adams said the issue is personal for her because she is an English teacher who is trying to help put her daughter through college. Just recently, her daughter's state grant money was cut by 15 percent. "Where am I going to get that 15 percent?" she asked.
We know Cal Grants funds were drastically cut after the defeat of 1A through 1F. But don't you just wonder how much Debbie Adams English teacher salary was cut this year because the state did not have money to pay her full salary?
How ironic. The liars John and Ken can motivate folks to hurt themselves just by carefully conceived and delivered propaganda that is bought and paid for by the wealthy. Scary the power of disinformation.
**
At one point during the rally, the crowd, cheered on by the radio show hosts, chanted in unison: "Liars, thieves and whores! Liars, thieves and whores! Liars, thieves and whores!"
The fools were chanting about the elected Democrats in the State Assembly and Senate in Sacramento. Those Democrats have been the only ones and I do me only ones that have tried to do anything to stop the giant cuts in school budgets.
The new breed of Republicans in the Assembly and State Senate just say no to every budget fix. They vote in 100% unison with no dissent, I am sad to say.
There was a time not long ago when the Republican Party consisted of mostly decent well educated folks. No more. The easily led mob demands that elected Republicans do whatever John and Ken, Rush Limbaugh, and FOX tell them to do. That well manipulated mob now controls the Republican Party, my party, the party of my father, grandfather, and great grandfather. How tragic!
***
More about the massive propaganda machine that is KF-lie
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KFI
In the Spring 2006 quarter Arbitron rating, KFI was the most listened to radio station in Los Angeles, averaging approximately 1.5 million listeners during any given weekday. The station was the most listened to AM radio station as well as the most listened to news/talk radio station in the country, beating out WABC in New York City.
KFI is a talk radio station owned by Clear Channel Communications, the largest U.S. radio owner. KFI is a member of the Fox News Radio network and Fox News reporters appear on the statio
On Sunday, December 19, 2004 at 9:45 a.m. Pacific Standard Time, Jim and Mary Ghosoph were killed when their rented Cessna 182P single engine airplane, travelling from the El Monte Airport to Fullerton Municipal Airport, struck KFI's transmission tower, located in the City of La Mirada. KFI and Clear Channel Communications management responded by saying the tower was in compliance with FCC and FAA regulations and that it did not need to make any changes.
Read more about John and Ken here:
http://vistaschools.blogspot.com/2009/03/unions-provide-american-dream.html
and here:
http://vistaschools.blogspot.com/2009/05/kfi-am-640-john-and-ken-bully-and.html
and here:
http://vistaschools.blogspot.com/2009/05/massive-pay-cut-for-vista-teachers-if.html
and here:
http://vistaschools.blogspot.com/2009/05/baby-sitters-make-more-money-than.html
Don’t Slack, Wear Black for Lower Class Sizes
Our two weeks of gentle persuasion starts today. If you do not have the official T shirt with the yellow slash mark through LARGER CLASS SIZES, then try to find any black blouse or T shirt to wear for the next two weeks. The more black on your clothes the better.
Black is the color of mourning. It is appropriate for showing our concern for the sad fate of student learning if permanent 40 student class sizes are enshrined in our VUSD contract.
Hopefully your site has organized a meeting time and spot in the parking lot before school, so that you can all walk in to school together on your first PAID minute of the seven and a half hour work day. Then at the end of the seven and a half hours of work walking out of the school en masse would be awesome.
Solidarity wins support for the just cause. Why give the district time that they are not paying you for? (I know, I know, there is no way to get it all done otherwise, but try to participate as much as you possibly can.)
Yes, it is incredibly difficult not to go in an hour early to prepare for classes and horribly difficult for our conscientious natures to leave at the end of the seven and half hour day. How can we leave before the classwork is graded? How can we leave before we feel prepared for the next school day? But the more we can stay together the better chance that giant class sizes will not be enshrined in the contract. (Actually, it is not we, it is you. I keep forgetting I am retired.)
Remember this very non confrontational work action lasts only nine days. Five days this week and four days next week due to the Memorial Day break on Monday. Good luck.
Wish I could be there with you.
Question Can we check our email at home? Darn this is hard!
Black is the color of mourning. It is appropriate for showing our concern for the sad fate of student learning if permanent 40 student class sizes are enshrined in our VUSD contract.
Hopefully your site has organized a meeting time and spot in the parking lot before school, so that you can all walk in to school together on your first PAID minute of the seven and a half hour work day. Then at the end of the seven and a half hours of work walking out of the school en masse would be awesome.
Solidarity wins support for the just cause. Why give the district time that they are not paying you for? (I know, I know, there is no way to get it all done otherwise, but try to participate as much as you possibly can.)
Yes, it is incredibly difficult not to go in an hour early to prepare for classes and horribly difficult for our conscientious natures to leave at the end of the seven and half hour day. How can we leave before the classwork is graded? How can we leave before we feel prepared for the next school day? But the more we can stay together the better chance that giant class sizes will not be enshrined in the contract. (Actually, it is not we, it is you. I keep forgetting I am retired.)
Remember this very non confrontational work action lasts only nine days. Five days this week and four days next week due to the Memorial Day break on Monday. Good luck.
Wish I could be there with you.
Question Can we check our email at home? Darn this is hard!
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Congratulations to Barbara Franklin, new VTA president!
Our angry friends like to blog about union bosses as though some overlords run the Vista Teachers Association. Why they feel the need to so misrepresent how our leadership is chosen, I can only speculate some form of delusional insanity. Why else so angry?
The truth is all our offices are filled by free elections of the membership. Any one can run. Any one can win. Our usual problem is finding enough candidates for all the offices. These jobs are long hours and sometimes extremely stressful.
Thankfully we had two people willing to run for VTA president, Barbara Franklin and Matt Lattuada. Frankly it surprises me that anyone would be willing when our president's name is constantly denigrated on the blogs of the North County Times and sometimes by their editors and opinion "writers."
Recently one of our more angry and hate filled North County bloggers, "Roxy" compared Jan O'Reilly to Adolph Hitler and labeled her, "the Queen of Mean." Roxy then asserted that Jan manipulated parents and teachers, so that she could get more money for herself. How outrageous! Dedicated, hard working, helpful Jan O'Reilly! What is wrong with these people?
Given the nuttiness of the opposition I am really grateful to Barbara and Matt for being willing to step into the breach on behalf of the teachers of VUSD.
The truth is all our offices are filled by free elections of the membership. Any one can run. Any one can win. Our usual problem is finding enough candidates for all the offices. These jobs are long hours and sometimes extremely stressful.
Thankfully we had two people willing to run for VTA president, Barbara Franklin and Matt Lattuada. Frankly it surprises me that anyone would be willing when our president's name is constantly denigrated on the blogs of the North County Times and sometimes by their editors and opinion "writers."
Recently one of our more angry and hate filled North County bloggers, "Roxy" compared Jan O'Reilly to Adolph Hitler and labeled her, "the Queen of Mean." Roxy then asserted that Jan manipulated parents and teachers, so that she could get more money for herself. How outrageous! Dedicated, hard working, helpful Jan O'Reilly! What is wrong with these people?
Given the nuttiness of the opposition I am really grateful to Barbara and Matt for being willing to step into the breach on behalf of the teachers of VUSD.
The reason that the Con Propaganda Machine targets school teachers
Below in blue is one paragraph from an anti teacher New York Times article. It explains why destroying teachers' unions and teachers' benefits, teachers' salaries and pensions is one of the highest priority of the massive, unprecedented, anti-middle class propaganda machine. This machine has been carefully crafted over two or three generations of billionaires who fund 'the machine'. The paragraph in blue below explains why our local angry ANTI friends continuous repeat the same hateful phrases about evil teacher unions. These phrases have been crafted by this anti-middle class propaganda machine and repeated ad naseum by hired gun 'opinion makers'.
First though some background, the billionaires (Koch brothers, Walton family of Walmart, Macmillians and Cargills of Cargill Meat of E. coli fame, and the Carlyle Group of Bush family fame et. al.) like money to go in only one direction, into their bank accounts never out. In order to make sure that happens they have funded and created a group of propaganda mills to attack any potential political opposition to their goal of complete financial conquest of the United States.
With the recent Supreme Court ruling that bizarrely labels corporations as "people" protected by the US Constitution, corporate boards and billionaires can spend any amount with no limits in elections. Starting in the next election there is unlikely to be any one elected in America who opposes their plans for financial conquest.
For the last fifty years, the billionaire Genghis Khans have successfully worked on destroying virtually all unions in private businesses. Then they went after public employee unions.
Ronald Reagan gave them their first major victory. It was the beginning of their political dominance of public unions and public opinion when he successfully fired all the air traffic controllers without any political consequences.
Then Reagan by presidential fiat ended the Fairness Doctrine. No more would national or local news have to be unbiased or fact based. The ending of the Fairness Doctrine was their greatest coup over the American working class until that recent Bush appointed Supreme Court ruling a couple of months back.
Ending the Fairness Doctrine allowed for conmen like the team of John and Ken of KFI AM 640 to without fear of consequence be hired to go on the AM radio five hours a day five days a week for more than a year to urge the recall of Gray Davis with no other viewpoint allowed. None. I tried to call in, was given air time and then not allowed to rebut their lies. They did not allow me to finish a sentence.
Complaints to the FCC about unfairness were ignored, because there was no Fairness Doctrine. No necessity of broadcasters to do broadcast anything for the public good.
A couple of years later John and Ken were paid to break the Southern California grocery clerk union. How could they? By using their air time to shape public opinion against the clerks with daily diatribes against union pay and benefits. John and Ken were successful. They changed public opinion with their lies and half truths. The strike was broken. Wages and Benefits were cut.
Allowing only one sided pro billionaire views on our public airwaves and monopoly cable networks strikes anyone as unfair. It is. The billionaires know that their pro billionaire views and tax cuts can't compete unless they cheat, so they do. How do you think they got rich in the first place. Conscience is a handicap to getting filthy rich. They have made sure that only one side is ever heard on AM radio and that one set of talking points, theirs, dominates every 24 hour news cycle.
Rush Limbaugh according to his autobiography was plucked from an obscure radio station in Rio Linda near Sacramento California and put on the air in New York City by one of these billionaires. Another billionaire Rupert Murdock used his wealth to create FOXnotNews and its message of middle class destruction.
Now the billionaire boys club is focused on destroying all public unions but particularly teachers' unions. They have created and unleashed through their media conmen a blizzard of propaganda talking points denigrating America's teachers and public schools.
Here is why the NEA and the CTA is in the cross hairs:
If unions are the Democratic Party’s base, then teachers’ unions are the base of the base. The two national teachers’ unions — the American Federation of Teachers and the larger National Education Association — together have more than 4.6 million members. That is roughly a quarter of all the union members in the country. Teachers are the best field troops in local elections. Ten percent of the delegates to the 2008 Democratic National Convention were teachers’ union members. In the last 30 years, the teachers’ unions have contributed nearly $57.4 million to federal campaigns, an amount that is about 30 percent higher than any single corporation or other union. And they have typically contributed many times more to state and local candidates. About 95 percent of it has gone to Democrats.
This paragraph is from an attack article against public school teachers and unions running in the "liberal" New York Times. Read the rest here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/magazine/23Race-t.html?ref=homepage&src=me&pagewanted=all
First though some background, the billionaires (Koch brothers, Walton family of Walmart, Macmillians and Cargills of Cargill Meat of E. coli fame, and the Carlyle Group of Bush family fame et. al.) like money to go in only one direction, into their bank accounts never out. In order to make sure that happens they have funded and created a group of propaganda mills to attack any potential political opposition to their goal of complete financial conquest of the United States.
With the recent Supreme Court ruling that bizarrely labels corporations as "people" protected by the US Constitution, corporate boards and billionaires can spend any amount with no limits in elections. Starting in the next election there is unlikely to be any one elected in America who opposes their plans for financial conquest.
For the last fifty years, the billionaire Genghis Khans have successfully worked on destroying virtually all unions in private businesses. Then they went after public employee unions.
