Bernie DeNiro

EVERYONE SHOULD READ

THE CORPORATE SURGE AGAINST PUBLIC SCHOOLS
http://normsnotes2.blogspot.com/2008/02/corporate-surge-against-public-schools.html

Since we no longer have Edwards

I move to the more beatific speaker of the two Democratic party candidates left to me and the one who has not been on the board of Wallmart nor supported the Iraq war from the start.

John Edwards Leaves with a challenge to the Democrats

Thank you all very much. We're very proud to be back here.During the spring of 2006, I had the extraordinary experience of bringing 700 college kids here to New Orleans to work. These are kids who gave up their spring break to come to New Orleans to work, to rehabilitate houses, because of their commitment as Americans, because they believed in what was possible, and because they cared about their country.I began my presidential campaign here to remind the country that we, as citizens and as a government, have a moral responsibility to each other, and what we do together matters. We must do better, if we want to live up to the great promise of this country that we all love so much.It is appropriate that I come here today. It's time for me to step aside so that history can blaze its path. We do not know who will take the final steps to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but what we do know is that our Democratic Party will make history. We will be strong, we will be unified, and with our convictions and a little backbone we will take back the White House in November and we'll create hope and opportunity for this country.This journey of ours began right here in New Orleans. It was a December morning in the Lower Ninth Ward when people went to work, not just me, but lots of others went to work with shovels and hammers to help restore a house that had been destroyed by the storm.We joined together in a city that had been abandoned by our government and had been forgotten, but not by us. We knew that they still mourned the dead, that they were still stunned by the destruction, and that they wondered when all those cement steps in all those vacant lots would once again lead to a door, to a home, and to a dream.We came here to the Lower Ninth Ward to rebuild. And we're going to rebuild today and work today, and we will continue to come back. We will never forget the heartache and we'll always be here to bring them hope, so that someday, one day, the trumpets will sound in Musicians' Village, where we are today, play loud across Lake Ponchartrain, so that working people can come marching in and those steps once again can lead to a family living out the dream in America.We sat with poultry workers in Mississippi, janitors in Florida, nurses in California.We listened as child after child told us about their worry about whether we would preserve the planet.We listened to worker after worker say "the economy is tearing my family apart."We walked the streets of Cleveland, where house after house was in foreclosure.And we said, "We're better than this. And economic justice in America is our cause."And we spent a day, a summer day, in Wise, Virginia, with a man named James Lowe, who told us the story of having been born with a cleft palate. He had no health care coverage. His family couldn't afford to fix it. And finally some good Samaritan came along and paid for his cleft palate to be fixed, which allowed him to speak for the first time. But they did it when he was 50 years old. His amazing story, though, gave this campaign voice: universal health care for every man, woman and child in America. That is our cause.And we do this -- we do this for each other in America. We don't turn away from a neighbor in their time of need. Because every one of us knows that what -- but for the grace of God, there goes us. The American people have never stopped doing this, even when their government walked away, and walked away it has from hardworking people, and, yes, from the poor, those who live in poverty in this country.For decades, we stopped focusing on those struggles. They didn't register in political polls, they didn't get us votes and so we stopped talking about it. I don't know how it started. I don't know when our party began to turn away from the cause of working people, from the fathers who were working three jobs literally just to pay the rent, mothers sending their kids to bed wrapped up in their clothes and in coats because they couldn't afford to pay for heat.We know that our brothers and sisters have been bullied into believing that they can't organize and can't put a union in the workplace. Well, in this campaign, we didn't turn our heads. We looked them square in the eye and we said, "We see you, we hear you, and we are with you. And we will never forget you." And I have a feeling that if the leaders of our great Democratic Party continue to hear the voices of working people, a proud progressive will occupy the White House.Now, I've spoken to both Senator Clinton and Senator Obama. They have both pledged to me and more importantly through me to America, that they will make ending poverty central to their campaign for the presidency.And more importantly, they have pledged to me that as President of the United States they will make ending poverty and economic inequality central to their Presidency. This is the cause of my life and I now have their commitment to engage in this cause.And I want to say to everyone here, on the way here today, we passed under a bridge that carried the interstate where 100 to 200 homeless Americans sleep every night. And we stopped, we got out, we went in and spoke to them.There was a minister there who comes every morning and feeds the homeless out of her own pocket. She said she has no money left in her bank account, she struggles to be able to do it, but she knows it's the moral, just and right thing to do. And I spoke to some of the people who were there and as I was leaving, one woman said to me, "You won't forget us, will you? Promise me you won't forget us." Well, I say to her and I say to all of those who are struggling in this country, we will never forget you. We will fight for you. We will stand up for you.But I want to say this -- I want to say this because it's important. With all of the injustice that we've seen, I can say this, America's hour of transformation is upon us. It may be hard to believe when we have bullets flying in Baghdad and it may be hard to believe when it costs $58 to fill your car up with gas. It may be hard to believe when your school doesn't have the right books for your kids. It's hard to speak out for change when you feel like your voice is not being heard.But I do hear it. We hear it. This Democratic Party hears you. We hear you, once again. And we will lift you up with our dream of what's possible.One America, one America that works for everybody.One America where struggling towns and factories come back to life because we finally transformed our economy by ending our dependence on oil.One America where the men who work the late shift and the women who get up at dawn to drive a two-hour commute and the young person who closes the store to save for college. They will be honored for that work. One America where no child will go to bed hungry because we will finally end the moral shame of 37 million people living in poverty.One America where every single man, woman and child in this country has health care.One America with one public school system that works for all of our children.One America that finally brings this war in Iraq to an end. And brings our service members home with the hero's welcome that they have earned and that they deserve.Today, I am suspending my campaign for the Democratic nomination for the Presidency.But I want to say this to everyone: with Elizabeth, with my family, with my friends, with all of you and all of your support, this son of a millworker's gonna be just fine. Our job now is to make certain that America will be fine.And I want to thank everyone who has worked so hard – all those who have volunteered, my dedicated campaign staff who have worked absolutely tirelessly in this campaign.And I want to say a personal word to those I've seen literally in the last few days – those I saw in Oklahoma yesterday, in Missouri, last night in Minnesota – who came to me and said don't forget us. Speak for us. We need your voice. I want you to know that you almost changed my mind, because I hear your voice, I feel you, and your cause is our cause. Your country needs you – every single one of you.All of you who have been involved in this campaign and this movement for change and this cause, we need you. It is in our hour of need that your country needs you. Don't turn away, because we have not just a city of New Orleans to rebuild. We have an American house to rebuild.This work goes on. It goes on right here in Musicians' Village. There are homes to build here, and in neighborhoods all along the Gulf. The work goes on for the students in crumbling schools just yearning for a chance to get ahead. It goes on for day care workers, for steel workers risking their lives in cities all across this country. And the work goes on for two hundred thousand men and women who wore the uniform of the United States of America, proud veterans, who go to sleep every night under bridges, or in shelters, or on grates, just as the people we saw on the way here today. Their cause is our cause.Their struggle is our struggle. Their dreams are our dreams.Do not turn away from these great struggles before us. Do not give up on the causes that we have fought for. Do not walk away from what's possible, because it's time for all of us, all of us together, to make the two Americas one.Thank you. God bless you, and let's go to work. Thank you all very much.

