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Stress and School

  • Posted on June 23, 2013 at 8:29 pm

A Survey by the Mackinaw Center for Public Policy (By the way, if you will click on the link you will see that they are out to protect my "rights" as a teacher. What a joke!)

It has been a stressful year at my school. Between the many illnesses, PLC time, the Common Core, evaluations tied to student performance (Even from areas that I do not teach.), the NOTEBOOK, and other tragedies; it has been a relief to get to the end of this year. I have not been able to post because I have had my time consumed by school related issues and the stress that comes from them. I feel such a sense of relief to be at the end of this particular school year. This is what it is like teaching in Michigan with the constant changing rules and expectations coming from our government. There is a lot expected from teachers today that most people just don’t even realize. Teachers have been beat up by a system that doesn’t respect them and chooses to blame them for all that is wrong with education today. Here in Michigan the push to privatize education is alive and strong. Why anyone could think a “for profit” system is going to be better for children is beyond me. If you think about it, children just become a commodity with a “net loss” value, not worth the effort, because the focus is on raising the profile of the better product. Why would a private organization want to work with a product that is going to cost them more money to put through the system? If they want to make money, they will not be concerned about special education, small class instruction, and doing anything “extra” that might cost them some profit. Our children become merely an incentive for profit. That is the bottom line. America needs to wake up and understand what is really happening in public education. It is about getting more for less and helping some big businesses turn a profit.

Recently, our school chose to privatize the cleaning in all of our schools. I don’t know what the result will be but I do know that good people that cared about our school and community lost their jobs. These people live in the district and even have children in the district. The company that will be coming in will be paying less, so they can make a profit. Everything is down to the bottom dollar. I know our school was required by the state to take bids on certain job areas. My thoughts are that it won’t be long when the teachers are summarily replaced, much like the janitors. We have no special power. We have been beaten down by a system that constantly makes us jump through another hoop to prove that we are good at our jobs, that we still love teaching, and that we care about the kids. There is nothing wrong with having to “perform” so to speak but the goal line seems to be constantly moving and changing. Just when one can think they are doing what is wanted of them, another thing is expected. It is like a constantly moving target that no one can quite hit because just as you are about to score, it moves.

The Michigan House rammed through a bill to dissolve school districts without transferring employees. It is rather appalling to see this kind of legislation coming out of the state of Michigan. Michigan used to be a leader in the area of education. Now we are a leader in government takeover of local districts with no thought given to the voting public. It started with places like Detroit and Benton Harbor. These cities have been taken over by emergency managers. Schools are getting the same treatment. The response from the House Education Committee Chairwoman on the House floor was as follows: “Pigs get fat — hogs get slaughtered.” Her statement is so inflammatory and does nothing to help schools at all. The state of Michigan has cut money to schools drastically since Governor Snyder has been in office. This is the “expect more and pay less” attitude that is the new mantra in Michigan. http://www.mea.org/house-rams-through-bills-dissolve-school-districts-without-transferring-employees

I frankly don’t see how local businesses are helped when employees lose their jobs. Unemployed people cannot do much for the local economy. They can’t spend as much money, so less money is circulated. Wal-Mart is part of this equation as well. It just doesn’t make sense to me that the Walton Family Foundation gives money to the Mackinaw Center for Public Policy, a conservative think tank that really has a stranglehold on current education policy in the state of Michigan. All teachers should be made aware that money they spend at Wal-Mart could find its way up to the Mackinaw Center for Public Policy. Yes, I know we all go to Wal-Mart as it is located to make us all shop there. I stay away as much as I can. Truthfully, none of us should be supporting a business that really believes that privatization is the cure for public ills. Maybe Wal-Mart will open a school if the money is right. With the right profit motive, anything is possible. People need to be aware of these connections.