Ronald Reagan gave them their first major victory. It was the beginning of their political dominance of public unions and public opinion when he successfully fired all the air traffic controllers without any political consequences.
Then Reagan by presidential fiat ended the Fairness Doctrine. No more would national or local news have to be unbiased or fact based. The ending of the Fairness Doctrine was their greatest coup over the American working class until that recent Bush appointed Supreme Court ruling a couple of months back.
Ending the Fairness Doctrine allowed for conmen like the team of John and Ken of KFI AM 640 to without fear of consequence be hired to go on the AM radio five hours a day five days a week for more than a year to urge the recall of Gray Davis with no other viewpoint allowed. None. I tried to call in, was given air time and then not allowed to rebut their lies. They did not allow me to finish a sentence.
Complaints to the FCC about unfairness were ignored, because there was no Fairness Doctrine. No necessity of broadcasters to do broadcast anything for the public good.
A couple of years later John and Ken were paid to break the Southern California grocery clerk union. How could they? By using their air time to shape public opinion against the clerks with daily diatribes against union pay and benefits. John and Ken were successful. They changed public opinion with their lies and half truths. The strike was broken. Wages and Benefits were cut.
Allowing only one sided pro billionaire views on our public airwaves and monopoly cable networks strikes anyone as unfair. It is. The billionaires know that their pro billionaire views and tax cuts can't compete unless they cheat, so they do. How do you think they got rich in the first place. Conscience is a handicap to getting filthy rich. They have made sure that only one side is ever heard on AM radio and that one set of talking points, theirs, dominates every 24 hour news cycle.
Rush Limbaugh according to his autobiography was plucked from an obscure radio station in Rio Linda near Sacramento California and put on the air in New York City by one of these billionaires. Another billionaire Rupert Murdock used his wealth to create FOXnotNews and its message of middle class destruction.
Now the billionaire boys club is focused on destroying all public unions but particularly teachers' unions. They have created and unleashed through their media conmen a blizzard of propaganda talking points denigrating America's teachers and public schools.
Here is why the NEA and the CTA is in the cross hairs:
If unions are the Democratic Party’s base, then teachers’ unions are the base of the base. The two national teachers’ unions — the American Federation of Teachers and the larger National Education Association — together have more than 4.6 million members. That is roughly a quarter of all the union members in the country. Teachers are the best field troops in local elections. Ten percent of the delegates to the 2008 Democratic National Convention were teachers’ union members. In the last 30 years, the teachers’ unions have contributed nearly $57.4 million to federal campaigns, an amount that is about 30 percent higher than any single corporation or other union. And they have typically contributed many times more to state and local candidates. About 95 percent of it has gone to Democrats.
This paragraph is from an attack article against public school teachers and unions running in the "liberal" New York Times. Read the rest here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/magazine/23Race-t.html?ref=homepage&src=me&pagewanted=all
Maureen Dowd describes Jim Gibson's penchant for exaggeration
I read Marueen Dowd's column in the New York Times today and I was surprised with how accurately she described the Jim Gibson I know. It was uncanny. She has never met him and was describing some national politicians yet there he is in her description below:
T. S. Eliot wrote about when memory mixes with desire. Politicians get in trouble when desire nixes memory.
They know they are misrepresenting an experience, but can’t help themselves. Their desire to be the person they describe is too overpowering.
Politicians are actors trapped in the same part, and some occasionally feel the need to punch up the script. They are salesmen engaged in the hard sell, and some occasionally get carried away.
Read the rest of her column here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/opinion/23dowd.html?hp
Martin Garrick's Gang directly caused California school layoffs
One of our hardworking, classified staff in VUSD, who may lose his job, posted on the North County Times blog in anger. His chosen blog name is DR Seussfantastic. He was angry with the fine teachers of our district.
Sadly he picked the wrong target. VTA had nothing to do with the massive cutbacks in our school district budget. It was instead our local State Representative, Martin Garrick, and the Republican gang he leads in Sacramento that are directly and almost solely responsible. This Republican gang of vandals in the State Assembly and State Senate caused the massive public school layoffs here and elsewhere in the state by refusing any reasonable suggestions for a fix to the California budget funding crises.
The tiny hate filled minority has been able to hold the state hostage by voting in unison without a single dissent or independent thinker to block all solutions that do not involve hurting the elderly, the sick, the poor, and school children. The two thirds vote required to pass a state budget has given this hate-filled group of despicables the power to destroy California government and its ability to work for ordinary Californians.
Read my reply to our fine classified friend below:
con no more said on: May 22, 2010, 1:31 pm DR Seussfantastic, I am very sorry your job is in jeopardy. It must be scary for you and your family. You have a right to be angry but you are directing your anger at the wrong people.
This entire mess with the state budget and funding is directly and almost solely the fault of the Republicans in Sacramento. They ALL, every single one of them, each of the gang, refused to consider solutions to the Great California funding Crises. They voted as a pack in lockstep like the old Soviet Politburo members, 100% together. They voted always, each and every time as united as a wolf pack to stop all attempts to fix the California budget. They voted just as they were told to by fat cat Republican party bosses.
Not one of the NO! NO! NO! Sacramento Republican crowd will consider anything to help the situation except "fixes" that destroy the lives, the health and the opportunities of our California neighbors who happen to be sick, elderly, poor, or public school children.
Please see my earlier posts for more complete details of the intentional harm local elected Republicans, Martin Garrick, Mark Wyland, Nathan Fletcher and other Sacramento Republicans have done to our state.
There are easy fixes that none of these three will consider.
See: http://caltaxreform.org/?p=211
If you have a strong stomach you can watch a you tube type video of Martin Garrick acting as an arrogant bully demanding across the board cuts while leading the California Republican Press Conference on May 12th.
Here: https://www.calchannel.com/channel/viewVideo/1387
Sadly he picked the wrong target. VTA had nothing to do with the massive cutbacks in our school district budget. It was instead our local State Representative, Martin Garrick, and the Republican gang he leads in Sacramento that are directly and almost solely responsible. This Republican gang of vandals in the State Assembly and State Senate caused the massive public school layoffs here and elsewhere in the state by refusing any reasonable suggestions for a fix to the California budget funding crises.
The tiny hate filled minority has been able to hold the state hostage by voting in unison without a single dissent or independent thinker to block all solutions that do not involve hurting the elderly, the sick, the poor, and school children. The two thirds vote required to pass a state budget has given this hate-filled group of despicables the power to destroy California government and its ability to work for ordinary Californians.
Read my reply to our fine classified friend below:
con no more said on: May 22, 2010, 1:31 pm DR Seussfantastic, I am very sorry your job is in jeopardy. It must be scary for you and your family. You have a right to be angry but you are directing your anger at the wrong people.
This entire mess with the state budget and funding is directly and almost solely the fault of the Republicans in Sacramento. They ALL, every single one of them, each of the gang, refused to consider solutions to the Great California funding Crises. They voted as a pack in lockstep like the old Soviet Politburo members, 100% together. They voted always, each and every time as united as a wolf pack to stop all attempts to fix the California budget. They voted just as they were told to by fat cat Republican party bosses.
Not one of the NO! NO! NO! Sacramento Republican crowd will consider anything to help the situation except "fixes" that destroy the lives, the health and the opportunities of our California neighbors who happen to be sick, elderly, poor, or public school children.
Please see my earlier posts for more complete details of the intentional harm local elected Republicans, Martin Garrick, Mark Wyland, Nathan Fletcher and other Sacramento Republicans have done to our state.
There are easy fixes that none of these three will consider.
See: http://caltaxreform.org/?p=211
If you have a strong stomach you can watch a you tube type video of Martin Garrick acting as an arrogant bully demanding across the board cuts while leading the California Republican Press Conference on May 12th.
Here: https://www.calchannel.com/channel/viewVideo/1387
Lowest Public Taxes in Decades, yet angry ones deny this fact
Our angry friends repeat the talking points that there is no more money in Sacramento; therefore, services for poor, sick and school children must be cut and no one should complain.
Point out to them the fact that the percentage of state and federal taxes are lowest in decades and they don't believe it or they claim it is because economy is in a recession. Yes, there is a recession but it is not just that the AMOUNT of taxes that is down but it's that the PERCENTAGE that is being paid, especially by super wealthy corporations, is down--way, way down.
The greatest amount of the state's budget deficit is not due to the recession. No it's main cause is super wealthy corporation paying a lower percentage on their incomes than they have in decades and decades.
Of course the income to the state and federal governments is down during a recession. No one is denying that. However the real problem is the billions and billion of dollars more that the state would have had if it had collected the same percentage of taxes as in the past especially from the super wealthy CEOs and corporations.
Taxes are truly and actually lower for all of us, but, by far, the biggest reduction has been on super wealthy who no longer pay their fair share to maintain our crucial state infrastructure and institutions. Many pay NO income taxes at all even with multimillion dollar incomes. (see:
The tremendous and actual reduction in the number of state workers per Californian served has been a disaster for our freeway maintenance and a real nuisance for getting needed services done by the state. I am in one such nuisance area right now.
It seems I have to have my direct deposit retirement check changed to a new checking account number because our former checking account was compromised. Should be a fast and easy thing to do, right? It is not. It will take 60 days. Why? because the state has laid off so many workers (and because Mission Federal that caused the problem is not much good at fixing the problems they create).
Mission Federal told me that they would not make the change at their bank without getting authorization from STRS. So then I called STRS and was answered by a very helpful and experienced women STRS state employee who helped me get the STRS form online. She also gave me the FAX number to send the form to the proper office for notifying Mission Federal. This STRS notification allows MF to change my direct deposit from one checking account number at the Vista branch into another checking account number at that same branch.
This same nice state worker apologized to me. She told me that because of back ups in the system this simple process would likely take two months. I think I can correctly interpret 'back ups in the system' as not enough state workers hired to do this simple procedure in a timely manner.
When the filthy rich corporations and their filthy rich CEOs rig the system so they do not pay their fair share of taxes, their are real world consequences for all of us who need state services and use state maintained roads.
Ever drive on Highway 5 north out of LA? Why is it still only two lanes wide thirty plus years after it was built with traffic volume at least ten times what it was in the 70s? Why is the road surface especially in the number two lane so "rugged", pitted and torn up? You know why, no money at the state level. Remember interstate highways built by the federal government are maintained by the state that they are in. We all have to pay more often to replace our car tires and get new front end wheel alignments because the state and local governments can no longer afford to properly maintain our roads. That extra cost for your car is just one of the thousands of “Back Door Taxes” that the middle class and poor must pay because the super wealthy have rigged the system. Our students will pay a very huge ‘Back Door Tax” with larger class sizes K-12 and less access to state colleges and universities due to MASSIVE increases in tuition.
Below is the viewpoint of a pro-American, Pro-American intuitions blogger, EarlRichards, about tax breaks for Chevron. Immediately following "EarlRichards" copied post is my post showing with website references that Americans have the lowest state and federal taxes in years.
You can use the URLs in my answer to Vista Watchdog to see the kind of factual information AM radio Con men and FOXnotNews will never tell you. Actually almost no news organization will say it--too afraid of the mobs that Limbaugh and the other radio conmen will whip up if they dare give correct information that contradicts con man propaganda.
EarlRichards said on: May 23, 2010, 3:05 am
Chevron gouged $24 billions in excessive profits in 2008, as per www.tyrannyofoil.com Schwarzenegger should put an excessive profits tax on these profits, instead of protecting the oil corporations from fair taxation, then, there would be sufficient public funds for all the vulnerable, people programs. Big business lost the fight to eliminate domestic violence funding, so now they are coming back with a vengeance. There is no funding provision for battered women shelters in the May Revise. Schwarzee picks on the most vulnerable, and not on corporate tax "deadbeats."
con no more said on: May 22, 2010, 10:27 am
Poor VWdog does not realize our taxes our state and federal taxes are at record lows. Could he have been fooled by FOX, lied to by Limbaugh, deceived by the hired gun deceptaCONS of AM "news"talk radio?