All through the night

For the past two years and a few months, this Cole Porter song has been all too useful for me. The song, which can be heard as referring to an imagined or lost love who is never there "when dawn comes to waken" the singer of the tune has been for me and, I'm sure a billion others like me, a refrain used when facing an actual loss of a romantic partner. For the past week, however, on and off, at differing times of day and night (because my sleep cycles have been completely disrupted) I've gone back to the memories of a different time, place and...job. I've been remembering as best I can what it was like to have worked at Brooklyn Comprehensive Night High School when Malaika Bermiss was principal and many of my colleagues and I were even younger than we are now. The more I go back, the more I want to, and in fact, a great deal of yesterday was spent just doing so in my own head while not doing anything else except tending to my cats all day. Whenever I tell people about Malaika, I always start with how she hired me which she actually did twice in almost the exact same circumstances. I'm only going to write about the first time here.

I had been working for a year and three months at an adolescent teaching facility on Rikers Island. Although the students were some of the most brilliant people I have ever met or taught (as a rule, the worse the crime, the better the brain), the job wore on me. The prison system added to the educational system is a lot of quagmire to be involved in at once, the program itself was kind of a factory and I was being asked by the principal, regardless of my skills as a teacher and the fact that my classrooms were comprised entirely of imprisoned 18-21 year old males to start putting on dresses and look prettier when I came to work. Needless to say, it wasn't the kind of place you imagine throwing the energy of your early 20's wholeheartedly into in order to change the world. Nothing more was going to be done for the students than what was being done, and no student took the GED who wasn't very likely to pass. It was a good statistics machine. All the principal was asking me to literally do was ease up and be "Vanna White". Moreover, she wasn't going to release me from my job because I was too good. I needed someone really, really smart, politically savvy, trustworthy and most of all, who actually cared about education to get me out of this. Someone at WBAI where I worked in the Arts Department told me they had just interviewed with this really interesting principal but that they couldn't take the job because of the hours -- they were at night. Night didn't bother me -- I was only a year away from college and endless all-nighters.

