What One Student Rant by Jeff Bliss Doesn't Tell Us

IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE NEWS REPORT AND VIDEO of Jeff Bliss going off on the teacher in his World History class, you should check out the link.

The “in-depth analysis” by Channel WFAA fills up two minutes and forty-one seconds of valuable air time. More than 3.8 million people have watched it. Thousands have felt a strange urge to comment. The actual rant lasts only ninety seconds. You can see the original on YouTube. It’s listed under the title: “Jeff Bliss Rant against Lazy Teacher.”

And here’s what’s so cool.

All you need to do is invest a snippet of time. Once you finish you know all you need to know about U.S. education. You can be a school critic! That’s what many who enjoy this brief glimpse of life in one Texas classroom decide.

On one of the videos the “top comment” was: “That teacher ought to be fired.” It had 85 “likes” and no “dislikes” at all.

I added the first.

As a former educator, I admit I watched the video and perused comments with a bit of a bias. I noticed, for example, that many newly-minted experts seemed minimally grounded in logic and reality. If anything, I felt bad because maybe schools aren’t doing a good job teaching critical thinking.

When I clicked on the “Lazy Teacher” video, for example, there were already 3,300 comments. Clearly, not all who felt compelled to start typing spent as much time cogitating as they did whacking the keyboard with abandon  (click on the picture below to enlarge):

Don’t you love the internet—a place where ignorant individuals can call other human beings “niggerdumb” and make informed judgments about all the black kids in class “there for the easy ride” and “not learning jack shit.” And you can somehow tell a teacher is a “fucking fat feminist” and not even realize who really, really, sounds dumb?

It’s bad enough you get this kind of thinking from fools who comment via YouTube. But the Bliss clip has been featured on Fox News.

(Motto: We Hate Unionized Teachers—You Should Hate Them, Too!)

Again, we are dealing with ninety seconds of video, in one classroom, an incident involving one teacher and one student. We have not heard the teacher’s explanation and if we rely on Fox News we never will.

Logically, then, we can’t draw broad conclusions. Nevertheless, many of the Fox Faithful do (although not all are sympathetic to Mr. Bliss and his predicament):

Donna Ramsey Bowen: The Unions have ruined our schools....among other things. Unions were great when they were started. Now, they hurt more than they help. Teachers are a good example of that. Teachers do not actually have to "teach" any longer and they cannot be fired because the Unions have all these regulations the school must follow first. Most Unions require someone to get in trouble at least 3 times - and it has to be for the Exact same thing - before they can be fired

Betty Shelton: Teachers have gotten lazy over the last 30 years. That is why kids can't read at grade level. And End of Grade Or End Of Course test are ignored and child is passed to the next grade or gradeuated.

Mary Long: Right ON! This is why we have nothing but Illiteracy in this country...Teachers care about their pay, not the students. Public Education needs to GO AWAY! We have a PATHETIC work force with Teachers and Unions across the board....All about the money....NO QUALITY in Education.

Debi Krupna Mielach: LOVE this kid!!! More passion in that short clip than that teacher probably showed in the entire school year. God bless you, Mr. Bliss. Don't lose your fire!


Here, I am thinking to myself. I am wondering how Debi sees through walls into other rooms and around corners, etc. I am thinking I’d like to be able to ask: “Ms. Mielach, if I have a video of you sitting on the toilet for ninety seconds does that prove you have been seated on the toilet all year?

That’s what, logically, I am thinking. Many other commentators are apparently typing as fast as they can. This is much faster than they can think:

Arlene Parson: This kid has a future as a motivational speaker at a teacher's convention. Keep it up Mr. Bliss.

Josh Stringer: I hope she gets fired. She was only doing the minimum to get a paycheck. Most places I know you would get fired unless you work at mcdonalds.

Sean Denaris: Listen to the teacher sounds so bored. Likely class taught the same way. Wish more people would stand up.

Beth McKenna Wade: Kudos to this kid... Sadly "teachers" like this are common place in alot of our schools these days!!

Jason Robertson: paid leave? for get that you don't work you don't get paid. I can not stand unions they have screwed up my childhood, rrrrrr and who pays to have a teacher that is not working

(Okay, now we know that the Fox Message has been sinking in to plenty of otherwise empty heads. Unions are terrible. Union members are bums.)

I decide if I’m going to comment, I should know more. I watch several interviews. There are plenty. All feature Mr. Bliss. None allow us to hear from the teacher. Her name is Julie Phung.

Jeff Bliss comments on an incident at Duncanville High School in Texas.

Here’s what I notice:

1. During the original rant the rest of the class appears to be working.

2. Say what you want about the young man's message, his rant eats up ninety seconds of education for every other kid in the room.

3. Bliss is far angrier than the teacher—and if her responses seem tepid we cannot know how much she cares about teaching. (If you are a teacher you don’t want to have this sort of situation escalate. You want the student to exit the room quickly and you want the rest of the kids to remain on task.)

4. Most of the Bliss interviews cut off the last part of the rant. If Bliss sounds eloquent in spots he sounds belligerent at the end. Again, we don’t know what sentiments motivate him.

5. What precipitated this incident? At some point Phung told him to “stop bitchin’.” It’s an inelegant choice of words but in a high school not something kids and teachers don’t hear every day.

6. Apparently, Bliss wanted to know why his class hadn’t had more time to prepare for the STAR test, the Texas standardized tests. These are the kinds of tests good teachers hate, the kind most feel are making education worse. Bliss is angry because his instructor keeps handing out packets. All I know is that in my final year in the classroom that’s what we were ordered to do. Keep using those packets, specially prepared by the State of Ohio (in my case), because we must raise test scores!


I HATE TO BREAK IT TO THE CRITICS, to young Bliss, or school reformers, but you don’t measure “inspiration” with standardized testing.

I still have an abiding interest in the future of American education. So I watch several more interviews. Not a peep from Ms. Phung. I only hear what Bliss thinks. I discover that he is an 18-year-old sophomore. By admission, he has failed once, during his freshman year. Based on age, I assume he has been held back twice.

He started ninth grade a second time, lasted a semester, and dropped out.

Was Bliss previously a terrible student? Did he have attendance problems? Were there substance abuse issues? Problems in the home? How is he doing now in other classes? Has he truly turned his life around? Is he working diligently? Or, is he a troublemaker and a loose cannon? From the evidence we possess we don’t know.

We do know Bliss is back in school. That speaks greatly to his credit.

I spend ten minutes watching the “Jeff Bliss’ Interview on Fox4.” I find myself liking some of what he says. His mother sounds nice and doesn’t want the teacher fired. I notice that there is no mention of a father in any story.

I come away from this excursion into the world of YouTube and Facebook commentary still not feeling like I can make any judgments.

Well, except one.

I have noticed in recent years that bashing public school teachers and making wild claims—that America’s public schools are failing—all failing—and all failing because of unions—has now become a right-wing sport.

The only definitive statement I will make is that people who make broad generalizations based on limited evidence are ignorant. It’s like convicting someone of a murder that took place in Dallas because at the time the “suspect” was, in fact, a human being living in Texas.

I’m amazed by how many unenlightened individuals feel they can judge Ms. Phung after ninety seconds. Then:  they compound their error by using one erroneous conclusion as foundation for another.

SOMEONE IN THIS COUNTRY NEEDS TO SPEAK UP for all the good teachers. For all we know, Ms. Phung may even be one.


P. S. Let us wish Mr. Bliss great success in all his future educational endeavors.

*

IF YOU LIKE THIS you might like my book: Two Legs Suffice: Lessons Learned by Teaching, available now on Amazon. 

Fox News Paid Sarah Palin Well for Babbling

NOW THAT SARAH PALIN HAS VANISHED FROM FOX NEWS it’s hard to say who’s going to miss that zany lady most. Will it be lusty right-wing males of an advanced age, a critical Fox demographic? They’ve been fantasizing about shapely Caribou Barbie since the moment she made her appearance on the national scene during the 2008 election.

