Hucksters

These Palins sure are some Hucksters. The daughter with the baby is charging 30k for speeches!

Education: Bloomberg's Biz

So, it may seem as if I'm a little late to the punch, seeing as this NY Times article was posted exactly a month ago, but I'm going to comment anyway. Yes, now that Eric and I are both school teachers in public schools (and dues-paying members of the United Federation of Teachers), I have been paying more attention to news about education. And this story takes the cake for "outrageous" and "idiotic."

In our monthly union meeting yesterday, it was mentioned that New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg is planning on cutting more money from the education budget this coming fall. Basically the equivalent of at least three full-time teachers' salaries per school in the whole district (14,000 schools).

This is in addition to the budget cut he already executed, coincidentally, on the first day I started my new job. That cut was a surprise attack. Since all the schools are linked and receive their budgets through the city, the city can go in and take funds whenever they want. And that's exactly what happened. The budget cut was authorized, happened overnight, and the next morning, payroll secretaries and the like checked their computers to find that money they had already accounted for and/or spent was gone. Oh wait, it wasn't a total surprise. Schools received an e-mail the night before, notifying them that the money would be gone in the morning.

My favorite quote from the article is this gem:

"Mr. Bloomberg, speaking on Thursday at Google’s offices in Chelsea, said the cuts would have 'no impact whatsoever,' adding, 'I know of no organization where you couldn’t’ squeeze out 1.7 percent, or even a lot more.'"


Sure, if you are a company who can raise prices, lower quality standards, or do whatever it has to do in order to sustain itself after a cut like that. But schools don't make a product, they educate students. So maybe each school should tell 1.7 percent of its students they can't go to school there anymore?

Congress To Vote For Christmas

The following resolution has been introduced to the House of Representatives, which means there will be a vote on it. What a cheap political ploy. Check it out,

Resolved, That the House of Representatives--
(1) recognizes the Christian faith as one of the great religions of the world;
(2) expresses continued support for Christians in the United States and worldwide;
(3) acknowledges the international religious and historical importance of Christmas and the Christian faith;
(4) acknowledges and supports the role played by Christians and Christianity in the founding of the United States and in the formation of the western civilization;
(5) rejects bigotry and persecution directed against Christians, both in the United States and worldwide; and
(6) expresses its deepest respect to American Christians and Christians throughout the world.

What about Geol?

Jena 6: The Presidential Candidates

I was wondering what the Presidential candidates, Republican and Democrat had to say about the situation in Jena. Here's what I could find.

Republican candidate Senator Fred Thompson said he didn't know anything about it which was spun buy his people as he wasn't familiar with the term Jena 6. Right.

Democrat Hillary Clinton called into Rev. Al Sharpton's radio show and described the issue as a teachable one for America and said that this kind of injustice cannot be allowed to happen in America.

Senator Obama who was criticized by Jesse Jackson, has compared the plight of the Jena 6 to that of Rosa Parks.

Senator Edwards has called Jena an important measuring point in the fight against racism.

I couldn't find anything from Rudy Giuliani via google or on his campaign site. He did speak to the NRA last week though. Guns!

Same deal for Gov. Mitt Romney, nothing on google, nothing on his site. I even looked at the stupid 5 Brothers blog (the 5 brothers are his 5 sons who are brothers, hence 5 brothers). That blog doesn't mention Jena either but it does chronicle Romney's meals and the Winter Olympics.

Not much from Sen. John McCain, I mean nothing actually.

Well those are the major candidates. Why is it so hard to find statements from the Republicans? I guess the candidates are playing more to the base of their parties leading up to the primaries. The Republican candidates must believe Jena is not important to the rank and file Republicans.

Yearlykos and the Democrats

I am a registered Democrat but I don't consider myself to be a cheerleader. However, one thing worth chering about is the fact that all of the candidates for President on the Democratic side will be attending the yearly convention for the online community DailyKos.

DailyKos is an online diary site consisting of thousands of left wing bloggers who are all free to blog on the main site. It is a pretty left wing group and most of its members are pretty outspoken about the war, health care, and Bill O'Reilly. I mention this to make the point that this influence of the Kos is an example of direct democracy in action. Many of the members of the DailyKos community are like you and me. They are not necessarily involved in specific political campaigns (although many are and the various campaign definitely try to utilize the community to their advantage).