Malaika Bermiss was sitting at her desk in her very overcrowded office, still working in the late afternoon, on the day I met her. Calculating with my very rough math skills, since she turns out to have only been 17 years older than I am, she was probably about 40, the age I will be in a week and a few days. I told her when I called that if she wanted to interview me that day then I didn't have time to change into my interview suit and I'd be in jeans because that's what I had worn to work. She said that was fine. I think she was wearing either a denim shirt and skirt--her clothes were elegantly loose and comfortable as I learned they would always be whether they were cotton or silk, high fashion or a sweatsuit. So that I don't get overwhelmed and so that I can take small readings first, I glom onto a person's initial gestures only and maybe one or two facial characteristics. With students, I am much the opposite, but I want to confine adults to a few controlling variables. Malaika was a firm handshake, a commanding and intelligent mezzo-soprano voice, and big-brown-no-b.s. eyes. She turned around in her chair and looked straight at my face. There was no up-and-down of my clothing, my weight or my bearing. I think I smiled and I know we looked straight at each other during what was not a short conversation. That sounds like nothing, perhaps, but there's almost no one I will look directly at for more than three minutes at a time and usually not even that in an initial meeting. I can do so with students because I need to. Usually, I fidget, look at my shoes, the sky, my fingernails or just away. It's not that I mean to be rude to adults I've just met, but I need time to trust them and like to do so in bits and pieces. Malaika Bermiss could be trusted instantly because she meant what she said.
We agreed on a lot, at least in spirit and having taught at Rikers made it easier for me to articulate how I felt about giving people second chances and the fact that I didn't want to judge those students or the students I would meet at her school based on what they had done in their past. By then, I also knew how to bluster about "having control of my classroom" as well as anyone, which I'm sure she saw through, but I did have a fairly decent technique for teaching essays and I liked doing it. What was clearest from what she was saying and the way the school was already running was that this was going to be a school designed for this population and we were really going to work with that in mind. She's the only person I've ever met who has ever recognized in practice that growth means you have to be allowed to make some mistakes-- and who knows how to look at something other people call a mistake and find what is useful in it.
I can hear people chiming "those mistakes are happening with children" -- and I'm afraid I will have to tell you that more mistakes happen when you don't try to fix problems than when you do and you still have to work out the fine tuning. Ours was a school where test scores and graduation rates got better and better. We're being closed because it's cheaper to run a GED program for the population we serve than an intensive high school. And the program won't even be run by the DOE -- it will be run by a non-profit organization and the students' statistics won't be counted in NYC public school numbers.

The woman I met that day, was most importantly, accountable. She wasn't going to let the school remain a "program" -- it was going to be a regular "high school" and not an "alternative high school". These students were not going to be cut off from the mainstream more than they had been. They were going to get a solid high school education which could serve as preparation for college. And somehow we were going to figure out how to do it. The same somehow, sort of, that she used to get her superintendent to call the superintendent in charge of the program I was working in and tell my principal to let me go which she finally did on the last day she had to do so.

It's 5:23 am. Soon it will be daytime. Confound it.

In Memory of Malaika Holman-Bermiss

Ad astra per aspera -- To the stars despite the difficulties. January 14, 2008.

In lieu of flowers, the family has established an endowment fund at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, one of Malaika’s favorite institutions. The goal is to endow a chair in the Opera house on the mezzanine level that will have a plaque that bears her name. More importantly, the endowment helps BAM to continue bringing world class performance art to the people of Brooklyn. Please send any donations to:
Brooklyn Academy of Music

Attn: Endowment Office

30 Lafayette Avenue

Brooklyn, NY 11217
Please note on the check "In memory of Malaika Bermiss."

Some of Mrs. Bermiss' last published thoughts about Brooklyn Comprehensive Night High School are in the article below from CITY LIMITS, March 19, 2007.