Here are the facts.
----------------------------
State of California
(1)In 1977 the state government consumed 6.6 percent of the state's economy. That number has fallen, down to 5.6 percent of the California economy this year, according to official California Department of Finance figures.
(2)Spending is striking, too. For each $100 Californians earn, the state spends $7.44. The number has been that low only four other times in the past three decades.
(3)The cost of general fund programs, such as public schools and health and social services, hasn't been at this low level since 1973 ---- $5.19 for each $100 that Californians earn
(4)In the coming year, there will be about 8.9 state employees for every 1,000 people. There were 9.5 state workers for each 1,000 Californians 30 years ago.
http://www.nctimes.com/news/opinion/columnists/morain/article_bf5d033c-d54a-5807-9840-44dbb07c91ed.html
---------------------------
Obama's Federal Government Taxes
Tax bills in 2009 at lowest level since 1950
By Dennis Cauchon, USA TODAY May 10, 2010
"Amid complaints about high taxes and calls for a smaller government, Americans paid their lowest level of taxes last year since Harry Truman's presidency, a USA TODAY analysis of federal data found."
http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/taxes/2010-05-10-taxes_N.htm
------------------
So tell me again VWdog about how terrible our tax burden is. Well, maybe you and I, as retirees, should not have our taxes raised, but BIG OIL in California certainly should pay enough taxes to cover its costs to the state if not substantially more as it is forced to do in SARAH PALIN's Alaska as required by a bill SIGNED BY SARAH PALIN.
Point out to them the fact that the percentage of state and federal taxes are lowest in decades and they don't believe it or they claim it is because economy is in a recession. Yes, there is a recession but it is not just that the AMOUNT of taxes that is down but it's that the PERCENTAGE that is being paid, especially by super wealthy corporations, is down--way, way down.
The greatest amount of the state's budget deficit is not due to the recession. No it's main cause is super wealthy corporation paying a lower percentage on their incomes than they have in decades and decades.
Of course the income to the state and federal governments is down during a recession. No one is denying that. However the real problem is the billions and billion of dollars more that the state would have had if it had collected the same percentage of taxes as in the past especially from the super wealthy CEOs and corporations.
Taxes are truly and actually lower for all of us, but, by far, the biggest reduction has been on super wealthy who no longer pay their fair share to maintain our crucial state infrastructure and institutions. Many pay NO income taxes at all even with multimillion dollar incomes. (see:
The tremendous and actual reduction in the number of state workers per Californian served has been a disaster for our freeway maintenance and a real nuisance for getting needed services done by the state. I am in one such nuisance area right now.
It seems I have to have my direct deposit retirement check changed to a new checking account number because our former checking account was compromised. Should be a fast and easy thing to do, right? It is not. It will take 60 days. Why? because the state has laid off so many workers (and because Mission Federal that caused the problem is not much good at fixing the problems they create).
Mission Federal told me that they would not make the change at their bank without getting authorization from STRS. So then I called STRS and was answered by a very helpful and experienced women STRS state employee who helped me get the STRS form online. She also gave me the FAX number to send the form to the proper office for notifying Mission Federal. This STRS notification allows MF to change my direct deposit from one checking account number at the Vista branch into another checking account number at that same branch.
This same nice state worker apologized to me. She told me that because of back ups in the system this simple process would likely take two months. I think I can correctly interpret 'back ups in the system' as not enough state workers hired to do this simple procedure in a timely manner.
When the filthy rich corporations and their filthy rich CEOs rig the system so they do not pay their fair share of taxes, their are real world consequences for all of us who need state services and use state maintained roads.
Ever drive on Highway 5 north out of LA? Why is it still only two lanes wide thirty plus years after it was built with traffic volume at least ten times what it was in the 70s? Why is the road surface especially in the number two lane so "rugged", pitted and torn up? You know why, no money at the state level. Remember interstate highways built by the federal government are maintained by the state that they are in. We all have to pay more often to replace our car tires and get new front end wheel alignments because the state and local governments can no longer afford to properly maintain our roads. That extra cost for your car is just one of the thousands of “Back Door Taxes” that the middle class and poor must pay because the super wealthy have rigged the system. Our students will pay a very huge ‘Back Door Tax” with larger class sizes K-12 and less access to state colleges and universities due to MASSIVE increases in tuition.
Below is the viewpoint of a pro-American, Pro-American intuitions blogger, EarlRichards, about tax breaks for Chevron. Immediately following "EarlRichards" copied post is my post showing with website references that Americans have the lowest state and federal taxes in years.
You can use the URLs in my answer to Vista Watchdog to see the kind of factual information AM radio Con men and FOXnotNews will never tell you. Actually almost no news organization will say it--too afraid of the mobs that Limbaugh and the other radio conmen will whip up if they dare give correct information that contradicts con man propaganda.
EarlRichards said on: May 23, 2010, 3:05 am
Chevron gouged $24 billions in excessive profits in 2008, as per www.tyrannyofoil.com Schwarzenegger should put an excessive profits tax on these profits, instead of protecting the oil corporations from fair taxation, then, there would be sufficient public funds for all the vulnerable, people programs. Big business lost the fight to eliminate domestic violence funding, so now they are coming back with a vengeance. There is no funding provision for battered women shelters in the May Revise. Schwarzee picks on the most vulnerable, and not on corporate tax "deadbeats."
con no more said on: May 22, 2010, 10:27 am
Poor VWdog does not realize our taxes our state and federal taxes are at record lows. Could he have been fooled by FOX, lied to by Limbaugh, deceived by the hired gun deceptaCONS of AM "news"talk radio?
Here are the facts.
----------------------------
State of California
(1)In 1977 the state government consumed 6.6 percent of the state's economy. That number has fallen, down to 5.6 percent of the California economy this year, according to official California Department of Finance figures.
(2)Spending is striking, too. For each $100 Californians earn, the state spends $7.44. The number has been that low only four other times in the past three decades.
(3)The cost of general fund programs, such as public schools and health and social services, hasn't been at this low level since 1973 ---- $5.19 for each $100 that Californians earn
(4)In the coming year, there will be about 8.9 state employees for every 1,000 people. There were 9.5 state workers for each 1,000 Californians 30 years ago.
http://www.nctimes.com/news/opinion/columnists/morain/article_bf5d033c-d54a-5807-9840-44dbb07c91ed.html
---------------------------
Obama's Federal Government Taxes
Tax bills in 2009 at lowest level since 1950
By Dennis Cauchon, USA TODAY May 10, 2010
"Amid complaints about high taxes and calls for a smaller government, Americans paid their lowest level of taxes last year since Harry Truman's presidency, a USA TODAY analysis of federal data found."
http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/taxes/2010-05-10-taxes_N.htm
------------------
So tell me again VWdog about how terrible our tax burden is. Well, maybe you and I, as retirees, should not have our taxes raised, but BIG OIL in California certainly should pay enough taxes to cover its costs to the state if not substantially more as it is forced to do in SARAH PALIN's Alaska as required by a bill SIGNED BY SARAH PALIN.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
ANTI public education icon, Diane Ravitch changes her mind
Great article. Enjoy.
-------------------
latimes.com
Opinion
The Big Idea -- it's bad education policy
One simple solution for our schools? A captivating promise, but a false one.
By Diane Ravitch
March 14, 2010
There have been two features that regularly mark the history of U.S. public schools. Over the last century, our education system has been regularly captivated by a Big Idea -- a savant or an organization that promised a simple solution to the problems of our schools. The second is that there are no simple solutions, no miracle cures to those problems.
Education is a slow, arduous process that requires the work of willing students, dedicated teachers and supportive families, as well as a coherent curriculum.
As an education historian, I have often warned against the seductive lure of grand ideas to reform education. Our national infatuation with education fads and reforms distracts us from the steady work that must be done.
Our era is no different. We now face a wave of education reforms based on the belief that school choice, test-driven accountability and the resulting competition will dramatically improve student achievement.
Once again, I find myself sounding the alarm that the latest vision of education reform is deeply flawed. But this time my warning carries a personal rebuke. For much of the last two decades, I was among those who jumped aboard the choice and accountability bandwagon. Choice and accountability, I believed, would offer a chance for poor children to escape failing schools. Testing and accountability, I thought, would cast sunshine on low-performing schools and lead to improvement. It all seemed to make sense, even if there was little empirical evidence, just promise and hope.
Today there is empirical evidence, and it shows clearly that choice, competition and accountability as education reform levers are not working. But with confidence bordering on recklessness, the Obama administration is plunging ahead, pushing an aggressive program of school reform -- codified in its signature Race to the Top program -- that relies on the power of incentives and competition. This approach may well make schools worse, not better.
Those who do not follow education closely may be tempted to think that, at long last, we're finally turning the corner. What could be wrong with promoting charter schools to compete with public schools? Why shouldn't we demand accountability from educators and use test scores to reward our best teachers and identify those who should find another job?
Like the grand plans of previous eras, they sound sensible but will leave education no better off. Charter schools are no panacea. The nation now has about 5,000 of them, and they vary in quality. Some are excellent, some terrible; most are in between. Most studies have found that charters, on average, are no better than public schools.
On the federal tests, known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress, from 2003 to 2009, charters have never outperformed public schools. Nor have black and Latino students in charter schools performed better than their counterparts in public schools.
This is surprising, because charter schools have many advantages over public schools. Most charters choose their students by lottery. Those who sign up to win seats tend to be the most motivated students and families in the poorest communities. Charters are also free to "counsel out" students who are unable or unwilling to meet expectations. A study of KIPP charters in the San Francisco area found that 60% of those students who started the fifth grade were gone before the end of eighth grade. Most of those who left were low performers.
Studies of charters in Boston, New York City and Washington have found that charters, as compared to public schools, have smaller percentages of the students who are generally hardest to educate -- those with disabilities and English-language learners. Because the public schools must educate everyone, they end up with disproportionate numbers of the students the charters don't want.
So we're left with the knowledge that a dramatic expansion in the number of privately managed schools is not likely to raise student achievement. Meanwhile, public schools will become schools of last resort for the unmotivated, the hardest to teach and those who didn't win a seat in a charter school. If our goal is to destroy public education in America, this is precisely the right path.
Nor is there evidence that student achievement will improve if teachers are evaluated by their students' test scores. Some economists say that when students have four or five "great" teachers in a row, the achievement gap between racial groups disappears. The difficulty with this theory is that we do not have adequate measures of teacher excellence.
Of course, it would be wonderful if all teachers were excellent, but many factors affect student scores other than their teacher, including students' motivation, the schools' curriculum, family support, poverty and distractions on testing day, such as the weather or even a dog barking in the school's parking lot.
The Obama education reform plan is an aggressive version of the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind, under which many schools have narrowed their curriculum to the tested subjects of reading and math. This poor substitute for a well-rounded education, which includes subjects such as the arts, history, geography, civics, science and foreign language, hits low-income children the hardest, since they are the most likely to attend the kind of "failing school" that drills kids relentlessly on the basics. Emphasis on test scores already compels teachers to focus on test preparation. Holding teachers personally and exclusively accountable for test scores -- a key feature of Race to the Top -- will make this situation even worse. Test scores will determine salary, tenure, bonuses and sanctions, as teachers and schools compete with each other, survival-of-the-fittest style.
Frustrated by a chronic lack of progress, business leaders and politicians expect that a stern dose of this sort of competition and incentives will improve education, but they are wrong. No other nation is taking such harsh lessons from the corporate sector and applying them to their schools. No nation with successful schools ignores everything but basic skills and testing. Schools work best when teachers collaborate to help their students and strive together for common goals, not when they compete for higher scores and bonuses.
Having embraced the Republican agenda of choice, competition and accountability, the Obama administration is promoting the privatization of large segments of American education and undermining the profession of teaching. This toxic combination is the latest Big Idea in education reform. Like so many of its predecessors, it is not likely to improve education.
Diane Ravitch, a historian of education, is the author of "The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education."
Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times
-------------------
latimes.com
Opinion
The Big Idea -- it's bad education policy
One simple solution for our schools? A captivating promise, but a false one.
By Diane Ravitch
March 14, 2010
There have been two features that regularly mark the history of U.S. public schools. Over the last century, our education system has been regularly captivated by a Big Idea -- a savant or an organization that promised a simple solution to the problems of our schools. The second is that there are no simple solutions, no miracle cures to those problems.
Education is a slow, arduous process that requires the work of willing students, dedicated teachers and supportive families, as well as a coherent curriculum.
As an education historian, I have often warned against the seductive lure of grand ideas to reform education. Our national infatuation with education fads and reforms distracts us from the steady work that must be done.
Our era is no different. We now face a wave of education reforms based on the belief that school choice, test-driven accountability and the resulting competition will dramatically improve student achievement.
Once again, I find myself sounding the alarm that the latest vision of education reform is deeply flawed. But this time my warning carries a personal rebuke. For much of the last two decades, I was among those who jumped aboard the choice and accountability bandwagon. Choice and accountability, I believed, would offer a chance for poor children to escape failing schools. Testing and accountability, I thought, would cast sunshine on low-performing schools and lead to improvement. It all seemed to make sense, even if there was little empirical evidence, just promise and hope.
Today there is empirical evidence, and it shows clearly that choice, competition and accountability as education reform levers are not working. But with confidence bordering on recklessness, the Obama administration is plunging ahead, pushing an aggressive program of school reform -- codified in its signature Race to the Top program -- that relies on the power of incentives and competition. This approach may well make schools worse, not better.
Those who do not follow education closely may be tempted to think that, at long last, we're finally turning the corner. What could be wrong with promoting charter schools to compete with public schools? Why shouldn't we demand accountability from educators and use test scores to reward our best teachers and identify those who should find another job?
Like the grand plans of previous eras, they sound sensible but will leave education no better off. Charter schools are no panacea. The nation now has about 5,000 of them, and they vary in quality. Some are excellent, some terrible; most are in between. Most studies have found that charters, on average, are no better than public schools.
On the federal tests, known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress, from 2003 to 2009, charters have never outperformed public schools. Nor have black and Latino students in charter schools performed better than their counterparts in public schools.
This is surprising, because charter schools have many advantages over public schools. Most charters choose their students by lottery. Those who sign up to win seats tend to be the most motivated students and families in the poorest communities. Charters are also free to "counsel out" students who are unable or unwilling to meet expectations. A study of KIPP charters in the San Francisco area found that 60% of those students who started the fifth grade were gone before the end of eighth grade. Most of those who left were low performers.
Studies of charters in Boston, New York City and Washington have found that charters, as compared to public schools, have smaller percentages of the students who are generally hardest to educate -- those with disabilities and English-language learners. Because the public schools must educate everyone, they end up with disproportionate numbers of the students the charters don't want.
So we're left with the knowledge that a dramatic expansion in the number of privately managed schools is not likely to raise student achievement. Meanwhile, public schools will become schools of last resort for the unmotivated, the hardest to teach and those who didn't win a seat in a charter school. If our goal is to destroy public education in America, this is precisely the right path.
Nor is there evidence that student achievement will improve if teachers are evaluated by their students' test scores. Some economists say that when students have four or five "great" teachers in a row, the achievement gap between racial groups disappears. The difficulty with this theory is that we do not have adequate measures of teacher excellence.
Of course, it would be wonderful if all teachers were excellent, but many factors affect student scores other than their teacher, including students' motivation, the schools' curriculum, family support, poverty and distractions on testing day, such as the weather or even a dog barking in the school's parking lot.
The Obama education reform plan is an aggressive version of the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind, under which many schools have narrowed their curriculum to the tested subjects of reading and math. This poor substitute for a well-rounded education, which includes subjects such as the arts, history, geography, civics, science and foreign language, hits low-income children the hardest, since they are the most likely to attend the kind of "failing school" that drills kids relentlessly on the basics. Emphasis on test scores already compels teachers to focus on test preparation. Holding teachers personally and exclusively accountable for test scores -- a key feature of Race to the Top -- will make this situation even worse. Test scores will determine salary, tenure, bonuses and sanctions, as teachers and schools compete with each other, survival-of-the-fittest style.
Frustrated by a chronic lack of progress, business leaders and politicians expect that a stern dose of this sort of competition and incentives will improve education, but they are wrong. No other nation is taking such harsh lessons from the corporate sector and applying them to their schools. No nation with successful schools ignores everything but basic skills and testing. Schools work best when teachers collaborate to help their students and strive together for common goals, not when they compete for higher scores and bonuses.
Having embraced the Republican agenda of choice, competition and accountability, the Obama administration is promoting the privatization of large segments of American education and undermining the profession of teaching. This toxic combination is the latest Big Idea in education reform. Like so many of its predecessors, it is not likely to improve education.
Diane Ravitch, a historian of education, is the author of "The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education."
Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times
From Washington Post, What Obama and Arne Duncan should know.
The following is an article from the Washington post. I found it interesting.
--------------------------------
Why Obama and Duncan should read Linda Darling’s new education book
--------------------------------
Why Obama and Duncan should read Linda Darling’s new education book
Educator Linda Darling-Hammond told me that her publisher gave her one hardback copy of her new paperback book, “The Flat World and Education: How America’s Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future.”
She gave it to President Obama. After all, the
How I hope he reads it, and Education Secretary Arne Duncan should too.
Anybody who does read the Darling-Hammond book--and Diane Ravitch's new book “The Death and Life of the Great American School System”--will get a full picture of how Obama and Duncan are off track with education reform and in danger of wasting billions of dollars on schemes that had already wasted billions in the George Bush era of No Child Left Behind.
Darling-Hammond’s research, teaching, and policy work focus on issues of school restructuring, teacher quality and educational equity--and she knows as much about them as anyone in the country. These issues are central to any effort to create schools that really work.
Still, when it came time to pick an education secretary, there appeared to be a campaign against her. She was falsely accused of supporting the status quo and blindly aligning with teachers unions.
Whatever his reasons, Obama tapped Duncan, the superintendent of
Darling-Hammond’s book gives us an idea of where we could have been headed if she were in charge of the country's education policy.
Her education experience is extensive: At Stanford she launched the Stanford Educational Leadership Institute and the School Redesign Network, and served as faculty sponsor for the Stanford Teacher Education Program. She is a former president of the American Educational Research Association and member of the National Academy of Education. She was, from 1994-2001, the executive director of the National Commission on Teaching and
Where Ravitch’s new book looks at the tenets of No Child Left Behind--in which she once believed--and uses data and personal experience to show how egregiously it failed, Darling-Hammond looks at why and how the country can build a truly equitably public education system.
Darling-Hammond uses a mountain of data and stories about reform efforts in various states to explain what can really work in helping close the achievement gap and what hasn’t worked.
She takes conventional wisdom and explains why we don't really know what we think we know. For example, she explains how
There is a common notion that they did it through the centralization of power. That’s not what happened. The key element in all three success stories was a commitment by the governments to equitably fund schools.
Her analysis of the ups and downs of reform efforts in three states--North Carolina, Connecticut and California--lays bare how policy-makers can get things right, then get them wrong again.
Darling-Hammond’s remedies are not original; they are what many educators have long known is necessary to close the achievement gap and build an equitable system, but which the country has never properly funded.
Working to reduce poverty so that children have secure housing, food and health care is central; kids who go to school hungry and sick can’t learn. But some of today’s generation of reform superintendents think they can achieve their goals simply by ordering the classroom in a specific way.
How many studies must be done before policy-makers understand that supportive early learning environments are critical, that teachers and education leaders must be well-trained and well-supported, that any effort to close the achievement gap is doomed to fail if we don’t equitably fund all schools and properly staff them?
If Obama and Duncan did read the book, I have to think that it would be hard for them to stay on the road they're now traveling.
ANTIs hide under false flags of conservative, Republican and/or Christian
Several pro public education blogger have recently taken to posting on the North County Times blogs after articles about VUSD. They are angry. They have a right to be. Our ANTI friends have done great harm to our district and the children we try to educate.
However no matter how many lies are ANTI friends tell, no matter how aggravated we feel at their cowardly attempts to hide behind the "false flag" labels of Christian, conservative or Republican, we must not try to identify the bloggers by guessing at their real names in our posting. This practice is forbidden by ACE who enforces nctimes rules. We must try to follow all the rules scrupulously. We must be better than they are.
The rules are enforced against us far more than our ANTI friends because ACE and other in charge at the North County Times are in actuality conservative Republican Christians. Our ANTI friends use many of the same terms as Christians, conservatives and Republicans. This technique results in confusion which has in the past worked to the political benefit of our ANTI friends when it comes to the North County Times articles and the editors attitudes. Remarkably ACE and others at nctimes have become far more even handed recently. But let's not push our luck.
con no more said on: May 2, 2010, 6:44 pm
To Eleanor, mac4me, and Rich L, your posts will be deleted as "abuse" when our angry friends alert ACE by pushing the abuse button. The rules enforced on this forum do not allow speculation about a bloggers identity nor apparently do they allow the use of the very appropriate and accurate term "anti" to describe our angry friends.
Your righteous anger in response is far more appropriate than theirs. They have reached into our lives and those of our children to damage us and them. They have caused great harm to our districts reputation and cost VUSD million of dollars wasted on the third high school shenanigans by the two trustees this small group of angry ones helped elect. What this group has done to our fine district is truly remarkable in its depredation on our children futures and to the wallets of the taxpayers of VUSD.
If the community was truly aware of who these folks are, what they have done, and what their truly evil hidden agenda for our fine schools is, the candidates our angry friends support could not get thirty votes in an election.
Only by hiding behind the cover of false flag labels like "conservative," "Republican," and "Christian" can they fool and confuse an ever smaller group of uniformed conservatives, Republicans and Christians into believing that they have either the ethics or the views of the majority of other conservatives, Republicans or Christians in our district.
Of all those groups whose names they hide behind, it is the Christians, like me, who should be, and are, the most outraged when we find out that they have used us and the name we call ourselves simply in order to gain personal political power. Second only to our anger about the real harm they have done to children in our VUSD classrooms, is the outrage we all feel about their use of the term Christian to describe their very un-Christ-like actions.
I suggest that if Eleanor, mac4me, or Rich L wish to re-post without the references to the obvious identity of blogger "Roxy" who I believe also posts as "Dorothy," your post will likely not be taken down.
ACE at the North County Times has actually become pretty even handed in the posts he takes down in the last month or so. I think we have a couple of teachers at Madison Middle School to thank for that. They invited one of the editorial writers, Jim Trageser, to their school for a day and seemed to have made a very positive impression on him.
That positive effect has seemed to modified the North County Times previous obvious efforts to support the candidates and anti-teacher views of our angry friends. The paper and the censor, ACE, now seem to be taking a more neutral stand on VUSD issues.
However no matter how many lies are ANTI friends tell, no matter how aggravated we feel at their cowardly attempts to hide behind the "false flag" labels of Christian, conservative or Republican, we must not try to identify the bloggers by guessing at their real names in our posting. This practice is forbidden by ACE who enforces nctimes rules. We must try to follow all the rules scrupulously. We must be better than they are.
The rules are enforced against us far more than our ANTI friends because ACE and other in charge at the North County Times are in actuality conservative Republican Christians. Our ANTI friends use many of the same terms as Christians, conservatives and Republicans. This technique results in confusion which has in the past worked to the political benefit of our ANTI friends when it comes to the North County Times articles and the editors attitudes. Remarkably ACE and others at nctimes have become far more even handed recently. But let's not push our luck.
con no more said on: May 2, 2010, 6:44 pm
To Eleanor, mac4me, and Rich L, your posts will be deleted as "abuse" when our angry friends alert ACE by pushing the abuse button. The rules enforced on this forum do not allow speculation about a bloggers identity nor apparently do they allow the use of the very appropriate and accurate term "anti" to describe our angry friends.
