Our Great Friends the Dumbocrats Do One Thing Right and Three Things Wrong.

Seriously? 

Can anyone tell me whose idea it was for Regent Collins to invite Lord Byron to take over Buffalo Public Schools? I'm wracking my brain to come up with an answer but I'm drawing a big fat blank. Remember friends, Collins was the political favorite of Carl Heastie and all the insider Dumbocrats who promised to take care of us by sending Old Bob Bennett out to sea on that Lake Erie ice floe we picked out for him on his 120th Nameday. John Licata was somehow seen as less desirable than Collins even though he served for years as the only sane and sentient member of a Board of Ed whose portrait should have been painted by Hieronymous Bosch. The Dumbocrats unloaded Regentus Flatulentus but brought in another liver maculate Septuagenarian who supports high stakes testing, thinks Common Core is the bees knees and now opines that handing over the school system to Mayor Squarepants is just what the doctor ordered. Wait, whut? Do Regents in New York have to be walking the razor's edge with senility or is it possible that a person under age 70 could make a sound decision for kids and education?  Just asking. 

And it gets better. In the meantime, Marc $350K NYSUT Campaign Donation Pannepinto along with Tim Right to Life Until Cuomo Says Otherwise Kennedy and Skippy Bitchslapped By Meryl Tisch Ryan have all flung themselves atop the Byronization pyre. Again, I remind both of my readers and you too number three if you're paying attention, these are Democrats -- you know the great allies of teachers, the ones who automatically get endorsed because everyone knows the Republicans are on the side of ownership and management but the Democrats are on the side of the workers. Right? Isn't that how it goes? Yeah I know, it used to go that way and if you read Salon the other day they even talked about The Right attacking public education. I love Salon and they have been getting the charter/privatization debacle right longer than anyone else. But even they fail to note that this is not exclusively a right wing, Republican attack. For years now, the Neo-Liberal White House, the Neo Liberal Governor of NY and all of their corporate dependent Dumbocrat pals have been raping unions, attacking teachers and fellating hedge funders and others who show up with a checkbook and say  "Dance,bitch." Watch Pannepinto, Ryan and Kennedy shake their pasty white asses while NYSUT makes it rain teacher dollars. And after the money is tucked into their G-strings they shuffle off and do whatever the hell they please. Including handing over control of the Buffalo Schools to a marginally capable mayor who ran unopposed and appointed politically wired cronies to the top spots in the Police and Fire Departments. 

 Pannepinto and Kennedy both voted NO on the Cuomo anti teacher budget but quickly erased any good feelings a teacher might have towards them by tying themselves to this Mayoral Control bill. Skippy Ryan, another of Arthur Goldstein's aptly named "Heavy Hearts Club" voted YES to Cuomo's budget yet thinks he can weasel his way around his voting record now by acting like he gives a rat's ass about Buffalo Schools. Fact is none of these clowns huddled with anyone I know and said Hey BTFers, we think we can outflank the Board Majority by turning the Board over to Byron Brown, what do you all think of that? What concerns do you have about it? What suggestions do you have for us about how we might go about it? Nope. Not one word with anyone I know who teaches kids in a classroom all day. Nobody had any input into any of this. They call themselves our elected representatives and pay obnoxious amounts of lip service to the concept of representing their constituents. But who exactly are they representing with this maneuver except themselves and their fucking useless Democratic Party pals? 

I'm saying as far as I know this crew had no conversations with anyone in a classroom. What I can't say for sure though is whether or not they had conversations with anyone in NYSUT or any other union that might have an interest at stake here. If that turned out to be the case and we learn that someone above the rank and file whiteboard teacher grunt gave Collins, Kennedy, Pannepinto and Skippy and wink and a nod to go ahead and push for this, we'd have to take a long hard look at who we're allowing to "represent" us. It's one thing for Albany based hacks to sell us out and act on their own with no regard for our concerns. But if anyone connected to our own union in any way signed off on this we'd be in a very dire situation. I'm hoping nobody did but it's hard not to wonder.