In the long run, however, those likely to suffer most will be sensible Americans, who appreciated the comedy of hearing her babble.

We do know now, thanks to a review by Smart Politics, what the going price of right-wing bullshit in America is today. During her three-year tenure as a foxy Fox News political analyst (an oxymoron if there ever was one) Palin pulled down $3 million, appeared on air roughly once every week, and offered up 189,221 words of her own brand of blather. Or, to put it in terms any “maker” can understand, Palin earned $15.85 for every word uttered, or $3.17 per syllable each time she used a five-syllable word.

That was probably never.

(Before we continue, however, let us quash the rumor that the people at Smart Politics who had to sit down and listen to, and keep count of, all those thousands of nonsensical words blew their brains out shortly thereafter.)

How then do we begin to measure the lasting mark Palin left in the long annals of American political discourse? What profound words of wisdom are we left with today? Some of what follows—like Palin, herself, on Fox News—we swear is not just shit we’re totally making up.

Among all those rambling sentences Palin uttered so prettily, some phrases, but not very many real ideas stand out:

“Barrack Hussein Obama” was mentioned 786 times (that’s true); meaning Fox spent $12,458.10 to help convince ignorant people that America’s 44th president was a Muslim usurper with no birth certificate at all.

“You betcha’s,” (surprisingly, uttered but twice on air, or $31.70); “darns,” 9, ($142.65), “heck’s,” 28, ($443.80).


“Amen’s” on 111 occasions ($1759.35); assorted “God’s,” “Christians’,” three “Moses’” and one “Jesus,” 77 total uses, ($1220.45).

Mentioning “tyranny” 695 times, causing angry old white men to rush out and buy more guns ($11,015.75).

“Unplugging granny’s,” 91 times, causing angry old white ladies to clutch at their hearts and send check to Tea Party candidates, ($1,442.35).

Use of the word “terrorist,” as in: “Obama pals around with terrorists,” 496 occasions, or $7,861.60.

Use of the phrase: “Drill, baby, drill.” 16 times ($760.80).

Mentioning the word “newspaper.” Never. (No cost to Fox News.)

Mentioning actual books she read—not counting books without pictures: Never (0 dollars).

“Socialism,” “communism,” “fascism” and or “liberals,” usually in sequence, separated only by commas (Palin never did figure out that these terms were not interchangeable and apparently no Fox News listener has ever actually opened a dictionary), or in changeable combinations: 1,542 uses ($24,440.70).

Times the word “dictionary” was uttered: 0 (0 dollars).

“Thesaurus,” a single usage: “Up here in Alaska we know global warming is fake, drill me baby, that scientists make stuff up, that evolution is not true, heck, that the tyrannosaurus and thesaurus roamed the earth together, 6,000 years ago, with Adam and Eve. But, you betcha,’ not Adam and Steve.” ($744.95).

“Hunting,” 10 times, “fishing,” 9 times, “Don’t fire at that moose until you see the whites of his eyes.” 1 usage (total: $507.20).

Let’s face it, sensible Americans. We’re all going to miss her chats with Sean Hannity and Greta Van Susteren. These appearances gave us comic gems like this one in regard to U. S. and NATO air strikes in Libya: “I haven’t heard the president state that we’re at war. That’s why I too am not knowing—do we use the term intervention? Do we use war? Do we use squirmish? What is it?” ($538.90).

Or this one, where Governor (Briefly) Palin tried to explain how the government should have responded to the Gulf Oil spill: “What the federal government should have done is accept the assistance of foreign countries, of entrepreneurial Americans who have had solution that they wanted presented...The Dutch and the Norwegians, they are known for dikes and for cleaning up water and for dealing with spills.” ($697.40).

And you had classics like this, on Hannity, when Palin tried to deny charges leveled by the NAACP that the Tea Party movement was rife with racist language and imagery: “[Barack and Michelle Obama] have power in their words. They could refudiate what it is that this group is saying.” ($317.00).

Truly, listening to Palin these last three years—it’s been more than worth the $15.85 she earned for every “who,” “what, “where” and “when.” You might try to make the case that what Rupert Murdoch actually did was waste three million bucks. But for those of us of a liberal persuasion, hearing Palin coin words like “refudiate” and “squirmish?”

Priceless!

The Sum of All Right-Wing Fears

IN THE WAKE OF THE BLOODBATH at Newtown, Connecticut and the strange year that was 2012, it seems we might need to try to interpret a little conservative thinking.

I’ve been studying the matter and believe I’ve got it down. I think—if I understand it right—that Mr. Obama has been having illicit sex with circus clowns.

I think that’s about the level of most of what has been passing for conservative logic in recent months.

What else have conservatives been trying to tell us? Where are they going at the start of this new year? For starters: Obama is a tyrant. Since he took office the Bill of Rights has been turned into fast food wrapping paper. (Angry white guys can hardly watch Fox News excoriate the President on a daily basis any more.)

So conservatives must rise up and…take back America...and buy guns and vote. Because nothing says tyranny like allowing political opponents to cast ballots and stock up on ammo. It didn’t really matter though, because everyone on their side knew they were going to kick butt in the 2012 election. That’s what Fox News said; and the polls were all wrong, because only gay people care about percentages. What? Obama won???

Obama is like Hitler!

Under Obamacare insurance companies can no longer refuse coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. This includes toddlers with rare genetic disorders and type-1 diabetic teens. What’s the next step, you ask?

Gas chambers for granny.

If taxes go up on the superrich, like the Koch brothers, then we are one step from a communist takeover. This is why the Koch brothers, worth $31 billion apiece, donate tens of millions of dollars to right wing causes, including smashing labor unions. Nothing says “communism” like teachers and fire fighters and bakers of Twinkies trying to win improved wages and benefits. These people want to remain in the great American middle class?

Yep: to the right, that’s “communism.”

Speaking of unions, how greedy can those thugs be? All they want to do is kill good jobs in this country. This is why job creators—here we are thinking, people just like Mitt Romney—have no choice but to create jobs in Bangladesh, where the minimum wage is $37 per month.

Gun sales in this country reached record highs in 2012, with 16.8 million background checks carried out by the F.B.I. You can’t fool conservatives—even if that does mean 45,902 guns were sold daily (it was a Leap Year). Obama plans to take away all their guns.

Glenn Beck says there may be giant magnets.

If anyone (even NASA scientists) mentions global warming or climate change or even says, “Boy, it’s a hot one today,” clearly they are part of a plot to destroy capitalism. They want to create a world government where BP and Shell Oil are denied their inalienable rights—since corporations are now people—to drill in Arctic waters and Americans are forced to eat vegan.

If gay people marry, traditional marriage will be dead, because gay people want to marry in a traditional way. Wedding cakes will no longer be baked.

Tuxedo sales will plummet.

The Chicken Dance will be only a memory.

Anyone who says, “Happy holidays,” in the weeks leading up to Christmas secretly hopes Christians spontaneously combust. (Yeah: some psychologist on Fox News explained it! Obama hates Christmas because when he was a boy his father never gave him a pony.)

We don’t need gun control to keep kids in school safe. We need to put God back in the schools. That means everyone reads the King James Bible—even Buddhists and Mormons and Jews. We need to arm teachers or maybe issue Kevlar-covered Bibles because nothing says “happy children” quite like defensive weaponry stacked near the reading center in a second grade classroom.

SPEAKING OF GOD, IF YOU GET RAPED and end up pregnant that’s His way of showing He loves you. If a mugger crushes your skull and you wind up with no health insurance and stuck in an emergency room it’s His way of saying Obamacare is socialized medicine.

And don’t say He didn’t warn you.

God believes all fifty states need concealed carry laws and He doesn’t like the 47% either.