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/mackinac-center-public-policy

This great debate in education frustrates me as an artist and an art teacher. I am in the business of trying to make people think. The arts push us to a better place. Whether we are painting, drawing, listening or playing music, art feeds our senses. For me it just doesn’t make any “sense” to leave art off the table of the great debate about education. I keep telling anyone that will listen that if you want a job in the future, you are going to have to be creative. If twenty people show up for an interview, I bet the one that stands out for being more creative is more apt to get the job. Of course, this debate really isn’t about the future; it’s about crony capitalism and pushing incentives over to the private sector. It isn’t about the kids, no, once again, it’s just about business.

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Wall Street Wives, Taxes and Privatization

  • Posted on April 22, 2011 at 12:34 pm

Illustration by Victor Juhasz

Whew!  Everyone has just breathed that big sigh of relief that their taxes are done and they don’t have to think about them for another year.  However, we should all be thinking about where our tax monies are going instead of focusing on the two parties that would have us believe that we must slash and burn “entitlement” programs in order to contain this unyielding budget deficit.  I, for one, don’t complain a lot about my taxes and I pay plenty in terms of percent of my income.  I am single with no dependents and I no longer run a business that might help for write off reasons.  This puts me in that tax space of hell that most single people understand.  When I add up all the money I pay for federal, state, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, property taxes and sales tax I could be screaming about the taxes I pay.  However, I don’t because I know that we need roads, public education, colleges, hospitals, airports, police, defense and many other things to make our society run.  I know I pay my fair share of the tax burden.  I don’t need any more and I know that many corporations pay nothing.  I also know that many wealthy people don’t share my percent of the burden.  I’ve been saying that we need to change the tax code so those at the top can do more for our country.  They have more, so they should do more.  After all they use more of these government resources than you or I will ever use.  They use the airports all the time to fly wherever they want to be in the world.

However, what I want to share with you today is how the rich have access to the government in a way that you and I will never have.  They take advantage of programs.  They even get programs written for them so they can dip into the honey pot of our tax payer monies.  Many of us that are old enough, remember John Wayne being paid not to farm.  Yeah, that’s funny.  That’s small potatoes compared to what I recently read in this  Rolling Stone article.  http://readersupportednews.org/off-site-opinion-section/72-72/5564-americas-shadow-budget

The Federal Reserve appears to be at the beck and call of the wealthy superstars.  Even though those wealthy bankers were basically crooks and liars and never had to pay for their shenanigans, we keep forking it over to them and now even, their WIVES!  This is important to read.  It’s from the link within the article about, “Why isn’t Wall Street in Jail?”

Not a single executive who ran the companies that cooked up and cashed in on the phony financial boom — an industrywide scam that involved the mass sale of mismarked, fraudulent mortgage-backed securities — has ever been convicted. Their names by now are familiar to even the most casual Middle American news consumer: companies like AIG, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley. Most of these firms were directly involved in elaborate fraud and theft. Lehman Brothers hid billions in loans from its investors. Bank of America lied about billions in bonuses. Goldman Sachs failed to tell clients how it put together the born-to-lose toxic mortgage deals it was selling. What’s more, many of these companies had corporate chieftains whose actions cost investors billions — from AIG derivatives chief Joe Cassano, who assured investors they would not lose even “one dollar” just months before his unit imploded, to the $263 million in compensation that former Lehman chief Dick “The Gorilla” Fuld conveniently failed to disclose. Yet not one of them has faced time behind bars.

So, we know these guys are crooked and the government knows it too, so what does the Federal Reserve do?  Our government has a “Shadow Budget”.  There is a budget that we see and then there is another one that the Federal Reserve creates.  You must watch this video because it is eye opening.

The Fed books have been opened up and now we are finding out about these secret transactions.  This was brought about by bi-partisan support as the video has stated.  Here is just a snippet from the article:

The Fed sent billions in bailout aid to banks in places like Mexico, Bahrain and Bavaria, billions more to a spate of Japanese car companies, more than $2 trillion in loans each to Citigroup and Morgan Stanley, and billions more to a string of lesser millionaires and billionaires with Cayman Islands addresses. “Our jaws are literally dropping as we’re reading this,” says Warren Gunnels, an aide to Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. “Every one of these transactions is outrageous.”

