October 14, 2015

Entire Tennessee school district closed because of Obamacare.

From Jen Hayden's diary at Daily Kos. This is unbelievable, but real.

Tennessee official offers mind-blowing explanation for abruptly closing entire school district

A Tennessee school district is making the news after it was announced the entire school district was closing up until further notice due to lack of funding. It is unimaginable this could happen in the United States, right? Especially so abruptly, in the middle of the school year, leaving parents and students in a lurch.

Clay County Director of Schools Jerry Strong has offered an explanation for the shocking closure. Inept management? Nope. Inability to pass local taxes to support the school? Oh, no way. The head of Clay County schools says the whole thing is due to Obamacare:

"Clay County's inability to generate the revenue to offset the mandates is what's caused this to come to a head," he said. "The straw that broke the camel's back was really the Affordable Care Act for us and it has made it very difficult for us to have our employees properly covered and meet the mandates of the law. That was going to require new revenue and the commission felt like they couldn't do that through a tax increase."

Strong said the county commission, which funds the schools, has declined to increase property taxes and a proposed wheel tax referendum vote won't take place until March.

Thanks, Obama! Through your insidious plan to get affordable healthcare for educators, you have forced their hand. For a party that once touted themselves as the "party of responsibility," they sure seem lack any personal accountability for their own misdeeds. Clay County, Tennessee residents aren't doing themselves any favors here either. Consistently identified as one of the most impoverished counties in the entire nation, they've turned extremely Republican in recent years. The district, which Vice President Al Gore once represented, has gone "severely conservative" in recent years. The county went overwhelming for Romney in 2012 (62/37) and they elected Tea Party Republican Diane Black to Congress in the "Tea Party wave" of 2010.

For now, Clay County residents appear to be reaping what they sowed. It is just too sad that the biggest losers in all of this are the children of Clay County.

October 14, 2015

Jake Tapper, Don Lemon call Facebook a place for "kids". "Kinda big with the kids." Putdown.

Yes, I am including the video from You Tube from GOP War Room site. It's the only one I see because this segment of the combined CNN/Facebook poll appears to have been taken down by CNN.

Strange how Jake Tapper and Don Lemon keep referring to the voters on Facebook as "kids". Tapper says it's "kinda big with the kids." All ages on Facebook, so it just sounds strange

Regarding the debate Lemon keeps saying "all the kids are talking about it". Says it several times.

I think it is weird. I think probably the reason behind it is to make the huge numbers on Facebook not matter because it is a bunch of "kids".

Lemon and Tapper are NOT stupid people. Correction Tapper is NOT a stupid person. They know perfectly well that people of all ages inhabit Facebook.

This is the media we face as we continue through the primaries. They seem to be all pre-programmed to say stupid and silly things. They really do think we are stupid.

I would like to think Jake Tapper is using sarcasm, but it does not come across that way.

October 14, 2015

It really doesn't matter who media declared as winner of debate. It was good for Bernie.

It was good for our party.

Disclaimer: I do not care who "won". It was a great debate. I think it was a mistake for the main media sources to so suddenly and loudly proclaim that Hillary won. It was not fair to either candidate, and it was done so quickly it had a "ready-made already-decided" air to it.

We are not the only ones finding it hard to reconcile that Bernie appears to have won the debate in all the big online internet polls. The fact that Hillary was immediately declared the winner by the media was not only noticed here, at Daily Kos, and elsewhere.

I found the comments at the end of this article interesting.

Bernie Sanders says debate performance prompted $1.3 million in donations

To show just a few:

8:17 AM EST
I watched the entire debate, something I have not done in over 20 years. Having read what some of the media "saw" I have to wonder - what debate were they watching? It certainly wasn't the debate I watched. What I saw was Bernie Sanders unfailingly addressing the real issues this country faces. What I saw was a very rich Hillary Clinton demean everyone of us that is not rich by suggesting she has had the same kind of struggles and experiences - like making such a big point that one of her son-in-laws is a FACTORY WORKER for goodness sake. I saw Sanders say - point blank - health care (not insurance) for everyone. I heard Clinton suggest possible help for those in poverty, the rest of us are on our own. I heard Sanders defend - no EXPAND - Social Security. I heard Clinton suggest SS doesn't need to be cut. I saw a Sanders that was genuine, believable, and impassioned.