The Founding Fathers knew everything and you couldn’t possibly beat any of them if you played them in Jeopardy. If the Founding Fathers were for freedom of religion then freedom of religion is still good enough for Christians today. Liberals, those people who hate America, insist that American citizens who happen to be Muslim should be able to build mosques where they want, such as in towns where they live. The Founding Fathers weren’t a pack of Muslims. They weren’t gay, either.

Okay, they weren’t black or female or poor white males either; but that’s not the point.

The Founding Fathers wanted pregnant women who were considering abortions to undergo invasive vaginal probes. It’s all laid out in Article III, Section 3 of the U. S. Constitution.

And you know why Obama is a tyrant? He’s planning to ignore the 22nd Amendment, which limits the chief executive to two terms—because the Founding Fathers never thought to limit a president’s tenure. You can’t fool right-wing thinkers! They know evolution and Hawaiian birth certificates can be faked. They know Obama plans to seize power and run for a third term in 2016, a fourth in 2020, a fifth in 2024, a sixth, a seventh, and an eighth!

My God, how long can that man last?

In summation, have we mentioned that Obama sends Kwanza cards to terrorists? And what about those circus clowns? Sean Hannity says Obama is a lepidopterist. 

And if you hear it on Fox News it has to be true.

 

You can't fool conservatives, they know he's plotting for 2016 and beyond.
Well beyond! Time to stock up on more guns.

A Timely Warning from the Mayans?

USUALLY, AT THIS TIME OF YEAR, Americans are too busy searching for holiday bargains (or, if they watch Fox News, worrying about losing the imaginary “War on Christmas”) to focus on world events. This year it’s different.

Mayan ruins.

Fear is building with each passing hour as we count down to the Mayan Apocalypse, just two days away. You think the fiscal cliff is a concern? Not really a problem. Let them raise your taxes if you’re a millionaire! Who cares! Not one taxpayer is going to be around to pay the bills after December 21, 2012. The planets and stars are going to align and bam!

That will be that.

We’re never going to know if President Obama and Speaker John Boehner might have worked out some kind of compromise. We’ll never learn who would have been this season’s winner on The Voice. The Chicago Cubs will never ever reach the World Series again.

Neither will anyone else.

Some skeptics, of course, may still be saying, “Screw the Mayans. I’m going Christmas shopping.” This writer admits to being skeptical, himself, until he received this ominous letter from his dentist, who claims to be “retiring” after 46 years in the field. Look at the date! My god, he’s just trying not to create a panic:

Now that you understand how short the time you—personally—have left on earth you might like to know a little about these Mayans, who somehow knew, thirteen centuries ago, that we were going to be screwed. First, they were math wizards, expert at charting stars and planets and heavenly cycles. They built impressive temples and developed a written language. They understood the concept of “zero” at a time when our European ancestors were trying to divide and multiply using Roman numerals. The Mayan people were skilled farmers, working communally to build vast reservoirs and irrigation channels. They grew corn and beans and actually liked squash.

An advanced people.

They had a monetary system (involving jade and cacao beans, the stuff of chocolate). They lived in cities like Tikal, population 60,000. They traded for hundreds of miles up and down the coast of what we know as Central America and out across the Caribbean. And they computed time backwards and forwards. According to their figures the first date in human history was August 13, 3114 B.C. Or is it August 10? My history books disagree.

Wikipedia says: August 11.

Who cares! The Mayans knew we we’re doomed. They knew it wouldn’t make any difference, not even if Obama kicked Boehner square in the nuts.

THEN AGAIN, MAYBE THEY WEREN’T SO SMART. Their civilization collapsed around 900 A.D.; and somehow they failed to predict that.

Maybe the Mayans are wrong about December 21; but maybe they still have a warning to offer. From what we know, as Mayan population grew, farmers cut down the forests and planted more and more crops. With forest cover gone there was heavy erosion and fields produced smaller and smaller yields. According to archaeologist Richardson Gill, when a long drought hit their homeland around A.D. 900 water tables dropped so fast, “There was nothing they could do. There was nowhere they could go. Their whole world, as they knew it, was in the throes of a burning, searing, brutal drought...There was nothing to eat. Their water reservoirs were depleted, and there was nothing to drink.”

It might make you feel safer knowing that the Mayans never saw their own collapse coming. Maybe we have plenty of time left. Maybe the Cubs do reach the World Series in this century.

Well, that’s the moral of that story. It’s time to quit worrying and head for the mall to do some serious shopping. When you get home, maybe, turn on the television and relax and watch Fox News. At Fox News, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Well, fear itself and labor unions. 

And Muslims.

Oh, and gay marriage.

Otherwise, Fox News is like a powerful sedative. Gretchen Carlson doesn’t scare fans with stories about melting Arctic ice and rising sea levels. Sean Hannity won’t bring up altered weather patterns and wonder why the Mississippi River was almost unnavigable last summer. The weather babes at Fox aren’t concerned about why Superstorm Sandy packed an unusually powerful punch. Megyn Kelly doesn’t care if the Ogallala aquifer, which underlies the heartland of America, is being drained at a fearful rate putting farming at risk. (Even the Wall Street Journal took note of that story). No one who works for Rupert Murdoch or Roger Ailes is ever going to admit there’s a problem when toxic chemicals show up all over the world in women’s breast milk or when traces of Prozac show up in fish. Nope. Nothing to worry about when it comes to the environment. 

Even the fish are relaxed.

Did you hear? Steve Doocy says Obama is crazy because he’s pushing solar energy. So, sit back and crank up the volume because Sarah Palin is coming on after a commercial. Listen to her coo seductively, “Oh, baby, oh baby, drill me baby, drill me!”

After that, it’s time to listen to Bill O'Reilly fume about the “War on Christmas.” So, yeah, screw those  Mayans.

What did they know?

Buy this t-shirt if you dare.

Fox News: When Crap Passes for Chocolate Pudding

IN SMALL DOSES, WATCHING FOX NEWS can be almost as much fun as watching Jon Stewart’s Daily Report. What passes as “fair-and-balanced” news in the eyes of right-wingers is just as comical. There’s additional pleasure to be found in knowing that regular Fox viewers are never in on the joke. Instead, they’re part of the joke. Roger Ailes feeds them crap and they think it’s chocolate pudding.  

On Fox and Friends one morning last week, Gretchen Carlson was going after the Buffalo, New York, teachers’ union. 

What had Ms. Carlson fired up? The fact that union members’ health benefits included coverage for plastic surgery. Taxpayers, she fumed—and nobody fumes with more conviction than Gretchen Carlson—were stuck with $2.7 million in bills. 

Fox News hates unions, and Fox News wants viewers to hate unions. That much about News Corporation is clear. 

What’s harder to grasp, unless we consider the possibility that Fox is nothing more nor less than the mouthpiece for a Plutocrat Class, is why Carlson never seems to get fired up about the bad behavior of our nation’s corporate citizens. They are citizens aren’t they? Didn’t conservative justices on the U. S. Supreme Court decide corporations are people with free speech rights? Too bad we can’t jail some of these “people.”  

How about solitary confinement for JPMorgan Chase and Credit Suisse, after they agreed to pay $417 million “to settle federal civil charges of selling risky mortgage bonds to investors that the banks knew could fail ahead of the 2008 financial crisis.” Screwing investors out of $417 million? Or evil unions and $2.7 million in plastic surgery?  

Do the math. Which is the bigger story? 

If Fox wants to do “righteous indignation” why not this story from today’s New York Times, about an investigation involving “wiretaps, cooperators and informants—[techniques] once reserved for infiltrating the Mafia and narcotics rings.”  

Who are the crooks in this sleazy tale? Not greedy unions. Nope. Hedge fund managers. White collar types, up to the tops of their $500 imported Italian loafers in shitty dealing. In fact, in this case the brown footprints lead upward, through the ranks of SAC Capitol Advisors, and stop, for now, but only for now, at the door of billionaire Steven A. Cohen.  

(Remember, Fox viewers, we can’t raise his taxes!) 