Here is more:

But if you want to get a true sense of what the “shadow budget” is all about, all you have to do is look closely at the taxpayer money handed over to a single company that goes by a seemingly innocuous name: Waterfall TALF Opportunity. At first glance, Waterfall’s haul doesn’t seem all that huge — just nine loans totaling some $220 million, made through a Fed bailout program. That doesn’t seem like a whole lot, considering that Goldman Sachs alone received roughly $800 billion in loans from the Fed. But upon closer inspection, Waterfall TALF Opportunity boasts a couple of interesting names among its chief investors: Christy Mack and Susan Karches.

Christy is the wife of John Mack, the chairman of Morgan Stanley. Susan is the widow of Peter Karches, a close friend of the Macks who served as president of Morgan Stanley’s investment-banking division. Neither woman appears to have any serious history in business, apart from a few philanthropic experiences. Yet the Federal Reserve handed them both low-interest loans of nearly a quarter of a billion dollars through a complicated bailout program that virtually guaranteed them millions in risk-free income.

Obviously, I encourage you to read the whole article.  I also think we have to press congress to stop this outrageous transfer of money to the wealthy Wall Street fat cats.  It’s Robin Hood in reverse.  We all pay our taxes.  We aren’t crazy about paying them, but we know that we have to pay something to keep society going.  I have no desire to pay for the fat cats on Wall Street so they can keep their cushy lifestyles.  It’s time we all woke up and really learned more about how our government is being run.  Right now we keep getting brain washed into accepting what must happen to those “terrible entitlement” programs because they are truly the problem.  We are also being told about all those “terrible teachers” and of course now those sleepy, good for nothing, air traffic controllers as well.  This is all smoke and mirrors, so they can privatize everything.  It will just give those fat cats on Wall Street one more thing to control.  I ask everyone that reads my blog to just pass this on and think about who the enemy really is.  It isn’t the teachers and it isn’t air traffic controllers that are asked to work all night by themselves without so much as a potty break.  It’s okay for our Vice President to fall asleep because he isn’t bringing in planes but truthfully, who is really at fault for putting these planes at risk?  I can’t help but wondering why we are hearing about the air traffic controllers right now anyway.  Is there some new reason they’re falling asleep or is there something else in the works?  http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/privatization

The next time you hear Rep. Paul Ryan blowing smoke your way, think about the real problems in government and where you tax dollars are being spent.  Here is a quick link for Rep. Ryan from Open Secrets.   http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N00004357&cycle=2010

Isn’t it nice to know that he rakes in so much money from insurance and health professionals?  Of course they will clearly make more money under his big proposal to privatize Medicare and Medicaid?  http://articles.latimes.com/2011/apr/07/nation/la-na-gop-budget-20110408

Now, that I’ve spoiled your Easter with all my happy talk on my blog, have a happy Easter!

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Reinvention and Other Useless Rhetoric

  • Posted on January 30, 2011 at 2:01 am

I'm sure it is not just the GOP, but this is a good depciton of the money cycle.

I keep hearing a strange word over and over in my head, reinvention.  Frankly, it’s just a word but it seems to be the “buzzword” this year in politics.  Governor Rick Snyder used it in his “State of the State” address and President Obama used it in his State of the Union” address.  It sounded interesting that both politicians have chosen to give such similar speeches when they are supposedly from opposing political parties.  The word reminds me of those “born again virgins”.  It’s almost like an oxymoron to me.  How do you reinvent and invention?  I also find it interesting that when anyone thinks of the word “invention” it usually draws to mind some kind of product.  Since we aren’t exactly making any products, what are we trying to reinvent?

I’m picturing the sleazy ex-husband that is desperately remaking his image for his next conquest.  How did that saying go?  Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.  I think that buzzword, reinvention, is nothing more than corporate speak for “privatizing government”.

We have been told so many times that government doesn’t work and private industry does a better job that many of us actually believe this myth.  I see our country being sold out to private industry more and more.  Here in Michigan we better think hard about that bridge the governor wants to build.  I’m all for the bridge but not if it is put in the hands of some private company that controls what goes in and out of our country.    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704590704576092881920953952.html

The details seem a bit fuzzy to me.  I remember fuzzy math and it usually adds up to a headache for the little guy.