Another:

Two things were very clear. Sanders won on content, stomping Clinton in every post-debate reader poll. And the media handed the victory to Clinton.

Another:

6:19 AM EST
Every single poll every focus group. I mean just every single metric had Bernie winning and I guess this is another clue. But yet all the articles say Hilary won, CNN said she won and disregarded their own focus groups and poll number that had Bernie at 81 to Clinton 13. Its incredible.

There are others at the link in the comments.

I just don't think they did Hillary any favors by announcing that she won so quickly. It really did show up the pre-planned mind-made-up nature of the corporate media we deal with. It made the media look bad.

Proud of Bernie getting so much national attention, so that made him the winner of getting himself noticed.

October 11, 2015

EB-5 Visas, charter schools. Law passed in 2000 near end of Bill Clinton's presidency.

The EB-5 visa has a lot to do with the huge amounts of money being given to charter schools. Public education in America is suffering because of it.

Silence no more.

Thanks to a little discussed law passed in 2000 at the end of Bill Clinton’s presidency, Banks and Equity firms that invest in charter schools and other projects in underserved areas can take advantage of a very generous tax credit, as much as 39% to offset their expenditure in such projects. In essence, that credit amounts to doubling the amount of money they have invested in just 7 years.. Moreover, they are allowed to combine that tax credit with job creation credits and other types of credit, and collect interest payments on the money they are lending out-all which adds up to far more than double in returns.

And it’s not just U.S. investors who see the upside of these investments. Rich donors throughout the world are now sending money to fund our charter schools. Why? Because if they invest at least $500,000 to charters under a federal program called EB-5, they’re allowed to purchase immigration visas for themselves and family members, yet another mechanism in place to ensure that the money keeps rolling in.

More implications of this visa from Fortune Magazine.

The dark, disturbing world of the visa-for-sale program

Increasingly, the skilled and the poor are out of luck. But the rich are another matter. The program (EB-5 is short-hand for the government’s fifth employment-based visa “preference”) allows well-heeled foreigners to leap to the front of the line by simply plunking down $500,000.

.....Today EB-5 commands bipartisan support—and it’s booming. Believers tout the program as a “win-win-win” that helps immigrants and U.S. workers, and provides valuable investment in American communities. A trio of billionaires—Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and Sheldon Adelson—recently endorsed the program in an op-ed column in the New York Times.

.....The EB-5 program isn’t overseen by a financial regulator but by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), part of the Department of Homeland Security. Accustomed to processing visas and conducting immigrant background checks, USCIS is ill-equipped to review business plans, job- creation studies, and securities offerings. The SEC retains the power to police fraud. What that means is the agency has no mechanism to sniff out a problem until it has exploded, at which point the agency can only clean up the mess.

Excellent article but very long. A few excerpts do not do it justice.

The Florida charter school industry has been especially hit hard by these visas.

Chinese expected to invest about 90 million dollars in Florida charter schools in 2013

Chinese investors are taking advantage of the EB-5 investment visa program, the so-called "green card via red carpet," by putting millions into Florida's charter schools and an aquaculture farm in Central Florida.

Under the EB-5 program, through investments of at least $1 million — or $500,000 for "targeted employment areas" — foreign nationals are able to obtain legal residency in the US so long as the money they invest will help secure or create at least 10 full-time jobs.

A group of Chinese investors have put $30 million into the state's charter school program to date and are looking to invest three times that amount in the next year, Ilona Vega Jaramillo, director of international business development for Enterprise Florida, the state's economic development arm, said in a US-China roundtable discussion last week.

She would not name any of the investors, citing confidentiality.

I just did a search for some more up to date articles, but not much at all about charter schools since 2012.

I did find this page showing some of the EB-5 projects in SE Florida.

Southeast Florida EB-5 Regional Center

OUR REGIONAL CENTER

Southeast Florida EB-5 Regional Center, LLC. is an approved EB-5 Regional Center by the "Department of Homeland Security" and the "United States Citizenship and Immigration Services" (USCIS) and has the authority to offer investment opportunities to qualified foreign investors who wish to invest in our Regional Center projects in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami/Dade counties , and other counties with USCIS qualified projects in the State of Florida.