In contrast you have the Republicans who are not even willing to participate in a debate in which the questions come from real people posting their questions via video on Youtube. Honestly, it's kind of a joke that they won't do it. Although, I guess it's no surprise that direct democracy would be lost on them.

The "New" Media, Technology, and Politics

It's no secret that parts of the internet, like blogs and social networks, have become a way for politicians, more specifically candidates for President, to reach out to and turn on a group of people who in the past may have been more difficult to reach and influence. All together, this fact is very good. The more people involved in the system the better, clearly. User generated content like blogs (like this one) are their own media outlets with views unbiased by mega forces like corporations and political parties.

There have been weird and embarrassing stops along the way that show how these politicians and their advisers don't have a real good grasp on how this whole technomalogicamal-internets thing really works, or at least how it is perceived by the people they are trying to reach. And it goes beyond the internet. In what must have been some sort of triumph for an enterprising Obama adviser, a set of wildly ill-conceived ring tones were recently released by Obama's campaign. The Daily Show mentioned it a while back and Huffingtonpost mocks it this week as well. For those who may not know the set of ring tones are generally snippets of Obama talking about Iraq and Healthcare as well as a few "remixes" of his 2004 convention speech. Oh and they are set to music, you know, the rock and the hip-hop. They really are more hideous than you can imagine. One has Obama repeating the phrase, "What I do oppose is a dumb war..." presumably until you silence the dumb ring tone.

The ring tones and the silly You Tube videos are a reminder that while the "New" media and new technologies may be playing powerful roles in politics and elections, the people pulling the strings behind the scenes can get things horribly wrong and shroud the newness of it all in camp and irrelevance.

CNN Responds to Michael Moore

CNN has provided and exhausting, ah hem, exhaustive response to Michael Moore's problems with CNN's reporting on Sicko. Fact checking and fact accuracy besides it is pretty clear to me that CNN's attention paid to Moore was purposefully skeptical if not down right inaccurate for a reason known as...ratings!...that's right, what a surprise.

Anyway, the CNN spokesperson's response, delivered point by point, to problems Moore had with CNN's reporting are insignificant and boring!

Here is an example,

POINT NO. 3:

CNN: In fact, Americans live just a little bit longer than Cubans on average.

"The Truth" (from Michael Moore's Web site):

Just the opposite. The 2006 United Nations Human Development Report's human development index states the life expectancy in the United States is 77.5 years. It is 77.6 years in Cuba

CNN RESPONSE:

Moore cites the 2006 United Nations Human Development Index, which uses life expectancy data from 2004. CNN relied on the 2007 World Health Organization report, which uses life expectancy data from 2005. That data shows Americans with a life expectancy of 77.9 years and Cubans with a life expectancy of 77.2 years.

Uh, give me a break CNN. Way to find a different stat and use it to make it seem like Michael Moore lied or at best simply got his facts wrong. I can't wait until the 2006 and 2007 and 2008 stats come out so we can see who is most right. No one is gonna stop watching you because Michael Moore got mad. Why waste time responding. Everyone knows corporate media is influenced by the corporations that sponsor them. You're not fooling anyone.

Republicans No-Show NAACP

Only one (1? where was Rudy at least, geez!) candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination showed up for a candidates forum hosted by the NAACP. This says a lot about the GOP and none of it is good. Tom Tancredo showed up though. I can't think of any reason, politically that he would do that. Maybe he is just a decent person? This picture says it all.

Ron Paul

Ron Paul is getting a little bit of publicity these days though his poll numbers don't really show much. I suspect in states where anyone can vote in the Republican primaries and those that have high numbers of independent voters Paul will get some decent numbers. Of course decent for him would be 5 percent or so. Don't get me wrong I would never vote for the guy, he is a conservative despite his leanings on the war.

I noticed that his weekly podcast is the third most popular in the Government and Organizations section on iTunes following only Bush's weekly radio address and the National Park Service cast. I suspect that should the Bush administration and leading Republican candidates for 2008 maintain their insane stances on the war and continue to talk about giving the surge a chance and claiming that the surge is working into the fall months, Paul may see an up-tick and at the very least may get a little more attention and time to speak during the Republican debates. Maybe Paul can continue to harass the super hawks and expose the faulty reasoning of continuing the war.