It’s a long, winding trail. So here are the bread crumbs. April 2009:  an F.B.I. agent visits with Richard Choo-Beng Lee in Silicon Valley. The agent explains that the government has proof he has engaged in insider trading. Lee promptly confesses and agrees to cooperate. Eighteen months later the same agent stops Noah Freeman in the parking lot of a school and plays back a secretly recorded conversation of Freeman getting insider tips from a woman named Winifred Jiau. Freeman quickly agrees to help investigators and save his own neck. In the winter of 2011 F.B.I agents visit Mathew Martoma. Confronted with evidence of his own illegal activities, Martoma faints on the lawn in front of his 8,000-square-foot Florida mansion.  

(Don’t raise that man’s taxes!)  

When he recovers he calls his lawyer. 

The plot thickens, as they say. Mr. Lee has close ties to Raj Rajaratman, the since-convicted billionaire head of Galleon Group.  

(Oh, oh, oh, woodman spare that billionaire and don’t raise his taxes!)

Lee is heard in 2008, on a recorded conversation, receiving insider tips from Danielle Chiesi, who works for Galleon. Pressed by the F.B.I. he reveals a sub-culture of “expert-network firms” that are “cesspools of inside information.” These firms feed tips to the Big Boys on Wall Street, allowing them to buy stocks they know—and smaller investors do not—are going up and sell stocks they know are going down—same idea as above—to suckers.  

Meanwhile, Freeman, a Harvard graduate, is hired by SAC Capitol Advisors at a guaranteed salary of $2 million per year for two years.  

(Do not, we repeat, DO NOT raise his taxes by 3% to help keep the country from plunging over the fiscal cliff!)  

As noted, recorded calls pick him up, receiving insider information from Jiau. Freeman passes on the tip to a friend and colleague at SAC, Donald Longueuil, who uses it to earn SAC a quick $1.1 million.  

(That would get you plenty of plastic surgery.) 

The F.B.I continues to follow leads in the investigation. Ms. Jiau is charged, convicted, and sent to prison. Longueuil, who served as best man at Freeman’s wedding, joins her behind bars.  Seven individuals at two more hedge funds are ensnared in an expanding federal net, as well as an SAC tech-stock analyst named Jon Horvath. Horvath admits to insider trading, agrees to cooperate, and points a finger at Michael S. Steinberg, a SAC manager, who is named in court filings as an “unindicted co-conspirator.” 

The case continues to build. Evidence is uncovered that Martoma was receiving insider info from Dr. Sidney Gilman, a neurologist involved in clinical trials of a new drug to fight Alzheimers, then under development by Elan and Wyeth, two pharmaceutical giants. The drug was failing, Dr. Gilman warned. SAC quickly sold out its huge holdings and then turned around and made negative bets on Elan and Wyeth stock to plunge. News of the failure broke and down the stock went and SAC was $276 million to the good, in terms of losses avoided and profits garnered.

(That would buy a hell of a lot of plastic surgery; but, still, don’t raise taxes on capital gains, whatever you do!)
 

THESE STORIES AREN’T DIFFICULT TO FIND. Maybe a producer for Fox and Friends could try Google.  

How about Hyundai and Kia inflating gas mileage figures to bilk customers? That meant a $100 million hit to unsuspecting consumers.  

How about UBS, the Swiss banking company, preparing to pay $450 million in fines to settle claims by British and U. S. regulators that they manipulated interest rates to the detriment of ordinary folks seeking home or auto loans?  

How about news this week that Bank of America (BoA) is facing potential penalties of $3 billion related to “brazen fraud” in the mortgage business? The company has already paid fines of $2.4 billion for fleecing investors. BoA’s legal troubles are far from over, having to do with ties formed with Countrywide Financial, a company at the epicenter of the 2008 home-mortgage crisis.  

Let’s hear it for former Countrywide CEO Angelo R. Mozilo who agreed to pay $67.5 million to settle civil fraud charges. Or David Sambol, second in command at Countrywide, who got off with a lighter fine:  only $5.5 million for crooked dealings. 

If you look at it realistically, which means doing something besides swallowing the Fox News line, you come to realize unions aren’t the problem. The boys and girls who keep Big Business in this country running smoothly are willing to do anything to pile up huge profits.  

If they can close down American factories and ship jobs to China, they’ll do it and be glad they did. If they can simultaneously break labor unions in the U. S. and hire illegal immigrants to drive down wages, they’ll do it and be glad. At times, the whole ugly picture can seem surreal, like Salvidor Dali explaining economics. 

One final example should suffice:  this time involving James F. McCann, minority stock holder of the New York Mets, and founder of 1-800-Flowers. According to documents in a recent federal lawsuit, McCann and other retailers were involved in a carefully designed scheme to rip off customers. The deal went like this, according to plaintiffs:  Callers dialed up the number and asked for a dozen roses for mom on Mother’s Day or their special girl on Valentine’s Day. They entered a credit card number, hit “purchase,” and were told they could apply for a rebate. Great! Or was it?  

According to the New York Times:

“If the customer clicked on the rebate option and failed to read the fine print, however, he or she wound up registering for a near-worthless club membership that would charge the credit card for months, sometimes years, before the expenses on the credit card statements were detected. Outfits like 1-800-Flowers.com received a cut of the operation, what regulators and others have called ‘bounties.’”

 
“A recent legal filing by lawyers in the case asserted that ‘1-800-Flowers was well aware that its customers were getting defrauded.’”  

So there you have it loyal Fox viewers. Next time you see Carlson having a bad day, fuming about greedy unions, send her some flowers. 

Fox News Goes All Warm and Fuzzy for Public School Teachers

I’VE ALWAYS WONDERED WHY any sane public school teacher watches Fox News. After all, if there is a story out there that can be used to shed a negative light on public school teachers, Rupert Murdoch’s sock-puppet commentators will find it and flog it. 

But, wait! Fox News is suddenly “standing up for teachers!” 

That's right—Gretchen Carlson and Megan Kelly and Sean Hannity will soon be boo-hoo-hooing the fate of poor public school teachers. 

According to a recent Fox News story, teachers are getting absolutely hosed. It’s tragic, they want their viewers to know. Just terrible—and unfair—and un-American too. The average teacher is making a mere $44,000 a year.

It’s tough going, says Tracie Happel, a teacher in LaCrosse, Wisconsin. And here’s where the story gets interesting. 

Whose fault is this? You’re thinking, maybe, that ass, Governor Scott Walker, who wants to take away all bargaining rights from teachers? Maybe the infamous Koch brothers, who donate tens of millions to all the big right-wing-nut causes, and who dream about crushing the last glimmer of life out of the U. S. labor movement? 

Nope. Fox News found the one teacher in America who would agree that the real problem was fat cat union bosses. Says Happel:

It’s always about the union. It’s never about the teachers or students. When you’re a teacher, you know you will not always be able to have the money for renovations on a house or go away on vacation, but it’s a tough pill to swallow when you can’t do those things when the people who are supposed to represent us get paid more and more every year.

That pill might be even tougher to swallow if you’re one of the tens of thousands of teachers who have been laid off by Tea Party- loving, tax-slashing, union-busting governors in the last couple of years.  

But no one at Fox News bothered to talk to any of those teachers. 

Not a snowball’s chance on a Fourth of July grill! What Fox really wants to see is the smashing of unions. It’s simple. No one at Fox News actually cares about teachers. The key to this “awful” story isn’t teachers’ pay. It’s those evil union leaders, and by extension their diabolical Democratic political friends. According to Fox sources, the evil leaders of the evil teachers’ unions are pulling down salaries and benefits of almost half-a-million annually. 

That’s the real takeaway from the tale. Don’t stop to remember that Wall Street types crashed damn near the entire U. S. economy in 2008, while hedge fund CEO’s raked in $100 million salaries. Don’t look at stories in newspaper about banks rigging basic interest rates—affecting what every teacher (and every poor sucker who watches Fox News) pays on mortgages and car loans. Pay no attention to the pharmaceutical companies that have paid huge fines for illegal marketing tactics. Ignore companies, including Bain Capital, that ship good American jobs overseas to India, China and Bangladesh. 