Your righteous anger in response is far more appropriate than theirs. They have reached into our lives and those of our children to damage us and them. They have caused great harm to our districts reputation and cost VUSD million of dollars wasted on the third high school shenanigans by the two trustees this small group of angry ones helped elect. What this group has done to our fine district is truly remarkable in its depredation on our children futures and to the wallets of the taxpayers of VUSD.
If the community was truly aware of who these folks are, what they have done, and what their truly evil hidden agenda for our fine schools is, the candidates our angry friends support could not get thirty votes in an election.
Only by hiding behind the cover of false flag labels like "conservative," "Republican," and "Christian" can they fool and confuse an ever smaller group of uniformed conservatives, Republicans and Christians into believing that they have either the ethics or the views of the majority of other conservatives, Republicans or Christians in our district.
Of all those groups whose names they hide behind, it is the Christians, like me, who should be, and are, the most outraged when we find out that they have used us and the name we call ourselves simply in order to gain personal political power. Second only to our anger about the real harm they have done to children in our VUSD classrooms, is the outrage we all feel about their use of the term Christian to describe their very un-Christ-like actions.
I suggest that if Eleanor, mac4me, or Rich L wish to re-post without the references to the obvious identity of blogger "Roxy" who I believe also posts as "Dorothy," your post will likely not be taken down.
ACE at the North County Times has actually become pretty even handed in the posts he takes down in the last month or so. I think we have a couple of teachers at Madison Middle School to thank for that. They invited one of the editorial writers, Jim Trageser, to their school for a day and seemed to have made a very positive impression on him.
That positive effect has seemed to modified the North County Times previous obvious efforts to support the candidates and anti-teacher views of our angry friends. The paper and the censor, ACE, now seem to be taking a more neutral stand on VUSD issues.
Gibson supporter claims,"VTA pensions are bankrupting VUSD!"
Our ANTI friend, Plain Truth, of the richly ironic self chosen name recently claimed that the Vista Teachers Association negotiated pensions that will bankrupt our school district. I have answered him a bit sarcastically because he is so infamous for never saying anything about the VTA, VUSD teachers, or our VTA president that is true. In fact if he writes anything on those three subjects, it is certain to be just the opposite of what he wrote. In a reason post to the North County blogs, he claimed this with create authority as he had a "source on the school board" so he was certain that the VTA was bankrupting the VUSD with its pensions. Gee, I wonder who his source could be?
Since Plain Truth has written passionately in support of Jim Gibson in the past, I will jump to a couple of conclusions. The first is obvious. Jim Gibson is the source. Second Jim Gibson has made up another tall tale about our fine teachers for his own political advancement and spread that tale among his ever declining supporters. His latest lie apparently is in regards to teacher pensions. His boy, Plain Truth, repeats that lie with the certainty of cult convert about his cult leader.
I have heard Jim spin tales. He is very very good at it. He sounds very sincere as he tells his tales. He is a master at making up stories that will really outrage his gullible audiences while portraying himself as the lone bulwark against this or that evil that he has falsely charged school teachers with.
This technique of the tall tale with Jim Gibson as the hero has worked to get Jimmy money and votes in the past. The more he talks, the more he makes up. He just can't help himself. The more made up stories he tells, the more risk that his supporters will find out how basically dishonest he is. They can and do. This is one of the reasons that he has fewer and fewer supporters.
My response below to the out right lie that teachers get their pensions from their local school districts. The pensions or retirement of course comes from the California State Teachers Retirement Fund. The fees and charges are set by CalSTRS for the entire state. Teachers do not negotiate their pensions with their local districts. Something that Jim Gibson after nearly twelve years on the school board apparently has never taken the time to find out. (Just like he never visits school sites, does not know the names of the schools in the district, let alone the names of site administrators or teachers.)
con no more said on: May 1, 2010, 7:52 pm
I must congratulate Plain "Truth" for actually referring to something substantive. Of course he shows with his post that he has no understanding of how the State Teacher Retirement System works. But still it is an improvement over his usual opposite land posts that seem to not be grounded in any fact based realities at all.
Yes, I was an employee of VUSD when I retired.
VUSD was the fourth school district I worked for. Each of the school districts paid part of my retirement into STRS. I paid the other part. My years of service in each of those districts counted towards my total STRS retirement because STRS is a STATEWIDE program that every public school district MUST participate in.
The local districts do not decide how much to pay into STRS for their employees, neither do the employees decide how much to pay into the STRS fund for themselves. STRS management in consultation with fiscal advisers makes that decision for ALL California public school districts statewide and all California public school certificated employees statewide. CalSTRS mandates the exact amount that local school districts and their certificated employees must contribute.
Before you believe your 'source' on the board who provided you with this budget item, you might consider his track record for veracity or the lack thereof.
Here are a couple of web addresses to visit for credible information about teacher's "pensions".
State Teachers Retirement System
http://www.calstrs.com/
And even better a document on their site that compares public and private pensions
http://www.nirsonline.org/storage/nirs/documents/final_out_of_balance_report_april_2010.pdf
Since you are repeating propaganda points, I assume you are aware of a nationwide effort to defame and then defund all public pensions. A few billionaires (Howard Ahmanson and the Kock brothers) who do not want to pay their fair share of taxes for the benefits they receive as US citizens are funding propaganda mills to generate misleading information about public pensions. Then AM radio conmen who call themselves "opinion makers" are hired to repeat these lies on air over and over again. The pay of these radio conmen depends on how successful they are at convincing their ill informed audiences to believe the lies generated by the billionaire's various propaganda mills. You obviously have been exposed to one or more of these conmen.
Since Plain Truth has written passionately in support of Jim Gibson in the past, I will jump to a couple of conclusions. The first is obvious. Jim Gibson is the source. Second Jim Gibson has made up another tall tale about our fine teachers for his own political advancement and spread that tale among his ever declining supporters. His latest lie apparently is in regards to teacher pensions. His boy, Plain Truth, repeats that lie with the certainty of cult convert about his cult leader.
I have heard Jim spin tales. He is very very good at it. He sounds very sincere as he tells his tales. He is a master at making up stories that will really outrage his gullible audiences while portraying himself as the lone bulwark against this or that evil that he has falsely charged school teachers with.
This technique of the tall tale with Jim Gibson as the hero has worked to get Jimmy money and votes in the past. The more he talks, the more he makes up. He just can't help himself. The more made up stories he tells, the more risk that his supporters will find out how basically dishonest he is. They can and do. This is one of the reasons that he has fewer and fewer supporters.
My response below to the out right lie that teachers get their pensions from their local school districts. The pensions or retirement of course comes from the California State Teachers Retirement Fund. The fees and charges are set by CalSTRS for the entire state. Teachers do not negotiate their pensions with their local districts. Something that Jim Gibson after nearly twelve years on the school board apparently has never taken the time to find out. (Just like he never visits school sites, does not know the names of the schools in the district, let alone the names of site administrators or teachers.)
con no more said on: May 1, 2010, 7:52 pm
I must congratulate Plain "Truth" for actually referring to something substantive. Of course he shows with his post that he has no understanding of how the State Teacher Retirement System works. But still it is an improvement over his usual opposite land posts that seem to not be grounded in any fact based realities at all.
Yes, I was an employee of VUSD when I retired.
VUSD was the fourth school district I worked for. Each of the school districts paid part of my retirement into STRS. I paid the other part. My years of service in each of those districts counted towards my total STRS retirement because STRS is a STATEWIDE program that every public school district MUST participate in.
The local districts do not decide how much to pay into STRS for their employees, neither do the employees decide how much to pay into the STRS fund for themselves. STRS management in consultation with fiscal advisers makes that decision for ALL California public school districts statewide and all California public school certificated employees statewide. CalSTRS mandates the exact amount that local school districts and their certificated employees must contribute.
Before you believe your 'source' on the board who provided you with this budget item, you might consider his track record for veracity or the lack thereof.
Here are a couple of web addresses to visit for credible information about teacher's "pensions".
State Teachers Retirement System
http://www.calstrs.com/
And even better a document on their site that compares public and private pensions
http://www.nirsonline.org/storage/nirs/documents/final_out_of_balance_report_april_2010.pdf
Since you are repeating propaganda points, I assume you are aware of a nationwide effort to defame and then defund all public pensions. A few billionaires (Howard Ahmanson and the Kock brothers) who do not want to pay their fair share of taxes for the benefits they receive as US citizens are funding propaganda mills to generate misleading information about public pensions. Then AM radio conmen who call themselves "opinion makers" are hired to repeat these lies on air over and over again. The pay of these radio conmen depends on how successful they are at convincing their ill informed audiences to believe the lies generated by the billionaire's various propaganda mills. You obviously have been exposed to one or more of these conmen.
Gibson supporter compares Jan O'Reilly to Adolph Hitler
Our ANTI public education friends just cannot help but write over the top nonsensical posts slandering our fine VUSD teachers, excellent schools and our courageous VTA president whose term of office will end next month, June 30th.
Being president of a teacher's association is a terribly difficult and stressful job in any district. Every teacher problem becomes your problem. Whether it is a grave job threatening problem that might result in termination or just annoying petty complaints, all problems stop with the office of president. My hat is off to anyone who is willing to be an association president in any school district anywhere.
However, being a VTA president is a whole new level of Hell that most association presidents would not dream of ever facing. In what other district in the country would the president of the association be so vilified for just doing their job? Can anyone imagine where else an association president would be compared to Adolph Hitler and dubbed the "Queen of Mean" simply because she was willing to accept the office?
We have been blessed with terrific, strong and capable presidents over the years, Len DeFabio, Tamara Drean, Tom Conry, Randy Wiens, Susie Bristow, and Jan O'Reilly. I salute them all.
Read pages of Roxy's ravings at the URL below if you wish, although why anyone would I do not know:
http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/vista/article_3b4b42be-89ac-5279-b9af-fbbb912d687c.html?mode=comments
.
Here are some quotes from "Roxy" rants from the above URL:
"HERRERA TEAMING UP WITH the QUEEN OF MEAN O'REILLY to get PETITIONS AGAINST BALES."
"YES HERRERA YOU'VE GOT TO EARN YOUR CAMPAIGN DOLLARS BY KISSING QUEEN OF MEAN O'REILLY A**."
" 'YES SO HOW MUCH ARE YOUR PUBLIC SALARIES JAN? ABOUT 250K PER YEAR.
While your poor PTA followers and brainwashed parents are meagerly poor and barely feed their kids?
Yes Adolph Hitler was a good leader too hah....' "
Given the senseless bile and invective hurled at them, how do we find anyone willing to run for VTA president at all?
Being president of a teacher's association is a terribly difficult and stressful job in any district. Every teacher problem becomes your problem. Whether it is a grave job threatening problem that might result in termination or just annoying petty complaints, all problems stop with the office of president. My hat is off to anyone who is willing to be an association president in any school district anywhere.
However, being a VTA president is a whole new level of Hell that most association presidents would not dream of ever facing. In what other district in the country would the president of the association be so vilified for just doing their job? Can anyone imagine where else an association president would be compared to Adolph Hitler and dubbed the "Queen of Mean" simply because she was willing to accept the office?
We have been blessed with terrific, strong and capable presidents over the years, Len DeFabio, Tamara Drean, Tom Conry, Randy Wiens, Susie Bristow, and Jan O'Reilly. I salute them all.
Read pages of Roxy's ravings at the URL below if you wish, although why anyone would I do not know:
http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/vista/article_3b4b42be-89ac-5279-b9af-fbbb912d687c.html?mode=comments
.
Here are some quotes from "Roxy" rants from the above URL:
"HERRERA TEAMING UP WITH the QUEEN OF MEAN O'REILLY to get PETITIONS AGAINST BALES."
"YES HERRERA YOU'VE GOT TO EARN YOUR CAMPAIGN DOLLARS BY KISSING QUEEN OF MEAN O'REILLY A**."
" 'YES SO HOW MUCH ARE YOUR PUBLIC SALARIES JAN? ABOUT 250K PER YEAR.