GOOD NIGHT, NIGHT SCHOOL:BROOKLYN COMP TO CLOSE
When this nontraditional school closes next year, only one other similar school will be left for students who are busy from 8:00 to 3:00. > By Matt Sollars


Ladonna Powell, 19, lives on her own, works at a bakery in Manhattan to pay the rent, and attends high school classes at Brooklyn Comprehensive Night High School because they fit into her schedule. Powell says the school, one of only two night high schools citywide, is important for struggling students who can’t make it to a day school but want to earn a diploma.
“Each person has their own problems,” she said. “We need this school to stay open. It’s a second chance.”
The public school is slated to close, however. The city announced in December that Brooklyn Comprehensive, which opened in 1990 to help students who had trouble in a traditional high school setting, would close this June. Teachers and students said they felt stunned and betrayed. The teachers’ union mounted a lobbying campaign, and by late February the staff was told the school would remain open until June 2008.
The city says five new "transfer schools," designed for “overage, under-credited” students, will replace Brooklyn Comp’s services. But while they will have some nighttime classes, it looks like they may not have an after-hours curriculum as complete as Brooklyn Comprehensive, which has the full high school curriculum except art and P.E. The other similarly complete nighttime school in operation is the Manhattan Comprehensive Night and Day High School, located on Second Avenue near Stuyvesant Town. The Department of Education cites “low demand” as the reason for closing the night school.
“Attendance has dropped significantly in recent years,” said Melody Meyer, a department spokesperson. She pointed specifically to an abysmal 33 percent attendance record at Brooklyn Comp last year.
The school’s former principal, Malaika Holman Bermiss, says “attendance was always horrendous.” But she and some current teachers counter that the attendance rate dropped precipitously after the school was moved from Midwood High School to South Shore High School in Sept. 2004, due to space constraints at Midwood.
Indeed, school attendance records seem to support Bermiss’s argument. Brooklyn Comp had a 66 percent attendance rate in 2003-04, its last at Midwood. That’s not too far from the 72 percent average for transfer schools in the city. But in the next school year – the first at South Shore – attendance fell to 49 percent. Then it dropped to 33 percent last year. Meanwhile, attendance at traditional high schools citywide is 90 percent.
South Shore, which itself suffers poor attendance and is slated to close, is a large white building at the intersection of Flatlands and Ralph Avenues in Canarsie. A 20-minute bus ride from the nearest subway stop, the school is remote to reach even by car. In addition to the long commute for a student population scattered throughout Brooklyn, teachers and students do not feel safe, particularly at 10 p.m. when the school day ends. The day begins at 4 p.m.
“Muggings have been bad,” according to English teacher Sharon Pearce, in an observation echoed by several others. “Some parents won’t allow their kids to come to school any more,” says the 14-year Brooklyn Comp veteran.
Current principal Catherine Bruno-Paparelli did not respond to requests for comment, and officials declined to show a reporter around the school.
Charles Turner, Brooklyn district representative at the United Federation of Teachers, called moving a night school to such a remote location “a thoughtless decision.” He believes Brooklyn Comp has become “collateral damage” of the decision to shutter South Shore, one of five schools that DOE announced in December would close.
Pearce finds it ironic that the city decided to close Brooklyn Comp and send students to transfer schools, which accommodate up to 250 students. “We were one of the new ‘small schools’ before there was the expression,” she said.
Bermiss fears that a new school, even one that looks like Brooklyn Comp but meets during the day, will miss out on helping a certain sliver of students. “It’s a time frame issue,” she said. “Some of our students had neither children or jobs, but what they needed is what we offered them at 7 p.m. in the evening.”
She believes Brooklyn Comp was hampered by not ever having its own facility. Before she retired in 2005 after 34 years in the city school system, Bermiss did propose an expansion of Brooklyn Comp that would have included a dedicated facility. Now she hopes that the extension through next school year will allow the teachers and staff at Brooklyn Comp to keep the school going in a different format and location.
“My concern is that there be a full-time night school in Brooklyn to meet the needs of students,” Bermiss said.
Student Natalie White, 19, certainly agrees. White started at Brooklyn Comp in September after she “messed up” at Erasmus Hall High School in Flatbush. Close personal attention from teachers quickly helped White gain confidence in herself.
“I never got an A in any class before,” she said. But after getting help from teachers in English and Spanish and A’s in both classes, she said, “I kind of knew I had some kind of potential.”
However, White knew she would not have enough credits to graduate by June 2007, so she stopped going to school. “I thought it was the end,” she said. “I was kind of thinking of giving up or going to another school.”
Now that another school year has been added, White says she will return and hopes to have enough credits for her diploma by January 2008.
- Matt Sollars

Work?