Biggest economic problem in America today?  

Overpaid union leaders. 

YOU MIGHT THINK THE DUMB CLUCKS who let themselves be gulled nightly by the Fox crew would have the tiniest clue. Then again, you’d think public school teachers wouldn’t be watching a channel that vilifies them. But if you think fans of Fox News didn’t get the real point of this recent story, all you have to do is read a few typical posted comments. 

“Well,” Warren Reichle noted, “the Average teacher is a know nothing Slug! End the unionization of our educators, end the tenures, increase quality of our educators, increase their pay with results!” 

Clearly that man felt bad for all the “know-nothing slugs” (to polish up his grammar) who make only $44,000 a year. 

Estella Bunny Howe added:  “Hey, the teachers have the right to opt out of the unions. Stupid if they don’t. And, just remember these are the same teachers who are teaching math, etc. to our kids. And, you wonder why our society is so screwed up?????” 

Yeah, don’t you hate it, Bunny, when teachers screw up the world? Starting the War in Iraq, for example, making American adults fat, causing health care costs to skyrocket. 

Yeah, damn teachers. 

Diana Lynn Friemann certainly caught the point of the story. She picked up the football and ran with it down the field and spiked the ball in the end zone. “We need to have a law outlawing these unions. They are full of thugs, liars and thieves. All they are good for anymore is raising money for the Democrat candidates. That is NOT what they are supposed to be for! They are supposed to be a voice for workers, but that ended years ago. Thugs!” 

The sympathy (cough, cough) for teachers that Fox News, in its heart, hoped to elicit was everywhere in view: 

Theresa Victorino Stevens:  “Public education system is RIDICULOUS!!” 

Joe Armato:  “This is why the children do not get an education. The teachers are so dumb that they allow this to happen.” 

“There’s probably no more overpaid profession than teacher,” Tom Van Riper grumbled. Apparently, he didn't care if Tracie Happel (or any other teacher in America) made $44,000 per year or if she had to get by on minimum wage.

John Hammack was equally sympathetic, noting, “around here they make on the average $90K. I’d love to make $44k, get three months off during the summer, and leave the job at 3:30 with no accountability.”

Marc Mathews pretty agreed with Mr. Hammack:  “44G with a pension, summers off and very good benefits and what is basically a job for life. Doesn’t excuse the 500g salaries but I'm playing the worlds smallest violin for the whiners.”

GregandAngie Jones—which could be a couple sharing a Facebook page—or maybe a posting by co-joined twins, responded:

Good teachers are the exception, not the norm. Many teachers are there to put in their 180 school days per year. Take their winter break, spring break, and summer vacations; collect their pay and retire on the taxpayer. The level and standard of public education in the US is a good indication that it is failing.

Charles Donaldson looked under his bed, couldn’t see President Obama’s birth certificate anywhere, but caught a glimpse of the Red Menace boogie man: “schools, public education, is destroying america…kids don’t have an idea what work is cause they spend their whole life in school socialism.” 

Jeff Runyan touched on a common sentiment, damning to America’s teachers in general, when he grumbled:  “The US doesn’t even rank in the Top 10 in the world for education yet we spend the most on it. Wonder why that is.” 

John Bravo backed him up, especially after a more liberal individual noted that maybe the matter was more complex than a simple list that showed the United States wasn’t in the Top 10 in terms of education. He lambasted Azhar Din, who dared to disagree, then made it crystal clear where the problems in education began:  “[We] rank low because liberals have been in charge of our schools for the past 50+ years wake up troll.” 

I did what I could. I posted a few comments of my own, including one in response to Mr. Runyan, noting that the U. S. doesn’t rank in the Top 10. True. We stood 25^th in the most recent international math comparison. Unions, right, fans of Fox News? I explained that if he cared to do a snippet of research he might discover that the U. S. was 24^th in life expectancy, using the same 30 countries in the international math survey. We’re 1^st in health care spending, too. 

It must be our terrible doctors. Are they union members, too? 

UNFORTUNATELY, LOGIC ISN’T A STRONG SUIT for fans of Fox News. So let’s leave the last word to Lowell Smith, a Tea Party philosopher. Says Mr. Smith: “For all you history majors here, on the upside, when the communist finally do get total control the first thing they do is shoot all the intellectuals and teachers.” 

Of course, Mr. Smith, won’t it be great when they shoot all the intellectuals and teachers! That’s the upside.  

Something tells me, sir, you’re going to be perfectly safe.

Climate Change? Don't Sweat It!

Good news, fans of reduced home heating bills and early-arriving spring flowers. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) the first six months of this year were the hottest of any January-June period in the U. S. ever reported.

"Experts" at Fox News, Gretchen Carlson, for example, might poo-poo such news. Glenn Beck might peek out from the bunker where he's been hiding lately, and lambaste all those evil climatologists and liberal "tree huggers." But the NOAA says it was noticeably hotter:  4.5 degrees warmer than normal in the 48 contiguous states.

Another record to fall:  hottest 12-month period ever recorded in the United States.

Oh hell. Who cares? Evolution, global warming, that absurd notion that the earth revolves around the sun? The right-wingers are used to denying obvious truths. They'll tell you weather has ups and downs; and Fox News will do a hundred stories on Solyndra, the failed solar panel manufacturer, to try to befuddle their easily-befuddled regular viewers. But they won't mention that in 2007 scientists reported 11 of the 13 hottest years in recorded history had occurred since 1998:

1. 1998
2. 2005
3. 2003
4. 2002
5. 2004
6. 2006
7. 2007
8. 2001
9. 1997
10. 1995

Damn those liberal thermometers and all that liberal statistical analysis. Don't worry your empty heads, Fox viewers. Point your car south, instead, and aim for the Creation Museum near Petersburg, Kentucky. If you're lucky, and fund-raising has been successful, you can see a life-size replica of Noah's Ark.

See the penguins and dinosaurs and people, all cohabiting together, just 6,000 year ago.

Those hard-hitting journalists at Fox News, they wouldn't fart without Rupert Murdoch's permission, and good old Rupert doesn't want you to remember that NASA said 2009 tied for the second hottest year on record.

What do NASA scientists know?

The right-wingers, who spend all their time worrying about President Obama's birth certificate, are too busy to notice that 2010 then tied for the global record for hottest twelve-months ever. That 2010 was the wettest year ever recorded, in part because warmer air has the capacity to hold more moisture, and so freak storms are going to be far more common. They don't know (or don't want to admit) that 2010 was the 34th year in succession with temperatures above normal. Or that 2011 and 2011 continued that trend.

They won't bring any of this up:  that NASA statistics showed 2011 squeezed into the top ten "hottest" years ever before it was over. That Oklahoma had the hottest average summer temperature that year, ever, for one state in this country, 86.9 degrees, including nights, worse than the Dust Bowl days of 1934.

But don't sweat it. Looks like 2012 is going to be a good year for right-wingers. Tree huggers? Hate 'em. Solution. Abnormally warm winters out west, huge problem with beetle infestations, insects that now survive winters they never were able to, killing entire mountainsides of lodge pole pines. Then hot dry summers in places like Colorado and Utah. Let's add a little of God's wrath in the form of lightning and watch all the western forests burn to the ground.

That will fix those liberal tree-huggers.

Right-wing apologists will say, "Don't worry." They will tell you there's some evil plot to put the poor coal corporations and oil companies out of business. Pay no attention! Let's focus on the illegal aliens under the bed!

Scientists tell us this is more than a variance in weather. They tell us we're facing serious climate change.

No way, Fox News commentators tell their loyal viewers, keep on living in your safe fantasy land. Look at all the pretty Fox Newscaster babes.

Look at their shapely legs.

