Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Birds of a Feather Trying to Get Rich Quick Together

See if any of this sounds familiar :


  • Zero Tolerance Disciplinary Policy
  • Poorly Trained Staff
  • Massive Staff Turnover Rates
  • Non Union Staffing for Maximum Profits
  • No counseling or Therapeutic Activities for Clients
  • Frequent Financial Mismanagement Due to Lack of Oversight
  • Close Ties to Wall St. and Financial Giants
  • Close Ties to Politicians Pose Major Conflicts of Interest
  • Huge Profits and Long Term Contracts




What are we talking about here kids?  

  1. Blackwater Private Security _______
  2. Halliburton/KBR Inc. ________
  3. Dumbocrats for Ed Reform  ______
  4. NYSED  _______

The correct answer in true Pearson Publishing fashion is 5. None of the Above. These are just some of the amazing features of the terrain lying in the ven diagram of Charter Schools and Privatized Prisons. Amazing how much alike they are both in their obvious profit motive and again in the general disdain and disrespect they show for the trained unionized professionals who were doing the job faithfully long before it became some hedge funder's next commodification. The private prisons in many states promise cash strapped governors millions to help close their budget gaps ands once they get the gov on the line they add a few items to the deal like ten year contracts and a pledge that the prison will maintain no less than 90% occupancy for the duration of the contract. Ever wonder why Arizona came out with a loonie toon law like SB 1070 AKA Show Me Your Papers Brown Man? It went hand in hand with the Governor's Chief of Staff serving on the staff of CCA one of the two largest  for profit privatized prison operators in the country. So the private prison companies were allowed to essentially write the laws that would fill their prisons and maximize profits? Yeah that's pretty much what they found out at NPR.

And does it seem slightly askew that here in New York State the Department of State Education is staffed by an annointed privatizer schooled in the art of privatized ed by his predecessor who tapped him and smeared his forehead with the charter Chrism before bawling a hearty See Ya Suckers and taking his golden parachute into the lucrative and filthy world of edubiz? Steiner gives King the decoder ring and all the bat codes then leaps into the arms of the corporate scum he's been pimping for for years anyway. King and Cuomo get Sammy the Rat Hoyt on the phone who digs up another neophyte fresh off the AAA reformer circuit where she's been licking envelopes at Democrats for Ed Reform and reading Trigger Laws for Dummies by under the naked bulb of her spartan garret dwelling. O.k. maybe she was still living with Mom and Daddy, I don't know but the rodentious one had crossed her path and they agreed that education funds needing some serious redistribution. So she packed up her B.A. in Sociology and all of her teaching cred which fit neatly on the pointed end of her Obama4EdReformers badge and Katie Campos came to Albany to write up teacher evaluations. Yes, she who has never taught a dog to beg let alone a kid to read, was handed the staggering task of evaluating professionals in a role she's never embraced, emulated or shown the tiniest scrap of respect for. I hate to pick on Sammy and Katie but don't you think the way she did a D.B. Cooper once she got to Albany all but screams "Hide her she is totally unqualified and has no background in any of this?" 

And sorry eduformers but your game is the same. You and these dirtbags at CCA are about one thing and it doesn't have anything to do with rehabilitation or education. It's money. You commodify human beings and use them to line your pockets. If your schools are so fucking great where's your evidence? You've had a decade or more to blow us out of the water and all you've done is enlist lobbyists, career political hacks and greedy yuppies to try and punch a hole in our hull. That isn't working either now is it? The pushback is coming slowly and more surely every day. Teachers are refusing to do your stupid testing and enrich your edutest buddies, parents are stepping in and telling you where to shove your goddamned tests. And the tiny but spiny state of Vermont is working in a scarily grass roots manner to cobble together legislation that will ban the state from using private out of state prisons in any future incarcerations. In Vermont they are gathering in living rooms and church basements. If you ask me that's pretty damned grass rootsy stuff, unlike the hundreds of fakeass "parent revolution" front groups the profiteers have scattered around the country in an attempt to make people think parents buy any of their shite. So enjoy the waning minutes of your Warhol 15 eduprivatizers, as the insurgency continues and more and more Americans wake up to the privatization lie you might want to start looking elsewhere for your next scheme. It's not too late to get in on those Florida houses built with Chinese drywall? Hmmm...

5 comments:

  1. I followed the link you provided and what an eye opener! If you replace "prisons" and "prisoners", and the names of the corporate privatizers, you could say pretty much the same thing about the frontal attack on public education.
    The hype, the lobbyists, the politicians, are all the same!
    Even their advertising, their source of financing, the greed, the lies, ..all similar.

    When the government owns all the "corporations:, and the serfs..er ..workers, all eke out a basic livelihood, it is called Communism.
    What will we call it when the corporations own all of the government
    and the "workers"..er..serfs work two jobs for minimum wages ( no unions to contract for benefits).

    I am thinking of "oligarchy", "plutocracy", "dictatorship", and synonyms for those options, and what comes to mind is "friggin' gawd awful mess!"

    Since there is no well funded lobby advocating for Public School Education, I guess we are "up that creek", unless we get more "grass rootsy" in every state, as they are doing in Vermont and Seattle.

    The Charters come in to the inner cities, skim off 5% of the kids for their schools, leave 95% of the kids to fend for themselves, make already underfunded public schools pay for each child they register, and that is a good thing?...
    For whom? Not the 95% and the communities they live in. So then...for whom?

    You "nailed it" again, Sean!





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  2. Peg...the perplexed one :|February 9, 2013 at 5:22 PM

    Off the subject;

    Did the Chameleons and other chaters put themselves in the group og private and parochial schools last week when the "Train or Bus" rolled into town to celebrate "Choice" week?

    Does that mean that they KNOW that they are "private" schools ...using public money).

    Over the whole country they "choo choo" in with their 14 destinations. Are we cursed to have nine of their stops in New York,or was it five here and nine for the other 49 states?

    Their picture was right there with the real private schools that are not scamming the taxpayers.

    Just wonderin'

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  3. Peg ...the sort of humble one :)February 9, 2013 at 5:31 PM

    Sorry for the typos...typing is not one of my most admirable accomplishments. My editing also sucks.

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  4. Peg,
    Here is another fine example of the privatizers ripping off the taxpayers for profit. I am just recently finding out about the "opportunity scholarships", reformspeak for vouchers. Here is what Diane Ravitch recently had to say:
    http://dianeravitch.net/2013/01/11/vouchers-do-not-reduce-educational-inequity/

    "Vouchers were once thought to be a dead issue in US education. Voters have turned them down again and again. The public dislikes them so much that even Republicans are afraid to use the V word. Instead, voucher programs–always enacted by legislation, not by voter referendum–are always called, euphemistically, “opportunity scholarships.”"

    Now look at the most recent nonsense from Hannya Boulos of Buffaloreformed. She "proposes the provision of publicly funded school choice scholarships to students in failing schools."

    http://www.buffaloreformed.com/index.php?src=blog&srctype=detail&blogid=84

    Here is another doofus in the Buffalo News calling vouchers "Freedom accounts"!
    http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130116/OPINION/130119402/1117

    Vouchers are now given all manner of crazy monikers. Just google opportunity scholarship for a start.

    It is ALL simply an attempt to take money away from public schools. Give the money to privatizers and/or religious schools.

    Sad.

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  5. Hare,
    Thanks for the many sites...I'll be there tonite.
    Gone all day to Knox farm mansion with 10,000 other folks...long day.

    ReplyDelete