While your poor PTA followers and brainwashed parents are meagerly poor and barely feed their kids?
Yes Adolph Hitler was a good leader too hah....' "
Given the senseless bile and invective hurled at them, how do we find anyone willing to run for VTA president at all?
Sacramento Republicans do not want to take responsibility for their mess
Here is a post by North County Times Blogger, Bluebird, that lays out how the Sacramento Republicans caused the state financial crises that has led to massive school cut backs.
BlueBird writes on June 20, 2009 at 8:32AM PST
Jim Jones’ letter is just more of that conservative Kool Aid. As usual, the Republicans do not want to take responsibility for the mess they have created. As I have repeatedly noted, Republicans have held the governorship for 20 of the last 26 years, with all the powers of administrative appointments and the veto that go with it. Additionally, for at least 30 years they have had enough votes to prevent the Democrats from getting the 2/3 vote necessary for passing fiscal reforms to save our state, and have obstructed the Democrats legislatively and administratively.
Case in point: the Democrats are trying to pass a simple reform that would generate billions in revenue. Californian is the ONLY one of 22 oil-producing states that does not have ANY tax on drilling! Democrats have proposed a tax rate that, if adopted, would be the LOWEST tax rate of any oil-producing state. Of course, Republican obstructionists are standing in the way, dancing to the strings being pulled by their Big Oil puppeteers.
In contrast, the Republican governor ofAlaska
And of course, the Jim Jones Kool Aid is eagerly swallowed by gullible letter-writer John Sable whose solution is NOT to stop the corporate welfare gravy train, but to expand it by privatizing just about everything! Sorry, but the middlemen profiteering off public health and safety is the problem not the solution. In the meantime, I don’t see Sable going for the obvious solution, to stop the free handouts to the Big Oil Bullies.
So please, I do not want to hear any scolding from REPUBLICAN oil whores who not only refuse one of the most basic, universal sources of taxation, but want to further rape our offshore coastal areas while the Big Oil Bullies return NOTHING of value to our state except more gouging.
BlueBird writes on June 20, 2009 at 8:32AM PST
Jim Jones’ letter is just more of that conservative Kool Aid. As usual, the Republicans do not want to take responsibility for the mess they have created. As I have repeatedly noted, Republicans have held the governorship for 20 of the last 26 years, with all the powers of administrative appointments and the veto that go with it. Additionally, for at least 30 years they have had enough votes to prevent the Democrats from getting the 2/3 vote necessary for passing fiscal reforms to save our state, and have obstructed the Democrats legislatively and administratively.
Case in point: the Democrats are trying to pass a simple reform that would generate billions in revenue. Californian is the ONLY one of 22 oil-producing states that does not have ANY tax on drilling! Democrats have proposed a tax rate that, if adopted, would be the LOWEST tax rate of any oil-producing state. Of course, Republican obstructionists are standing in the way, dancing to the strings being pulled by their Big Oil puppeteers.
In contrast, the Republican governor of
And of course, the Jim Jones Kool Aid is eagerly swallowed by gullible letter-writer John Sable whose solution is NOT to stop the corporate welfare gravy train, but to expand it by privatizing just about everything! Sorry, but the middlemen profiteering off public health and safety is the problem not the solution. In the meantime, I don’t see Sable going for the obvious solution, to stop the free handouts to the Big Oil Bullies.
So please, I do not want to hear any scolding from REPUBLICAN oil whores who not only refuse one of the most basic, universal sources of taxation, but want to further rape our offshore coastal areas while the Big Oil Bullies return NOTHING of value to our state except more gouging.
Friday, May 21, 2010
"Vista Teachers are acting like spoiled brats!"
One of our angry friends on the North County Times blogs this morning is calling VUSD teachers 'spoiled brats' (Oside Mom 6:06am) for deciding to work only the hours that they are paid for. Another accuses some teachers of just being there "for the money" (Plain Truth 7:18am) A third compares a teacher's job to a twenty four hour a day job in a war zone. (Bearinaboat 7:21am).
Read all their baseless, false and hate filled comments here:
http://www.nctimes.com/news/opinion/editorial/article_cc1c03d6-1dad-5782-808e-d395c822905c.html?mode=comments
Ridiculous! No one ever goes into education for money. No one. The teachers are NOT doing this for more pay. They have already twice accepted pay cuts. They are making this hard choice for their student's benefit. To make sure that the increased class sizes necessary for the next couple of years are not made permanent. Wow, how evil, NOT!
Outrageous! To insult teachers who feel cornered into this action. The two week gentle pressure on the district will be horribly difficult for our conscientious VUSD teachers. They will be terribly stressed by not being able to finish all the regular classroom work and Bales Busy Work in their paid hours during a school day. They all want to stay until the job is done. Only a motivation to help children in the long run to not have permanent class sizes of forty enshrined in the contract could get teachers to make this difficult decision.
Preposterous! to compare a teacher's job to a twenty four on call military job. The job contracts, job descriptions and jobs themselves are completely different. Should we arm teachers? Should we put them in barracks at night? Should we forbid them from getting pregnant? Should we have a "don't ask, don't tell" policy for teachers? Will they get the free health care benefits (TRICARE) of the military? (Offer them access to TRICARE and I bet the contract dispute would end instantly) Will they get to retire after twenty years at nearly full pay like the military? Can they shop for reduced price groceries and other items at the commissary at Pendleton? Can they use the beaches, overnight campgrounds, and golf courses reserved for military personnel ONLY? (Many of these are located in San Diego County, some at Camp Pendleton.)
GEESH LOUISE!! Don't the angry ones ever get tired of hurling hateful accusations at fine hard working public school teachers?
"Oside Mom" wrote at 6:06am, "To the VUSD teachers-you are acting like spoiled brats and are not a good example to the children."
"Plain Truth" at 7:18am writes, "I guess the parents and the community will soon find out which teacher is there for the money and which are (sic) there for the kids."
My first post to the angry comments is below.
con no more said on: May 21, 2010, 7:17 am
The teachers will be working every single hour that they are paid to work. They will be working as fast and as hard as possible to fit in as much of their nine to ten hour day into that seven and a half hours as possible.
In no other job on the planet would workers be called "spoiled brats" (Oside Mom at 6:06am) for deciding to work only the hours they are paid for.
What is the teacher's "spoiled brat" reason for doing this "not a good example for children"? Is it for more pay or even to be paid for all the hours they normally work? No. It is to keep increased class sizes from becoming permanent.
Teachers have accepted that class sizes have to go up for next year and the following year. They accepted reduced pay this year to protect K-3 class size reduction. They are accepting pay cuts for the next couple of years as well. All they are asking is to have the chance that class size increases will not be forever enshrined in contract language.
Forty children in classrooms as a permanent solution to this problem is just wrong. No one can pretend that there will be as much learning possible in classrooms of forty kids. Increasing class sizes should be a temporary fix or at least a possibility should be made available that class size can come down in years to come if funding returns.
Get Joyce Bales out! Bring in an administrator who will compromise
Read all their baseless, false and hate filled comments here:
http://www.nctimes.com/news/opinion/editorial/article_cc1c03d6-1dad-5782-808e-d395c822905c.html?mode=comments
Ridiculous! No one ever goes into education for money. No one. The teachers are NOT doing this for more pay. They have already twice accepted pay cuts. They are making this hard choice for their student's benefit. To make sure that the increased class sizes necessary for the next couple of years are not made permanent. Wow, how evil, NOT!
Outrageous! To insult teachers who feel cornered into this action. The two week gentle pressure on the district will be horribly difficult for our conscientious VUSD teachers. They will be terribly stressed by not being able to finish all the regular classroom work and Bales Busy Work in their paid hours during a school day. They all want to stay until the job is done. Only a motivation to help children in the long run to not have permanent class sizes of forty enshrined in the contract could get teachers to make this difficult decision.
Preposterous! to compare a teacher's job to a twenty four on call military job. The job contracts, job descriptions and jobs themselves are completely different. Should we arm teachers? Should we put them in barracks at night? Should we forbid them from getting pregnant? Should we have a "don't ask, don't tell" policy for teachers? Will they get the free health care benefits (TRICARE) of the military? (Offer them access to TRICARE and I bet the contract dispute would end instantly) Will they get to retire after twenty years at nearly full pay like the military? Can they shop for reduced price groceries and other items at the commissary at Pendleton? Can they use the beaches, overnight campgrounds, and golf courses reserved for military personnel ONLY? (Many of these are located in San Diego County, some at Camp Pendleton.)
GEESH LOUISE!! Don't the angry ones ever get tired of hurling hateful accusations at fine hard working public school teachers?
"Oside Mom" wrote at 6:06am, "To the VUSD teachers-you are acting like spoiled brats and are not a good example to the children."
"Plain Truth" at 7:18am writes, "I guess the parents and the community will soon find out which teacher is there for the money and which are (sic) there for the kids."
My first post to the angry comments is below.
con no more said on: May 21, 2010, 7:17 am
The teachers will be working every single hour that they are paid to work. They will be working as fast and as hard as possible to fit in as much of their nine to ten hour day into that seven and a half hours as possible.
In no other job on the planet would workers be called "spoiled brats" (Oside Mom at 6:06am) for deciding to work only the hours they are paid for.
What is the teacher's "spoiled brat" reason for doing this "not a good example for children"? Is it for more pay or even to be paid for all the hours they normally work? No. It is to keep increased class sizes from becoming permanent.
Teachers have accepted that class sizes have to go up for next year and the following year. They accepted reduced pay this year to protect K-3 class size reduction. They are accepting pay cuts for the next couple of years as well. All they are asking is to have the chance that class size increases will not be forever enshrined in contract language.
Forty children in classrooms as a permanent solution to this problem is just wrong. No one can pretend that there will be as much learning possible in classrooms of forty kids. Increasing class sizes should be a temporary fix or at least a possibility should be made available that class size can come down in years to come if funding returns.
Get Joyce Bales out! Bring in an administrator who will compromise
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Race to the bottom; Let's make VUSD employees compete for lowest possible pay
Today in the North County Times one of our favorite anti public education bloggers, Unlaxx, has for the third time in recent weeks suggested a terrific solution to the problem of laying off VUSD employees, cut pay for all employees instead. If they do not like it, fire them and get someone else. Make employees compete for the least possible amount of money that can be offered that anyone anywhere is willing to take for work.
Tongue in cheek, I agreed with Unlaxx today. I suggested in my answer to his post an even more effective way to save taxpayer money. Why not totally eliminate pay. Instead of money offer up food scraps for meals and cardboard boxes for domiciles to those who do the jobs in VUSD. After all there are a lot of hungry homeless folks in America and if the current employees won't work for scraps, others might.
Sadly the complete lack of empathy that Unlaxx shows is contagious. It is being spread on AM radio by the hired gun 'opinion makers' like Rush Limbaugh on hundreds of stations daily and John and Ken of KFI 640 out of Los Angeles. Not only is the modest pay of public employees in their sights, but so are pensions and seniority status in lay offs.
There has been a concerted effort to reduce or end public employee pensions and seniority in the last two months. Propaganda institutes* funded by tax free gifts of billionaires have produced a plethora of anti public employee pension talking points that the paid liars of AM radio and FOXnotNews repeat endlessly.
Sadly the propaganda campaign paid for by the billionaires who do not want to contribute their fair share to keep our country safe and running is having a dramatic effect in public opinion. The economic downturn has found a ready audience for hate directed against government employees. The problem is growing in America.
I call the syndrome Acquired Empathy Disorder (AED) also known as Selfish Con Disorder (SCD). It is most virulently expressed in those who are heavily exposed to AM radio and FoxnotNews. The only cure is the reinstatement of a Fairness Doctrine that would allow all points of view to be expressed on radio and cable not just the bought and paid for ones of the rich and selfish.
Unlaxx is suffering from a very grave case of AED. You can see how bad it is if you read Unlaxx's post here:
http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/vista/article_4f12ad2e-2cad-5ffc-bf52-bd6b46ab906c.html?mode=comments
My response to his suggestion here:
Unlaxx at 7:20AM has focused his intellect into laser like sharpness and has discovered the source of the problem. We pay employees. Why should we pay anyone at all when there are those who would take the jobs for left over food scraps from the children's lunches.