If you really wanted, you could look it up. In 2012 the Arctic ice sheet retreated for the sixth year in a row, to record low levels, a million square kilometers less coverage, in Canadian waters, than even 2007, until now the worst year for ice retreat ever. You could read about methane "seeps" in the region, where ice is melting, and gasses trapped for centuries under permafrost are being released, adding to the climate change dilemma. You might read that scientists are surprised by how fast the northern ice sheets are disappearing, that plants extinct for 800,000 years on the eastern coasts of North America are now migrating from the Pacific Ocean region, that a type of whale not seen in the Atlantic for hundreds of years is now returning by way of the Arctic. But if you're a right-wing fan of Fox News, mesmerized by the usual horse manure, well...that would require a whole lot more serious cogitation than you're used to.

Besides, whose afraid of rising sea levels. That's where Noah's Ark will come in handy. You might even get to ride with the dinosaurs.

I wonder if Governor Rick Perry, who hates federal interference in his state,
will ask for assistance again. He did so repeatedly last summer and this summer looks worse.

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/sep2011/2011-09-06-03.html



Governor Scott Walker and Big Business Buddies to Save U. S. Education

Teachers' unions are killing the U. S. economy.

GOVERNOR SCOTT WALKER LIVES to fight another day. He has survived his recall election. Now he can go about the job of saving Wisconsin. He has handed greedy public sector unions a stinging defeat, then another, defeating them against all odds and rescuing the taxpayers of his state. Governor Walker is like David with his sling (but wearing a Cheesehead hat), slaying Goliath.

He has brought down the mighty teachers' union.

Okay: true. 

The governor did have tens of millions of dollars worth of stones, thanks to campaign contributions from Big Business types like David and Charles Koch.

That doesn't change the story. Just watch Fox News. Walker is a hero! He is like Governor Chris Christie. Only thinner. 

The forces of evil, those dirty union members behind the recall, have been defeated. Wisconsinites can sleep again at night, knowing the kindergarten teacher and the high school physics instructor can't ever rip them off again. Teachers have no more bargaining rights. Taxes will go down! Count on it. Millionaires are saved! 

Pay and benefits for middle class Americans will also go down. But, say, did we mention taxes will go down? 

Test scores will go up. Really. Bank on it! Wisconsin's economy will boom. No more teachers' unions standing in the way. And with luck, and a Romney win in November, we introduce this approach on a national scale.

Remember 2008, when the teachers crashed the economy and got that big bailout from the Bush adminstration? Well, okay, maybe that was somebody else; but the point is the same. Never again will unions bring down the U. S. economy.

A NEW ERA IS DAWNING, from sea to shining sea, as voters realize (after watching $45 million worth of pro-Walker advertisements) that only a marriage of Big Business and conservative politicians can save the nation. The door to a fantastic future is opening. Unions are dying. Now we privatize U. S. education.

We turn schools over to billionaires and millionaires who know how to profit. We put Big Business types in charge, those who can bring business efficiency to schools. Teachers will have to shape up or ship out and children can only gain. Okay, maybe we outsource secretarial positions to call centers in India. Alright, maybe we hire illegal immigrants to perform janitorial services. Hey! That's what free enterprise is all about.

Saving taxpayers money.

With Big Business methods you can look forward to Big Business morality. And when has Big Business ever not been about helping kids? Okay, sure, there was that 19th century when business leaders fought against enactment of laws to ban child labor. Okay, sure, business leaders today want to help your son our daughter save money for college by freezing the minimum wage and cutting funds for low-cost student loans. Quit quibbling. We are saving America here and if a few middle class Americans get run over in the process, that's the price of success, and the cost of lower taxes for the Koch brothers. We are putting faith in Joe the Average Billionaire because, let's face facts, who cares more about about helping every child in America, and helping every American worker, unless that child or that worker needs health care, than the people who (did I already mention this) know how to profit?

Privatizing U. S. education is going to be great. It will be like:

Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling...no, no, poor choice. Um. Schools will show rising standardized test results, year after year, like when Bernie Madoff...uh...no, no, that's not right. The school nurse will save taxpayer money by turning away students who come to her office with preexisting conditions...
Still not quite right. Okay: Your school superintendent will have the business acumen of Jamie Dimon, CEO of J. P. Morgan. He will let your district business manager put up buildings, athletic fields and school buses as collateral for risky loans. No. Scratch that. You don't want to lose $2 billion do you?

Oh yeah, have we mentioned greedy teachers lately?

Well, now that you've smashed the unions, you can tell those middle class teachers to take a hike if they want a raise on their $50,000 salaries. You can pay your superintendent who is really the key to all success, $133.7 million dollars for one year.

That's what Home Depot does. That's how much Bob Nardelli earns running the company; and while you're at it your district can start buying everything it can in China. This means parents of students might lose jobs; but it doesn't matter because the savings you make buying foreign goods will allow you to pay Bob Nardelli and he's the key. 

When a newspaper reporter asks if Mr. Nardelli deserves it, a spokesman for your district can reply, "Mr. Nardelli works harder than other people."

"Really?" the reporter may respond. "Harder than 2,674 teachers, earning $50,000 each, combined?"

Your spokesman must be ready to respond (and be sure not to laugh): "Yes. Mr. Nardelli puts in a lot of late nights and weekends."

Still not convinced that Big Business, with the help of conservative politicians, can save all the children? Maybe a real example might help. 

How about K-12, Inc. an online school operation, which owns the Ohio Virtual Academy? The company spends $6,108 per pupil vs. $10,660 at traditional brick and mortar schools (partly because K-12 pays teachers half what the regular public schools do). This means...um...huge savings for taxpayers! Have we mentioned huge savings for taxpayers lately? Talk about efficiency. Ohio Virtual Academy has one building and 7,277 pupils and a student-teacher ratio of 55.5-1 vs. a statewide average of 16.1-1. Assigning each teacher three-and-a-half times as many students and paying them less allows K-12, Inc. to make tidy profits, and...give taxpayers a fantastic deal. What? The dropout rate is 14.9% yearly, compared to a statewide average of 4.3%, according to the website Local School Directory.com?

Don't sweat it. Governor Walker can explain how it will all work. Or Governor Christie, unless his mouth is stuffed with donuts. Or Governor John Kasich here in Ohio. K-12, Inc. is in the education business because the company wants to help children. They would probably run their school for free if they could help children. But, no, Big Business leaders at K-12 can't help it if they are so talented that they make a ton of money running the Agora Cyber Charter School in Pennsylvania. True: One-third of students at Agora fail to graduate on time. Also true: hundreds withdraw every year, within months of enrollment. True, again: some Agora high school teachers are responsible for overseeing 250 students.

What the heck. Big Business heroes are crushing evil unions. Big Business heroes are going to save U. S. education.

Meanwhile, Rupert Murdoch has bought into the education business, because who cares more about children than an Australian billionaire, paying $360 million for an education company called Wireless Generation, a technology operation with close ties to the New York City Schools. And who used to run the New York City Schools?  

Joel I. Klein, a gentleman who never taught a day in his life.

Now Klein works for Murdoch, heading up his education operations. How much does he earn for his expertise? A cool $4.5 million per year. After all, if you want to help the kids, you need to have the best legal advice, and Klein's real value has always been in the field of corporate law, another bastion of altruism if there ever was one. Sadly, Klein has been unable to focus on improving U. S. education lately.

He's been devoting most of his efforts to cleaning up Murdoch's long list of legal difficulties in Great Britain, including widespread phone-hacking, bribery of politicians and police, perjury, and all kinds of other sleazy antics. Maybe Klein will suggest to Murdoch that they name their first on-line charter school Milly Dowler Virtual Academy, in honor of the 13-year-old girl English girl who was abducted on her way home after classes one day, and who then had her cell phone account hacked by Murdoch's reporters while she was still missing, so that News Corporation could try to get scoop rival papers.