I urge everyone concerned about work, getting it, keeping it, etc. to read this post.

http://nyceducator.com/2007/12/work.html

Let's hope Sirota's right and Happy New Year!

December 31, 2007 7:38 AM
Gauging the Fear Inside the Palace Walls by David Sirota
A pretty reliable gauge of Establishment fear is how far away from factual reality its chief spokesmen stray at election time. With economic populism now driving both the Democratic and Republican presidential contests, professional political pontificators in Washington are attacking candidates for being crazed and angry - when in fact their own rhetoric shows it is the pundits who are the angriest of all. An uprising is on - one against the hostile takeover of our government by Big Money interests. And inside the walls of the Washington palace, the elite are freaking out.
Here's Time Magazine's Joe Klein, claiming that presidential candidates who attack NAFTA are "wildly irresponsible on trade":
"NAFTA has been a wash, creating as many jobs as have been lost."
According to government data, NAFTA has cost America at least 1 million jobs. This is not new information - nor is it even much debated among economists on either side of the trade debate. But because it offends the Washington Consensus in support of lobbyist-written trade policies and because the realities of trade are finally taking center stage in the presidential primaries, Klein - a loyal Establishment soldier - has taken to the ramparts to lie.
Klein's silliness is eclipsed only by Stu Rothenberg - who reliably hands us the old adage that any candidates challenging the status quo will destroy America. Here's his take today:
"[John Edwards] is also portraying himself as fighting for the middle class and able to appeal to swing voters and even Republicans in a general election...His approach to problems is likely to frighten many voters, including most middle class Americans and virtually all Republicans...Given the North Carolina Democrat's rhetoric and agenda, an Edwards Presidency would likely rip the nation apart - even further apart than Bush has torn it."
Rothenberg's entire career is predicated on his supposed ability to analyze polling data - which is stunning in juxtaposition to his statements today. After all, polls show Edwards performing the best of any Democrat against any Republican presidential candidate. More importantly, polls also show the vast majority of the country - including Republicans - behind his populist economic positions.
For instance, Edwards has staked his candidacy on guaranteeing health care to every American and on raising the minimum wage - two positions the majority of Americans - and a huge chunk of Republicans - strong support. As I noted in a 2005 Washington Post article, a 2005 public opinion survey by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center showed that about half the GOP's core voters support the "government guaranteeing health insurance for all citizens, even if it means raising taxes" and an astounding three-quarters support an increase in the minimum wage. Pew recently updated these numbers to show that 4 in 10 Republican voters nationally "favor universal health coverage, even if it means higher taxes."
Trade? Same thing. Edwards has been demanding an end to Washington's lobbyist-written, job-killing trade agenda - a demand that the majority of Americans (and Republicans) support. The Wall Street Journal was only the most recent publication to note this fact. "By a nearly two-to-one margin, Republican voters believe free trade is bad for the U.S. economy," the Journal noted, adding that voters in both parties want our trade policies reformed.
Knowing these number, it is difficult to understand how a professional poll-watcher like Rothenberg could say that an economic populist platform "is likely to frighten many voters, including most middle class Americans and virtually all Republicans." It is even more difficult to understand when you consider that the leading Republican candidate right now is Mike Huckabee - a guy being grossly outspent but who is nonetheless surging among Republican voters on the strength of his campaign's economic populist themes. In short, all of the actual facts point to exactly the opposite of Rothenberg's conclusions: That power-challenging economic populism is exciting most voters, including most middle class Americans and many Republicans.
But, then, the rhetoric from the Kleins and Rothenbergs is less surprising when you consider how the rise of economic populism fundamentally indicts both the system they have long defended and, more personally, their individual relevance as supposed political oracles.
Most Washington pundits have reached their positions by defending the system they cover as fundamentally good. Doing that, in their minds, validates their own value and worth - because if they acknowledge that the system is corrupt, it means they are admitting that their work bolstering that system is corrupt, too (which, of course, it is).
And so elite reaction to the populist uprising is swift. As respected pollsters tell us that "if Americans have ever been angrier with the state of the country, we have not witnessed it," Washington pundits tell us candidates representing that anger are doomed. These pundits desperately claim that candidates' support for majority positions will somehow "rip the nation apart," and that such candidates who take up the populist mantle are "wildly irresponsible" for doing so.
Sadly, the caucuses and primaries look like only the opening act of a more full-scale Establishment backlash against America's populist tide. A group of has-been politicians are pushing Wall Street billionaire Mike Bloomberg to run as an independent if these has-been politicians do not approve of the nominees of both parties. We are told that Bloomberg is the one who can restore "unity" and "bipartisanship" in the face of the uprising. That the populism represented in both parties' primaries right now is supported by both Republican and Democratic voters has somehow escaped these supposed crusaders for "bipartisanship."
The fledgling Bloomberg candidacy says all you need to know about the difference between actual bipartisanship in America, and Washington bipartisanship. A cursory glance at the New York mayor's positions show an egomaniac wholly out of touch with the country on issues from the Iraq War, to civil liberties to economic policies. But because he is a Wall Street billionaire with the corresponding respect and love of Big Money, he is promoted as a deity by Washington."[A Bloomberg candidacy would] be intended as punishment meted out by the Establishment," writes Salon's Glenn Greenwald. "That, more than anything, seems to be the oh-so-noble and trans-partisan purpose...To find a way to stifle the populist anger at our political establishment after 8 years of unrestrained Bush-Cheney devastation."
Still, on this New Years Eve, I remain an eternal optimist. A few weeks ago I finished up my new book, entitled "The Uprising: An Unauthorized Tour of the Populist Revolt Scaring Wall Street and Washington" (due out in the Spring of 2008). I spent a year reporting firsthand from the trenches of the populist movement that I have been a part of for the last decade - an uprising against the hostile takeover of our government that I documented in my first book.
In my reporting over the last year I learned that things are - finally - starting to change. The Joe Kleins, Stu Rothenbergs and Mike Bloombergs still have influence, because they have lots of money behind them. But an uprising is on - one that has already impacted the 2008 presidential race, and one that will continue to seethe well past the upcoming caucuses and primaries. It is that simple fact that truly frightens the defenders of the status quo who have gotten used to the good life inside the palace walls.