After all we know that there are record numbers of hungry people in America. Let's put them to use.
Some may say that we have to pay them enough to rent a dwelling. I'm with Unlaxx and we say, "horse feathers." Instead of money for rent, issue cardboard boxes to the workers and let them sleep on the playgrounds at the schools.
Solves two problems at once. Gets rid of boxes that food is delivered in to the school cafeterias and gets the homeless out of our neighborhoods.
Unlaxx in his caring compassionate way has really hit on a great idea. Pay no money to any school employees. Let them compete against each other for the lowest pay possible until they are willing to work for food scraps for dinner and card board boxes for shelter. But why stop there, let's quit paying all employees for all jobs everywhere in America.
The pre Civil War southerns had it right. Why did we bother to fight that war, at all?
Then I wish I was in Dixie, hooray! hooray!
In Dixie Land I'll take my stand to live and die in Dixie,
Away, away, away down South in Dixie,
Away, away, away down South in Dixie.
--------------
A partial list of these propaganda institutes used by the wealthy for tax shelters and to compose talking points to convince useful fools in the American populace to transfer ever more wealth out of the middle class to the ruling elite include all of the following and many, many more: American Enterprise Institute, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Cato Institute, Pacific Institute, Manhattan Institute, Hudson Institute, Heritage Foundation. There are many others. These are the ones I remember at the moment. Another problem is Pat Robertson so called "christian" news network, while not an institute, may it may actually be worse. It runs tax free. All contributions to it are not taxed and called charitable donations, yet he and his hired guns push the same anti worker, anti environmental agenda of the super wealthy and call it religion. Sad really.
Tongue in cheek, I agreed with Unlaxx today. I suggested in my answer to his post an even more effective way to save taxpayer money. Why not totally eliminate pay. Instead of money offer up food scraps for meals and cardboard boxes for domiciles to those who do the jobs in VUSD. After all there are a lot of hungry homeless folks in America and if the current employees won't work for scraps, others might.
Sadly the complete lack of empathy that Unlaxx shows is contagious. It is being spread on AM radio by the hired gun 'opinion makers' like Rush Limbaugh on hundreds of stations daily and John and Ken of KFI 640 out of Los Angeles. Not only is the modest pay of public employees in their sights, but so are pensions and seniority status in lay offs.
There has been a concerted effort to reduce or end public employee pensions and seniority in the last two months. Propaganda institutes* funded by tax free gifts of billionaires have produced a plethora of anti public employee pension talking points that the paid liars of AM radio and FOXnotNews repeat endlessly.
Sadly the propaganda campaign paid for by the billionaires who do not want to contribute their fair share to keep our country safe and running is having a dramatic effect in public opinion. The economic downturn has found a ready audience for hate directed against government employees. The problem is growing in America.
I call the syndrome Acquired Empathy Disorder (AED) also known as Selfish Con Disorder (SCD). It is most virulently expressed in those who are heavily exposed to AM radio and FoxnotNews. The only cure is the reinstatement of a Fairness Doctrine that would allow all points of view to be expressed on radio and cable not just the bought and paid for ones of the rich and selfish.
Unlaxx is suffering from a very grave case of AED. You can see how bad it is if you read Unlaxx's post here:
http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/vista/article_4f12ad2e-2cad-5ffc-bf52-bd6b46ab906c.html?mode=comments
My response to his suggestion here:
Unlaxx at 7:20AM has focused his intellect into laser like sharpness and has discovered the source of the problem. We pay employees. Why should we pay anyone at all when there are those who would take the jobs for left over food scraps from the children's lunches.
After all we know that there are record numbers of hungry people in America. Let's put them to use.
Some may say that we have to pay them enough to rent a dwelling. I'm with Unlaxx and we say, "horse feathers." Instead of money for rent, issue cardboard boxes to the workers and let them sleep on the playgrounds at the schools.
Solves two problems at once. Gets rid of boxes that food is delivered in to the school cafeterias and gets the homeless out of our neighborhoods.
Unlaxx in his caring compassionate way has really hit on a great idea. Pay no money to any school employees. Let them compete against each other for the lowest pay possible until they are willing to work for food scraps for dinner and card board boxes for shelter. But why stop there, let's quit paying all employees for all jobs everywhere in America.
The pre Civil War southerns had it right. Why did we bother to fight that war, at all?
Then I wish I was in Dixie, hooray! hooray!
In Dixie Land I'll take my stand to live and die in Dixie,
Away, away, away down South in Dixie,
Away, away, away down South in Dixie.
--------------
A partial list of these propaganda institutes used by the wealthy for tax shelters and to compose talking points to convince useful fools in the American populace to transfer ever more wealth out of the middle class to the ruling elite include all of the following and many, many more: American Enterprise Institute, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Cato Institute, Pacific Institute, Manhattan Institute, Hudson Institute, Heritage Foundation. There are many others. These are the ones I remember at the moment. Another problem is Pat Robertson so called "christian" news network, while not an institute, may it may actually be worse. It runs tax free. All contributions to it are not taxed and called charitable donations, yet he and his hired guns push the same anti worker, anti environmental agenda of the super wealthy and call it religion. Sad really.
Monday, May 17, 2010
The VUSD Wars are about Republican reformers versus liberal Democrats
Our angry ANTI friends have their own set off "facts". These 'facts' are not true now nor have they ever been. The only place the facts are real are in our angry friends fevered imaginations. They share their made up facts with each other and the made up facts become ever more real in their angry undisciplined minds.
The propaganda points they constantly try to push on the unsuspecting community at large is that the Great VUSD Wars are and were between "reformer Republicans" and backward Democrats or between liberals and conservatives or 'Christians' and non Christians. These falsehoods were successfully used by them in 1992 to get a board majority. What they do not realize is these falsehoods no longer work in VUSD, but like an old dog trying to learn new tricks our angry ANTI public education detractors find trying to make new relevant arguments is not easy.
They occasionally use their dwindling influence on the editorial staff of the North County Times to run a propaganda piece as news for them.
Stacy Brandt was forced to write the latest one. Read it here:
http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/vista/article_3c0dc7fe-3b28-5c6c-9d0d-b95189d8d262.html
He dutifully wrote such inaccurate propaganda statements as: "
"Herrera, a liberal Democrat, was backed by the union both times she ran, while Gibson, a conservative Republican,..."
These attacks on our schools have been launched by a tiny religious group that fears and rejects the discoveries of science. They believe their "little god" 6000 year old false interpretation of scriptures is the only Christian viewpoint possible and that all who do not share their views are evil. They believe that government especially the federal government sides with non Christians (defined as all who do not share their warped views), so it too and its workers are evil. Public schools are part of the government hence are evil. All evil must be destroyed including fact based public education in America.
I know my descriptions sound over the top, but all this and more can be found at the Citizens for Excellence in Education website. CEE trained and led the fight which resulted in the brief control of our district by these angry,, intolerant and stubbornly ignorant folks from 1992 to 1994.
The excesses of their tenure lead to a general uprising among all VUSD community groups, Republican, Democrat, Independents, religious, non religious, business owners and workers. The cult board members were recalled. Yet their movement did not go away. Even though they control less and less of the electorate in each election and the number of active angry ANTIs is diminishing, they still remain a potent threat to our children's education and public education in general in VUSD.
In no other North County school district is the threat so strong as in VUSD. Why us, who knows? All we know is that we must fight them and their angry backward ideology.
They have elected board members to our VUSD school board in subsequent elections. They had two on the board for eight years, Dr. Stephen Guffanti and Jim Gibson until we defeated Guffanti in November of 2008.
Those two managed to delay the start of construction on our third high school for five years at an almost doubling of the cost. A fifty million dollar high school in 2002 will be nearly 100 million dollars when it opens next year.
This nearly fifty million dollars wasted by Guffanti and Gibson has cost a lot of pay raises for VUSD employees since 2002. That waste is one of the chief reasons our average salaries in VUSD are among the bottom five lowest salaries out of nearly forty school districts in San Diego County.
Here was my response to the article that I posted on line.
con no more said on: May 1, 2010, 10:17 pm
Poor Stacy forced to write another slanted article to favor the angry folks who attack our fine school district for no good reason.
The problems in Vista Unified have nothing to do with Republican versus Democrat or conservative versus liberal. That is a phony story line that our angry friends use to try to gain sympathy for their attacks on good teachers and a fine education system.
The truth is that I and many, many other Republicans in the district including many business owners oppose the destructive agenda of these angry few. We were here the last time they were in charge. We remember what they do with power and it is not pretty.
The fight in VUSD is actually between the vast majority of voters who support the existence of public education and its FACT based curriculum and a few angry folks who detest FACT based public education.
The small extremist minority of angry ones have been responsible for a great deal of evil and harm to VUSD, our community at large and especially to our children in our excellent schools.
The angry ones fought against all four desperately needed school bonds. All four of those bonds 'won' the vast majority of VUSD voter support. Results that would have been a landslide victory in a presidential election were a loss in the school bond election requiring two thirds vote. These "losses" resulted in years and years more of terrible overcrowding in our schools.
I started working to pass a school bond in VUSD when my oldest child was in first grade. We did not get a bond (Prop O) passed until my youngest child was in this second year of college--a decade and a half.
My children and tens of thousands of other VUSD children of that era never had a chance to attend schools without having to use dozens of temporary trailers located in school parking lots rather than school classrooms.
When finally after years of horribly overcrowded schools a fourth bond received over two thirds and passed, the two board members supported by the angry ones denied the voters the high school land that would have allowed construction on our third high school to be started in 2002 for an estimated cost of about 50 million dollars. Today that long delayed high school on an inferior and more expensive piece of land is not yet finished and is projected to cost almost 100 million dollars.
At least five extra years of overcrowded high schools classrooms. VUSD had and still continues to have two of the top three largest student populations sizes in our two existing high schools out of ALL the high schools in San Diego County according to the San Diego CIF.
When are angry friends used a stealth campaign, mis-using our local churches, to get a three member board majority elected in 1992, our district became a national laughing stock due to the actions of that 1992-94 board majority. That board made headlines across the nation for denying life saving information to VUSD students in sex ed classes and pushing an anti-science agenda. Read more here:
http://articles.latimes.com/keyword/vista-ca-schools
A couple of headlines from that archive:
"Vista Schools OK Sex Education Program With Religious Theme" and "Vista Board OKs Teaching of Creationism"
or the New York Times archives here:
http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?frow=0&n=10&srcht=s&query=creationism+Vista&srchst=nyt&submit.x=13&submit.y=7&submit=sub&hdlquery=&bylquery=&daterange=full&mon1=01&day1=01&year1=1981&mon2=01&day2=26&year2=2010
con no more said on: May 3, 2010, 8:06 am
The propaganda points they constantly try to push on the unsuspecting community at large is that the Great VUSD Wars are and were between "reformer Republicans" and backward Democrats or between liberals and conservatives or 'Christians' and non Christians. These falsehoods were successfully used by them in 1992 to get a board majority. What they do not realize is these falsehoods no longer work in VUSD, but like an old dog trying to learn new tricks our angry ANTI public education detractors find trying to make new relevant arguments is not easy.
They occasionally use their dwindling influence on the editorial staff of the North County Times to run a propaganda piece as news for them.
Stacy Brandt was forced to write the latest one. Read it here:
http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/vista/article_3c0dc7fe-3b28-5c6c-9d0d-b95189d8d262.html
He dutifully wrote such inaccurate propaganda statements as: "
"In recent years, one side has championed the efforts of Superintendent Joyce Bales and another has supported the views of the Vista Teachers Association.
Bales' allies tend to be more conservative, reform-minded individuals pushing for big changes in the district, while the other group is made up mostly of educators who are part of the teachers union and the PTA parents who back them."