I mean, if you can't trust lawyers like Klein and businessmen like Murdoch to save America's kids, who can you trust?

Donald Trump, Next U. S. Secretary of Education?

TODAY, I AM GOING TO EXPLAIN how Big Business and billionaires can end the "education crisis" facing America.

Unfortunately, most people who see that phrase, "end the 'education crisis' facing America," will lose interest before finishing the sentence and switch to YouTube to hunt up clips of Jolene Van Vugt setting the land speed record on a motorized toilet.

While you're checking out Vugt's stunning accomplishment you might also watch Secretary of Education Arne Duncan drone on about the achievement gap in U. S. education. But you're not actually crazy. Duncan has a measly 184 views. No. Do what most  people do. Check out the video of Charlie Schmidt's piano-playing cat, which has 24,189,976.

Of course, if you're interested in what's happening in the public schools, there's one place you can still go for "fair and balanced" coverage. That's right, you can watch Fox News. And if you do your head is already brimful of ideas:

1. You know teachers' unions are shot through with greed and corruption and that their reason for existence is to protect tenured child molesters.

2. You are convinced that unions make campaign donations to politicians who worship the Devil.

3. You realize that if Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin loses his recall election, June 5, then union thugs are coming to your home next and they are going to eat your baby.

4. On a positive note, you can see that the only way we can save our schools, our children, our piano-playing cats, and our inalienable right to ride motorized toilets, is to break teachers' unions and turn the public schools over to for-profit corporations.

5. You believe government isn't a solution. Government is a problem. In fact, government is like herpes.

6. And last, but not least, billionaires are your heroes, because you admire their altruism; and you understand that business efficiencies brought into U. S. public education can only mean lower taxes and soaring profits.

6a. No, wait, we meant:  soaring test scores.

6b. In fact, you hope that when Mitt Romney sits in the Oval Office he will select Donald Trump as his U. S. Secretary of Education!

Of course, since you probably don't follow education news closely, you might not know that Rupert Murdoch, the Australian billionaire and owner and guiding spirit of Fox News, paid $360 million in November, 2010 to buy a company called Wireless Generation and get in on the education technology business. And you've probably never given much thought to what might happen when people like Trump and Murdoch see dollar signs dancing in front of them....no, no...we mean happy American children.

So let's look at a few examples to see how the Golden Age of For-Profit Public Education might play out:

SCHOOL BUS SERVICE:  Low-budget bus companies take over and slash costs (hugh savings for taxpayers! huge profits for low-budget bus companies!) by dispensing with time-consuming safety inspections, ignoring rules limiting hours employees can drive, and skipping background checks for drivers. Okay, kids! Meet Ophadell Williams, your new driver! Sure, Ophadell was once jailed for manslaughter. Sure, his driving privileges have been suspended on multiple occasions. Mr. Williams works cheap and this is business. So fasten your seat belts, because your bus is going to be careening off the road when Ophadell falls asleep at the wheel!

GYM CLASS REQUIREMENT:  Parents might worry that their children are getting flabby. But the for-profit gym teacher has a solution. He asks mom and dad to watch a short educational film about the benefits to their child of wearing Skecher toning sneakers. The film features Dr. Steven Gauteau, chiropractor, touting a six-week clinical trial he conducted, which showed that if a child would wear these toning sneakers he or she would lose weight, see an increase in muscle strength, and have slimmer legs and better buttocks! But the doctor will not bother to mention that his wife is an executive who works for...Skechers. No problem. The shoe companies will rake in the dough, earning $1.1 billion in 2010 sales of toning sneakers, and the $40 million Skechers will pay in fines later, for making unsubstantiated health-benefit claims, will be a small cost to pay for doing business. And your son or daughter will still have those cool sneakers!

GOOD SCHOOL NUTRITION: Meddling bureaucrats with the Department of Agriculture will try to impose new rules and require more fresh fruits and vegetables on the school lunch menu. But student interests come first when Big Business controls education. Del Monte Foods will save all those chubby fourth graders, putting lobbyists to work in Washington, D. C., to ensure that pizza remains classed as a vegetable. (After all, a slice of pizza is covered in tomato sauce!) Tea Party types will be shown on Fox News, passing out bumper stickers that read, "You'll have to pry my cold dead hands off my pepperoni pizza."

FOR-PROFIT SCHOOLS: We have seen the future of for-profit education! At the college level, it's ITT Tech and Phoenix University! These for-profit colleges make money hand over fist, which we all know is the founding principle of U. S. public education. Since 2008, such institutions have actively recruited students, including returning Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans, who have guaranteed G. I. Bill tuition benefits, even though many of the students they recruit are totally unprepared for college-level study. No problem for Big Business saviors:  Students at for-profit colleges have used G. I. Bill benefits and relied on more than $125 billion in federal grants and loans to pay almost all their tuition expenses (because government is always a problem) and many have flunked out or graduated with worthless degrees (because business is always a solution). Wait? What? And then those students have defaulted on 15% of all loans.

START YOUR OWN CHARTER SCHOOL:  Profits are waiting at the elementary and secondary levels, as well. Just found a charter school! Collect payments from state government. Then cook the books and pad your own bank account. It's the Carl W. Shye Jr. method! Shye, treasurer for four Ohio charter schools, has been charged with embezzling $523,000 from school operations! Or go bankrupt, as did Lorain Art Academy, another Ohio charter. Yep. Make the state take back it's students, but say you no longer have the money already paid to your institution to educate those students. Feel the power of Big Business to save U. S. education! Operate with the same dedication to children as Michigan-based National Heritage Academies. Lease an old Catholic school in Brooklyn for $264,000 yearly. Then charge a New York State-supported charter school $2.76 million to use the same building.

STANDARDIZED TESTING: The states pay testing companies hundreds of billions to design, market and grade standardized tests. Classroom teachers will tell you the tests aren't working. But if that were true Big Business couldn't keep selling more testing, and, you know, helping America's children. So, all you billionaires, rely on your allies in right-wing political circles, and your proxies at Fox News, to keep portraying teachers as lazy union members! Sure, the test-preparation company, Princeton Review, now faces a federal suit, accused of submitting millions of dollars in false claims, for providing tutoring services to underprivileged school children in New York City! Sure, sure, one former supervisor is accused of forging student signatures, falsifying sign-in sheets and providing false certifications, including one billing which showed that 74 students attended a class held on New Year's Day in 2008, when...well...no class was actually held. That's  okay. Free markets always work the way God intended.

FINALLY, SCHOOL NURSING: Children with severe emotional problems are way more expensive to educate. Yet they insist on coming to school! Time to apply good business principles and sedate them. Presto! No more behavior issues! And tidy profits for drug companies! So what if hundreds of thousands of young children, two-thirds of them twelve or younger, are treated with Risperdel. Who cares if 1,200 kids suffered serious health problems after using the drug? If thirty-one died, including a 9-year-old who suffered a stroke a few days after beginning treatment? You're bringing business efficiency to the school house!

Meanwhile, doctors are increasingly prescribing Zyprexa, Seroquel, Abilify and Geodon to treat children. But government agencies are whining. (As always, government is the problem!) Studies show that use of these drugs has increased fivefold in twenty years. Well, that's great! Drug companies help kids and simultaneously make billions in profits! In fact, according to an article in the New York Times, “The growing use of the medicines has been driven partly by the sudden popularity of pediatric bipolar disorder.”

Well, okay. Thank god for the work of Dr. Joseph Biederman, a child psychiatrist at Harvard, and leading advocate of that diagnosis. If you can’t trust an expert like Biederman to tell you when your child needs powerful medication, who can you trust? What? You say an investigation by Congress reveals that the doctor failed to report to Harvard that he earned $1.4 million in outside income from... the drug manufacturers?

You say Biederman and the drug companies were not entirely forth-coming in testimony before Congress? That as early as 2002, one internal report noted that more study of medicines prescribed for children was necessary?  That without more data, government watchdogs might rightly question the use of these powerful medications, “especially those like neuroleptics, which expose children to potentially serious adverse events?”