Peace on earth

Bernie hugs Larry in Brooklyn, New York

Cousin Cassie in Wheeling, Illinois being her Greta Garbo self

WE WANT HEARINGS

GO TO THIS WEBSITE AND TELL THE HOUSE YOU WANT CHENEY TO START ANSWERING SOME QUESTIONS AS PART OF HIS IMPEACHMENT PROCESS



http://wexlerwantshearings.com/

Schools Klein gives an A do poorly with State, meanwhile those that get a D, do fine....

NEW YORK POSTCITY SCHOOLS FAILING
33% FALL SHORT OF FEDERAL STANDARD
By YOAV GONEN Education Reporter
December 21, 2007 -- One in three city public elementary and middle schools are in need of improvement - a significant increase since last year, state education officials announced yesterday. The percentage of city schools failing to meet federal academic benchmarks climbed from 29 percent to 33 percent, while the statewide total climbed from 14 to 16 percent. Sixty-four city schools were added to the state's list of so-called "failing schools" this year, including one charter school, Harriet Tubman in The Bronx. Eighteen city schools were removed from the list, bringing the city's total to 318. Education officials were quick to point out that the jump in schools unable to meet student-progress goals stemmed from the larger pool of youngsters, from grades three to eight, now tested by the state. Until 2005, only fourth-graders and eighth-graders were tested annually in English and math. Schools make the state's naughty list by missing targets for particular groups of 30 or more students - such as special education, English-language learners, or racial/ethnic minorities - two years running. They get off the list by making targets for two years. Coming six weeks after the city released its own grading system for schools, the state's assessment pointed to many instances where schools were given conflicting feedback. At least two schools that the city Education Department will close for poor grades after this year - PS 79 in The Bronx and PS 183 in Brooklyn - actually met the state's standards and were considered "in good standing." "This discrepancy serves as a big red flag showing that there is something wrong here and that these schools should get another look before they are closed," said United Federation of Teachers chief Randi Weingarten. And an additional 66 schools that got D's or F's from the city are in good standing with the state, while 170 A or B schools failed to make enough progress by state measures, according to the city Education Department. "A mixed message? It's outrageous!" said the principal of a D school in Queens that fared just fine with the state. "We're still trying to reconcile [the grade] with the fact that we did so well with the state." A spokesman for the city Department of Education acknowledged there were discrepancies between the two systems, but said there was also a significant correlation. "As a school's grade gets higher, it's much more likely to be in good standing with the state," he said. http://us.f620.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=yoav.gonen%40nypost.com

If he walked into my life...