"Many in the district have been bitterly divided since a union-supported recall election in 1994 removed two conservative trustees.""Herrera, a liberal Democrat, was backed by the union both times she ran, while Gibson, a conservative Republican,..."
Those three statements in the article are false but they echo the lie that our angry friends would like the community to believe. They hope to hide their radical agenda behind terms that most VUSD community members find positive like 'christian" , 'conservative', or 'Republican'. By disguising who they are and hiding behind false labels they believe they can once again take over our district. They used these labels as false flags in the 1990's to fool the community and even me into voting for them. We will not make that mistake again.
These attacks on our schools have been launched by a tiny religious group that fears and rejects the discoveries of science. They believe their "little god" 6000 year old false interpretation of scriptures is the only Christian viewpoint possible and that all who do not share their views are evil. They believe that government especially the federal government sides with non Christians (defined as all who do not share their warped views), so it too and its workers are evil. Public schools are part of the government hence are evil. All evil must be destroyed including fact based public education in America.
I know my descriptions sound over the top, but all this and more can be found at the Citizens for Excellence in Education website. CEE trained and led the fight which resulted in the brief control of our district by these angry,, intolerant and stubbornly ignorant folks from 1992 to 1994.
The excesses of their tenure lead to a general uprising among all VUSD community groups, Republican, Democrat, Independents, religious, non religious, business owners and workers. The cult board members were recalled. Yet their movement did not go away. Even though they control less and less of the electorate in each election and the number of active angry ANTIs is diminishing, they still remain a potent threat to our children's education and public education in general in VUSD.
In no other North County school district is the threat so strong as in VUSD. Why us, who knows? All we know is that we must fight them and their angry backward ideology.
They have elected board members to our VUSD school board in subsequent elections. They had two on the board for eight years, Dr. Stephen Guffanti and Jim Gibson until we defeated Guffanti in November of 2008.
Those two managed to delay the start of construction on our third high school for five years at an almost doubling of the cost. A fifty million dollar high school in 2002 will be nearly 100 million dollars when it opens next year.
This nearly fifty million dollars wasted by Guffanti and Gibson has cost a lot of pay raises for VUSD employees since 2002. That waste is one of the chief reasons our average salaries in VUSD are among the bottom five lowest salaries out of nearly forty school districts in San Diego County.
Here was my response to the article that I posted on line.
con no more said on: May 1, 2010, 10:17 pm
Poor Stacy forced to write another slanted article to favor the angry folks who attack our fine school district for no good reason.
The problems in Vista Unified have nothing to do with Republican versus Democrat or conservative versus liberal. That is a phony story line that our angry friends use to try to gain sympathy for their attacks on good teachers and a fine education system.
The truth is that I and many, many other Republicans in the district including many business owners oppose the destructive agenda of these angry few. We were here the last time they were in charge. We remember what they do with power and it is not pretty.
The fight in VUSD is actually between the vast majority of voters who support the existence of public education and its FACT based curriculum and a few angry folks who detest FACT based public education.
The small extremist minority of angry ones have been responsible for a great deal of evil and harm to VUSD, our community at large and especially to our children in our excellent schools.
The angry ones fought against all four desperately needed school bonds. All four of those bonds 'won' the vast majority of VUSD voter support. Results that would have been a landslide victory in a presidential election were a loss in the school bond election requiring two thirds vote. These "losses" resulted in years and years more of terrible overcrowding in our schools.
I started working to pass a school bond in VUSD when my oldest child was in first grade. We did not get a bond (Prop O) passed until my youngest child was in this second year of college--a decade and a half.
My children and tens of thousands of other VUSD children of that era never had a chance to attend schools without having to use dozens of temporary trailers located in school parking lots rather than school classrooms.
When finally after years of horribly overcrowded schools a fourth bond received over two thirds and passed, the two board members supported by the angry ones denied the voters the high school land that would have allowed construction on our third high school to be started in 2002 for an estimated cost of about 50 million dollars. Today that long delayed high school on an inferior and more expensive piece of land is not yet finished and is projected to cost almost 100 million dollars.
At least five extra years of overcrowded high schools classrooms. VUSD had and still continues to have two of the top three largest student populations sizes in our two existing high schools out of ALL the high schools in San Diego County according to the San Diego CIF.
When are angry friends used a stealth campaign, mis-using our local churches, to get a three member board majority elected in 1992, our district became a national laughing stock due to the actions of that 1992-94 board majority. That board made headlines across the nation for denying life saving information to VUSD students in sex ed classes and pushing an anti-science agenda. Read more here:
http://articles.latimes.com/keyword/vista-ca-schools
A couple of headlines from that archive:
"Vista Schools OK Sex Education Program With Religious Theme" and "Vista Board OKs Teaching of Creationism"
or the New York Times archives here:
http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?frow=0&n=10&srcht=s&query=creationism+Vista&srchst=nyt&submit.x=13&submit.y=7&submit=sub&hdlquery=&bylquery=&daterange=full&mon1=01&day1=01&year1=1981&mon2=01&day2=26&year2=2010
con no more said on: May 3, 2010, 8:06 am
ADHD linked to common pesticides in our foods
ADHD linked to common pesticides in our foods
One of the differences between our students now and the students of fifty years ago is the exposure our children have today to environmental toxins and pesticides of kinds and in quantities not ever seen previously in the history of human kind. These toxins have an affect on our children. The effect is not good as we could predict. Here is what one study shows:
Study links pesticide to ADHD in children
Using data from a national survey, researchers find that higher levels of malathion detected in urine is associated with a higher risk of the disorder. Food may be a factor.
By Thomas H. Maugh II, Los Angeles Times
May 16, 2010 | 9:03 p.m.
Children with higher levels of the pesticide malathion in their urine seem to be at an increased risk of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, researchers reported Monday.
Several previous studies have linked neurodevelopmental and behavioral disorders such as ADHD to exposure to pesticides, but generally in children of farmworkers and others exposed to abnormally high levels of the chemicals.
The new study is the first to focus on "a population sample more representative of the United States, and not one selected for being at high exposure," said epidemiologist Marc G. Weisskopf of Harvard University's School of Public Health, the senior author of the paper in the journal Pediatrics.
The study is "interesting and provocative … because the levels of pesticide are very low," said epidemiologist Brenda Eskenazi of UC Berkeley, who was not involved in the research. "We need to build up a body of evidence [linking pesticides and neurobehavioral development], and we are building it."
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ADHD is thought to affect 3% to 7% of children in the U.S., with boys affected much more heavily than girls. Its prevalence is generally assumed to have increased sharply in the last three to four decades, but controversy exists about whether the incidence has increased or diagnostic standards have broadened.
Weisskopf and his colleagues studied data on 1,139 children from the government's National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey for the period 2000 to 2004. Among the information collected in the survey were the level of metabolites of malathion in urine and, through a structured interview with the parents, whether a child had been formally diagnosed with ADHD. There were 119 children diagnosed with ADHD.
Accounting for factors that could confound the results, the researchers concluded that a tenfold increase in malathion metabolite levels in urine — still a very low level — was associated with a 55% higher risk of having ADHD. For the most commonly detected metabolite, dimethyl thiophosphate, children with levels higher than the median of detectable concentrations were twice as likely to have been diagnosed with ADHD as those with no detectable concentrations.
Forty organophosphate pesticides similar to malathion are registered in the U.S., with at least 73 million pounds used in agricultural and residential settings.
Weisskopf and his colleagues speculated that for most of the children in their study, exposure came through food. The 2008 report of the U.S. pesticide residue program found, for example, that 28% of frozen blueberries, 25% of strawberries and 19% of celery were contaminated with malathion.
The study has some obvious deficiencies. Unlike DDT and certain other pesticides, malathion is cleared from the body quickly, in three to five days, and levels can fluctuate widely. Because the government health and nutrition survey is a "snapshot" of urine levels at one point in time, it says little about long-term exposures, Weisskopf conceded.
But if the children's diets remain relatively constant over a long term, he said, then the findings are probably a reasonable estimate of normal levels. Variations in exposure over long periods would make it harder to find an association, he added, so the fact that they found a link is significant.
Other researchers are finding similar links between pesticides and developmental problems. Epidemiologist Virginia A. Rauh of Columbia University has been finding links to the pesticides chlorpyrifos and diazinon in urban dwellers, and Eskenazi is seeing similar results with malathion.
"Ideally we would like to get populations with this level of exposure and follow them over time to get [causality] correct," Weisskopf said. But studies like this one "should raise eyebrows and get people concerned enough to want to follow up intensively."
Two more references to this study with slightly different information are found below. Here:
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/721892?sssdmh=dm1.617239&src=nldne&uac=86387MV
From Medscape Medical News
Organophosphate Pesticides Linked to ADHD
------------------------------------------------------------------------
and here:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-05/uom-pem051710.php
Pesticide exposure may contribute to ADHD
University of Montreal and Harvard scientists publish study in Pediatrics
Keep on Cleaning Surfaces and Washing hands, MRSA Rates are up Ten Fold
Keep on Cleaning Surfaces and Washing hands, MRSA Rates are up Ten Fold
Ten percent bleach solutions are the best for killing these bacteria on surfaces. Alcohol also is capable of killing many of these bacteria, but is not as comprehensive as bleach solutions. Ultra violet light (as in sunlight) also kills them. Soap and water does very little but spread them around on the contaminated surfaces.
Any surface touched by any human can harbor these bacteria. The bacteria can still be cultured from completely dry surfaces for weeks after being initially contaminated. Bare wood is the safest surface material as they seem to die rather quickly on wood. Plastic is the absolute worse. An eight week test with various materials including plastic, metal, wood and cloth found that there was no diminishment in infectivity on plastic over the eight week period. Dry cloth as in sheets, towels and pillow cases was also surprising capable of causing infections for weeks. It had been thought that bacteria died on linens and towels rather quickly. But in this test using MRSA they did not. Why they survive so long on cloth, is unknown. With plastic there seems to be a good reason for their extremely long survival. Apparently even smooth feeling plastic contains millions of tiny depressions in the surface that are perfect incubators for bacteria.
Door handles, computer key boards, desk tops, text book covers are all key areas that may contain these newly evolved antibiotic resistant bacteria.
Good luck out there. Keep cleaning commonly touched areas in the classroom and keep washing your hands regularly. (Even though soap and water mostly move the bacteria around on surfaces, they are effective on the hands as the soap lifts the bacteria and running water carries them off the hands to the drain.)
A good way to know if you have washed long enough is to repeat the ABC song in your head as you wash. Wash all surfaces on your hands especially the finger tips. Scrub hard you are using friction and lubrication to break the connection of the bacteria to your skin cells. Once the connections are broken and loosen by soap and friction, away go the bacteria. It seems that bacteria have millions of tiny villi on their surfaces that act a lot like Velcro, but soap loosens their hold on human skin cells. When you finish the ABC song you have probably washed sufficiently.
The number of children hospitalized with dangerous drug-resistant staph infections surged tenfold in recent years, a study has found.
Disease incidence increased from two cases to 21 cases per 1,000 hospital admissions from 1999 to 2008. Most infections were caught in the community, not in the hospital.
The study, which was published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, involved methicillin-resistant staph infections, called MRSA. These used to occur mostly in hospitals and nursing homes, but they are increasingly showing up in other settings among children and adults. Recent evidence suggests hospital-acquired MRSA cases may be declining while community-acquired cases are becoming more common.
The results are "a good example of how something that is not unexpected remains alarming," said Dr. Buddy Creech, an infectious disease specialist at
The study involved 25 children's hospitals; the tenfold increase in hospitalizations probably occurred nationwide, said Dr. Jason Newland, the lead author and an infectious disease physician at Children's
Almost 30,000 children were hospitalized with MRSA infections at the hospitals studied during the 10-year period. Most had skin or muscle infections, and 374 of them died. Although NewlandMRSA caused those deaths, it can be deadly and is blamed for more than 18,000 deaths in children and adults nationwide each year.
The study didn't examine whether deaths or the severity of infections increased.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-staph-20100517,0,5579892.story
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