My son complains all the time about how the government of Illinois handles licensing.  It seems that they have very few state offices open.  However, you can purchase your license plates, etc. through private industry, but it will cost you much more.  You are paying for the convenience of not having to travel the distance to find an open state office.

This push for privatization has been going on for some time.  Republicans have been trying to privatize Social Security for years.  The military has been holding hands with private corporations for years.  The one thing that I notice about all of this is the high cost of doing business with these private military corporations.  Our politicians seem ready to feed that dragon for a long time to come without worrying too much about how the money is spent or how much is laid to waste in Iraq and Afghanistan.  They don’t even seem too concerned about the millions and millions of missing dollars that have been reported about.

Now the latest trend is to take public education and sell it out to private corporations that are for profit businesses.  This is being done in a rather sneaky way.  First, the schools have privatized everything from janitorial service and food service to substitute teachers.  Its’ all happening and inch by inch it will happen on an even bigger scale.  The push right now for getting rid of tenure for teachers is all part of this plan as far as I can tell.  The past ten years has been an out right assault on public school teachers and their competence.  What ails education is being blamed on the teachers.  The teachers are the scapegoat but it is really just part of the plan to destroy the teachers’ unions.  Truthfully, there are many factors that have had an influence on education.  The biggest factor in my mind is poverty.  The rise to the top of the chosen few and the loss of the middle class have created a growing lower class of people that have probably lost hope for the future.  Unemployment is staggering and many people are also under employed.  Their main priority right now is simply survival.

With all of this in mind what does the president do?  At the state of the union he called once again for the push for science and math education.  The funny thing about this aspect is something my sister mentioned the other day.  She told me I should do a post on what the senators, representatives and other politician’s children are doing for jobs.  She figures they aren’t working in science and math.  We talked about it.  I know Chelsea Clinton works for a hedge fund.  Most of these politician’s kids are probably going where the money is.  I don’t think the money is in science, math and certainly not in education.  The young people that can manage to find a decent job are working in business.  The other ones are doing service jobs like waiting on tables, working in a retail store or working in senior citizen’s homes.  Our young creative minds are left under utilized in a country that sees more value in private industry than in people!

Early this morning I was watching C-Span.  It was some kind of educational meeting that took place this week.  There was a man from Sweden who was part of a private business that had created schools in Sweden that were for profit businesses.  He was over here because he is starting a school in New York City.  I found this all very interesting.  He said people were unhappy with the school system in Sweden.  This must be a world wide phenomenon.  When he opened his first school he had something like 900 people sign up, even though he had no prior proven success.  He said that just showed how ready for change people were.  He wants to do for America what he did for Sweden.  There was also a young college graduate student from Chile.  Chile also has been starting schools created by businesses.

Watching this today made me really think about what’s going on here in our country with education.  The drumbeat has been going for quite some time that teachers are not qualified, that they are inept.  Much blame has been placed on the poor quality of the teachers.  I’m not going to say all teachers are great because obviously there are imperfect people in every job category.  However, it has been my experience that most of the teachers I know are dedicated individuals that want to do the best job they can for the students.  It’s apparent to me that it’s not so much about the teachers as it is about business controlling every aspect of government.  Business has been able to infiltrate into everything we do.  It really is about the bottom dollar.

The common person only has their vote.  Business has lobbyist that caress the politicians and give them the money they need to keep their seats.  What we end up with are corrupt politicians that sound more like businessmen than like statesmen.  The most recent push for business was the health care bill.  Real people don’t seem to be happy with it.  However, insurance companies will be happy with all the new customers they are going to have after all the penalties kick in.  Business has a special seat in our government.  Don’t let them destroy public education with a for profit business plan where the bottom line is profit, not students.  President Obama using a word like “reinvention” is meant to inspire us with nothing more than business laced useless rhetoric.  Don’t be fooled!

By the way according to Dyson he reinvented the vacuum cleaner!

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