There's a song which opens, "If he walked into my life, would I feel this way again" which thinks through what a person would do if someone they love just walked out on them and then later walked back in. On various days of foolish and unfathomable feelings, I've played it and sung it. Tonight, however, I wonder it about good ol' Roger Clemens of whom it is suggested that his steroid use parallels that of Barry Bonds'.

As a Yankees fan over the last three years, its been impossible for me to not fall for "The Rocket" legend, even as I joked that if we bought him and David Wells then we could be assured that the game would be fully pitched through since what I remembered of both of their last visits was that they mostly couldn't make it past four innings. As I recall they were about even, Wells without steroids, apparently. But in his last return, there was something of the "Cowboy Up" appeal -- which should have told us all we were in trouble as this was a Red Sox gimmick. I did look forward to him going out there and grinding out innings with spit and forethought. Well, that's what I thought, anyway.

Somewhere in the song, the question is asked that if the object of affection returned, "would I look the other way?" Or, in this case, would I just plain, "look the other way" and still see Roger Clemens. Another question is also asked: "Will I feel the same again?"

Let's see where and when he walks in. I don't want to see him as a Yankee, but I don't think anyone did even before this scandal.

But, I mind my feelings, whatever are left of them. I'll let you know what they tell me.

My little prince

Karen B. Hunter

Nov. 23. 1951 - Sept. 2. 2005

I will always remember how beautiful the world looked when I was looking at it with you.

John Edwards On The Hostile Takeover of Our Government

Election '08 Meets The Great Education Myth
By David Sirota on November 15, 2007 - 3:53pm.
Regular readers know my frustration with what I previously deemed The Great Education Myth in an op-ed for the San Francisco Chronicle. This myth, omnipresent in our media and political debate, states that America's problem with stagnating wages, job loss and benefits cuts is a problem of education. If only workers were better educated, the myth goes, their economic problems would be over.
This myth, which is a lobbyist creation designed to divert political pressure away from reforming labor, trade and economic policies, was most recently vomited up by a top editor and "expert" at one of the largest magazines in America - and then obliterated by government data and at least one leading presidential candidate.
That's right, the latest regurgitation of the myth comes from none other than U.S. News & World Report's chief financial reporter, James Pethokoukis. In the midst of an article asserting that "income inequality may actually be a good sign," this brave defender of royalism flippantly claimed "It really is all about education." He went on to state:
"Advanced economies, whether America's or Denmark's, are knowledge economies. And knowledge economies reward education. Get a degree, expand your skills, and you will do just fine."
Pethokoukis, in a non-sequitur, cites one macro unemployment stat, but offers up no actual data to support his central claim that if you just "get a degree and expand your skills you will do just fine." This is one of the top editors of one of the supposedly most Serious magazines in America regurgitating lobbyists' Great Education Myth without even bothering to check the most easy-to-find data - data reported in publications that are not exactly bastions of anti-capitalist sentiment.
Fortune magazine, for instance, recently reported that economic data proves that "the skill premium, the extra value of higher education, must have declined after three decades of growing." Specifically, "the real annual earnings of college graduates actually declined 5.2 percent, while those of high school graduates, strangely enough, rose 1.6 percent." Similarly, Businessweek has reported that "real wages for young Americans with a bachelor's degree have declined by almost 8% over the past three years" and "economists suspect that global competition has something to do with it."
That's an understatement, as shown in a stunning new report out today from the good folks at the Economic Policy Institute. Using government data, the think tank finds that "the educational group most vulnerable to offshoring are those with at least a four-year college degree." That vulnerability helps drive down wages for better-educated workers because they know that if they try to demand good pay, their employer could simply pick up and leave.
Obviously, this has everything to do with America's corrupt NAFTA-style trade policy - a policy that the U.S. House ratified last week in its vote for the Peru Free Trade Agreement, and that now awaits Senate ratification. This trade policy without enforceable labor, wage, environmental, human rights or product safety standards encourages large corporations to manufacture a race to the bottom in which workers have to keep accepting lower and lower wages (or other standards) in hopes of keeping their employer in their country.
This ain't rocket science to understand. Sure, we should all support improving our education system, because better education is just a good thing. However, it is not a cure-all to our economic challenges - not even close. No amount of education and retraining can overcome the effects of unfair trade agreements. And no amount of "customizing", to use Clinton administration jargon, by an American worker can beat an equally "customized" Chinese or Indian worker, particularly when such workers earn pennies, rather than dollars, per hour.
As I said to start, the Great Education Myth is a corporate creation. It exists to distract the public from demands to change our trade and economic policies so as to raise up all workers. If Big Business can get us all to be mad at the education system alone, then theoretically we won't demand serious populist reforms of an underlying economic system that is currently benefiting the Big Money players in Washington, while crushing the rest of us.
Now, the whole Great Education Myth is hitting the presidential campaign trail. Both Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama have announced their support for the NAFTA-expanding Peru trade deal all while - rather shockingly - engaging in a true Theater of the Absurd by continuing to tell union audiences that they oppose the NAFTA trade model. John Edwards, by contrast, has come out strongly against the Peru deal, and yesterday issued a statement tying the upcoming Senate vote on that trade deal to the Great Education Myth and the Economic Policy Institute's report. Here are some excerpts:
"Today, the Economic Policy Institute issued a report that should come as a clarion call to everyone concerned about the impact of unfair trade agreements and practices on America's working families. In their report, the EPI concludes that between 25 to 30 million American jobs -- about one in five American jobs -- in states all across the nation, are at risk for being offshored over the next decade. And it's not just manufacturing jobs - the report shows those jobs that require at least a four-year college degree are actually the most at risk. This report makes clear what the labor community has known for far too long: bad trade deals, cheap foreign labor, illegal foreign subsidies and foreign currency manipulation are having a devastating effect on American workers...Given this reality, I find it alarming that Senator Clinton and Senator Obama have chosen to support a flawed Peru Trade deal that will only further expand the NAFTA-model that has already cost us well over a million jobs."
How this plays out on the campaign trail is anyone's guess. As we see from Pethokoukis's piece and from many other political pundits like him, the Great Education Myth is such unquestioned orthodoxy among our elite media and politicians that it has become an assumption that is flippantly forwarded without even a flinch toward basic factual substantiation.
That means candidates like Edwards (or anyone other such populist) who dares to challenge the Great Education Myth and the Washington Consensus in support of NAFTA-style trade policies face not only hostility from other candidates chasing down Wall Street cash, but hostility from what is supposed to be an objective political press corps.