You say “adverse events” is Big Business-speak for “death?”

Don't worry. When it comes to America's public schools, Mr. Murdoch and all the other billionaires just want to help.

P. S.: I CAN ALWAYS ADD EXAMPLES to show how business efficiencies, business morals, and business motivations can save us.

HIGH SCHOOL SPORTS: Your favorite high school realizes good athletic teams mean good publicity. The football coach starts recruiting, paying players from other schools under the table. The star linebacker gets hurt and his status for the big game is doubtful. Follow the National Hockey League, where Derek Boogard, who played for several teams, received more than 100 perscriptions for pain-killers from team doctors, even though he had a history of addiction. (Boogard died of an accidental overdose at age 28.)

GAMBLING DOLLARS GO TO SCHOOLS: We all know altruistic casino owners like to pay taxes to support schools. It's called doing your civic duty! So, let's say you want to move into a new state, say New York, and say you want the governor's support for a constitutional amendment to to legalize casino gambling because you love helping the children, and let's say you donate $2 million to the governor's campaign organization. You won't care about that money because you'll be raking in huge profits...no, I mean, you'll be helping raise test scores.

Unionized Public Sector Workers vs. Free Market Enterprise

Lee Farkas in cuffs.

We all know what's wrong with our economy: It's those damn deficits, and those damn deficits are the fault of inefficient local, state and federal governments, wasteful of taxpayer dollars and ever ready to give those damn unionized public sector workers everything they demand.

We know if we listen to Governor Kasich or Walker in Wisconsin or Christie in New Jersey or the robots on Fox News that there can only be one solution: introduce business efficiency and free market principles to government operations.

So let's take a sampling of how the free market works in the real world. Let's see what conservatives really want. Here are a few examples, gathered randomly, in recent months:

A) Lee B. Farkas, the chairman (pictured left) of Taylor, Bean & Whitaker, one of the nation's largest mortgate lenders was convicted in April 2011 on 14 counts of securities, bank and wire fraud, a scheme that cost investors and the government $2.9 billion. (Six other company executives pled guilty.) 

Farkas's actions brought about the collapse of Colonial Bank, which was sold worthless mortgages, and when the whole scheme headed south, Farkas tried to convince Colonial to apply for $570 million in Troubled Asset Relief Program funds. 

DAMN OVERPAID COPS.

B) In May we had a federal indictment of George H. Lee and Justin W. Lee, charged with four counts of bribery and one count of conspiracy. The Lees are only two of scores of contractors and military officers who face or have faced criminal charges related to manipulation of lucrative government contracts during the Iraq War. They gave away airline tickets, spa vacations and big bribe money in return for sweet deals to build warehouses for the U. S. military and provide bottled water and blankets to the troops at a healthy markup price.

According to the indictment, the Lees paid Major Gloria D. Davis $225,000 in bribes in return for $14 million in contracts funneled to their company. Davis shot and killed herself in Baghdad in 2006, after admitting her role.

In a related case, Maj. John Cockerham was sentenced to 17 years in prison for taking $9.6 million in bribes from various private contractors interested in doing "business" with the U. S. military in Iraq.  (New York Times, 5-31-11)

THOSE FIREMEN AND THEIR PENSIONS!

C) If the public sector is wasteful of tax dollars call in the business experts! A case in point, involving the New York City Public Schools, proves how much we can learn if we apply sound free market principles to education. Willard Lanham, just the kind of get-it-done fellow to show those unionized bums how it's done, won a contract to serve as a technology consultant to the New York City Public Schools. In the weeks and months ahead, Lanham is accused of stealing $3.6 million dollars, relying in large part on the old-fashioned profit motive to keep others from blowing the whistle on his scheme. 

Lanham hired five consultants, one of them his brother, who worked from home at a rate of $60-70 per hour. Lanham billed a cable subcontractor, Custom Design Communications for the work, but at a rate of $225 per hour. CDC held it's nose and billed Verizon and I.B.M. $250 per hour. Then Verizon and I.B.M. held their noses and closed their eyes and mouths and billed the Education Department $290 hourly, all for the same work.

If you like juicy stories, this one gets better. Lanham and his wife Laura Lanham are deep into an ugly divorce. Laura , 42, blogs about her pursuit of younger men and her "cougar" lifestyle and one story describes her as a hot "yummy mommy." The couple lived a lavish lifestyle before the indictment, with three luxury homes and a fleet of flashy cars: a yellow Corvette, a Porsche, a Lexus, a Mercedes and a Cadillac Escalade.

PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHERS...THEY'RE OVERPAID...

D) Now we have a story involving Rupert Murdoch and his paper News of the World in England. There is no bigger champion of free market principles than Murdoch and you don't have to listen to the folks at Fox News to hear them touting the absolute virtues of private enterprise and scaring up a little terror among viewers about evil unionized public sector workers. Unfortunately, the free enterprise system has no morality, except profit, and Murdoch has a bank book for a soul. To insure sales of newspapers editors at News agreed to bribe police to gain access to sensitive information, hacked the phones of celebrities and politicians illegally, and in the most egregious cases tapped the phones of murder victims, like Milly Dowling, 13. Murdoch employees deleted frantic messages left on Milly's phone by her parents when her in-box filled, so that new messages could be received and hacked, giving the family false hope that she was still alive and deleting the calls herself.

CRAPPY SOCIAL WORKERS...AND THEIR SICK PAY PACKAGES...

E) If you're an NFL fan (and what model of business efficiency out there can possibly be more impressive) you might have noticed that John Mackey died this week after a decade-long battle with dementia. Mackey, a Hall of Fame tight end, was 69, but showed the first signs of football-related brain damage in 2000. That same year, Jerry Jones, the Cowboys owner insisted there was no evidence that repeated concussions put players at risk.

A committee of doctors appointed by the league agreed. You know: no sense having the medical people stamping all over the golden eggs the league had laid.

By 2007, Mr. Mackey was using a spoon to drink his coffee, confusing coffee with a bowl of soup. On another occasion, when security agents at the airport asked him to remove his Super Bowl and Hall of Fame rings before going through the scanner, he exploded and broke for the gate. When wrestled to the ground by armed guards he kept mumbling, "I got in the end zone."

Finally, with evidence piling up so high, not even a rich tycoon like Jones could ignore it, the NFL began making rules changes in 2010. Meanwhile, cities keep pouring tax dollars into new stadiums for billionaires, and much of the bill for the dozens of former players suffering from similar ill effects will probably have to be borne by government-financed health plans in the end.

THOSE CITY WORKERS...BUILDING THE ROADS TO THE STADIUMS...THEY DON'T NEED ANY BARGAINING RIGHTS.

F) Finally, if you haven't been paying attention, it has just been reported that Phillippe Dauman, top executive at Viacom made $84.5 million dollars last year and median pay for top executives at U. S. companies rose 23% last year. 

Leslie Moonves of CBS was second in pay, earning $56.9 million.

Put it this way: Dauman was "worth" as much as 1,690 police officers (at $50,000 yearly). Mr. Moonves did greater service to society than 1,625 first year teachers ($35,000) combined.

And last year the leading head fund manager, John Paulson, earned $4.9 billion for his efforts, equal to what the sweat of 184,000 average American workers could make in the same time. (You figure, maybe Paulson put in a few long weekends and a lot of overtime.)

But it gets better yet. Since Paulson makes money in a convoluted fashion, the tax code allows him to claim almost every penny he makes as "capital gains" and so he pays a much lower rate in income taxes than say your average state social worker or city prison guard. 

Yep, the man pays 15% federal income tax.

It's just killing him. It's killing his ability to create jobs. No way, no way, should we raise that poor man's taxes. 

YEAH, ECONOMIC PROBLEMS IN AMERICA TODAY ARE ALL THE FAULT OF GREEDY PUBLIC SECTOR WORKERS.