Still hope for Edwards!

John Edwards and Mike Huckabee are both doing well in Iowa. Edwards is my candidate of choice. Why is Edwards doing well. David Sirota writes in this week's column "It's the populism, stupid." Read the whole column at http://www.creators.com/opinion/david-sirota/the-huey-longs-of-iowa.html

My second choice is now Joe Biden, the only candidate who knows anything about the issues and what he's talking about. Sure, Herculean ego. But he has plans for what he would do right now. Check out his most recent interview with Bob Schiefer -- I am going to see if it is posted anywhere.

Not so spooky

Bernie likes to sleep on my laundrybag which is nestled in the hallway. It's full of clean clothes I just pull out as I go. Where the bag is, is close to where Henry used to sit on similarly poorly placed blankets and empty boxes. Like Henry, Bernie likes to tear up paper and he likes to get my attention mostly to himself. Food is also his favorite topic of discussion and he has a broad palate, including broccoli -- a favorite of Queequeg's.

Larry sits on one of Karen's chairs, waiting for me to come over and snuggle, very contented and at ease. He climbed that chair in her apartment and it's an old friend with good memories. Like Queequeg, he is very self-contained, except for those moments he spreads out flat on the chair with his paw hanging over, as if reaching for me. Queequeg did something similar, but it was to prepare to scratch me when I wasn't looking for something I had done (such as crossed over him or in his path without proper acknowledgement or permission). Larry monitors my movement throughout the house like Fred, did. He worries about me, though he pretends to be nonchalant. Fred covered his worries with a big appetite.

So, this Halloween is filled with good and many spirits. We three, Larry, Bernie and I, carry many good memories.

Swimming to my MP3 player

For two days straight, at lunch with colleagues whose political knowledge far surpassed mine, I gave up my usual attempt to learn on the fly. I listened to my MP3 player through the whole meal. At one moment, one of my colleagues leaned next to me and said, "Irish music?" "Karen liked it." He nodded. There, I got a lot done:
Avoided showing my ignorance about several politicians I looked up when I got home.
Held my ground on sentiment, romance and bagpipes. Karen usually liked the more adventurous and vocal, but the tone was right. She would understand.

It was a musical pause at lunch with homage to a close friend.

I couldn't take the picture fast enough

Larry and Bernie stood on a piece of furniture. Together. No negative energy. Just sharing the view. And tonight they returned to sharing my bed, sleeping a few feet apart.

BUY NOTHING ON NOVEMBER 6, 2007

It's the national strike against fascism. You can do it. Just buy nothing that day.