Our projects are I-526 "Shovel Ready Exemplar" approved that provides for faster processing our investors.

This program is known as the "EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program" of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS).

MISSION

Southeast Florida EB-5 Regional Center will promote job creation, economic growth and increase domestic investment by aligning capital within specific investment projects in targeted geographic areas in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami/Dade Counties in the State of Florida. We may review and approve EB-5 projects outside of this area within the state provided they meet the guidelines of the USCIS for EB-5 Visa Program.

A couple of pictures at the link, with no further explanation as to whether they are present or future projects.



EXTRAORDINARY LEADERS ACADEMY PRIVATE CHARTER SCHOOL



CONTINUING CARE RETIREMENT COMMUNITY (CCRC)

And from the first link in the OP:

I much agree with this statement.

Any questions about why Charters are so popular with the wealthy? Any questions why the wealthy insist on supporting Charters even though the research is quite clear. Ever wonder why it is next to impossible to get any statistical information out of charters?

Money cures conscience!

So how in the world in that big money investment of 90 million plus in Florida charter schools coming along? Well....

Florida’s big charter school problem (which Jeb Bush manages not to talk about)

Fast forward to 2015. Has anything changed? Not much, according to a new exposé on Florida charter schools, this one done by the Sun-Sentinel, with the headline: “Florida’s Charter Schools UNSUPERVISED — Taxpayers, students lose when school operators exploit weak laws.”

It says that in the past five years, 56 charter schools in South Florida have closed because of mismanagement and/or other issues, and that “a handful” of them “owe a total of at least $1 million in public education money to local school districts” but because districts have a hard time documenting spending, the amount could be much higher. The story says:

Unchecked charter-school operators are exploiting South Florida’s public school system, collecting taxpayer dollars for schools that quickly shut down.

A recent spate of charter-school closings illustrates weaknesses in state law: virtually anyone can open or run a charter school and spend public education money with near impunity, a Sun Sentinel investigation found.

Florida requires local school districts to oversee charter schools but gives them limited power to intervene when cash is mismanaged or students are deprived of basic supplies — even classrooms.

Once schools close, the newspaper found, districts struggle to retrieve public money not spent on students.

Not going so well.

Unfortunately the names of the EB-5 half million dollar donors must remain secret. It's at times like the long distance landlord, I imagine.

October 8, 2015

Arne Duncan's left many scandals behind as he leaves. Billions to charter schools....

unaccounted for.

From May:

Feds failed to keep tabs on $3B in aid doled out to charter schools. 3 billion?

The federal government shelled out $3.3 billion over the past 20 years to launch new charter schools nationwide, yet failed to monitor how that money was used, a new report has found.

Federal spending to launch charter schools zoomed from a mere $4.5 million in 1995 to more than $253 million today, according to the Center for Media and Democracy, a liberal watchdog group — with President Obama now asking Congress for a whopping increase to $375 million for next year.

And that’s on top of billions of dollars state governments spend for charter school operations.

Yet the new report concludes there is “no systematic public accounting for how the federal budget allocated to charters is actually being spent,” and “major gaps in the law allowing waste and fraud.”

.....The U.S. Department of Education doesn’t even bother to keep a public record of which charter schools get money from more than a half-dozen federal programs, said Lisa Graves, director of the Center for Media and Democracy. Her organization had to review thousands of pages of documents obtained through Freedom of Information Law requests before it could coming up with an initial tally of federal charter school spending.

Now FINALLY Arne Duncan being mentioned in regards to this mess. He's going back to Chicago, but the guy who's replacing him is just as bad. But that's another story.

The Ugly Charter School Scandal Arne Duncan Is Leaving Behind

Arne Duncan’s surprise announcement to leave his post as secretary of education in December is making headlines and driving lots of commentary, but an important story lost in the media clutter happened three days before he gave notice.

On that day, Duncan rattled the education policy world with news of a controversial grant of $249 million ($157 million the first year) to the charter school industry. This announcement was controversial because, as The Washington Post reports, an audit by his department’s own inspector general found “that the agency has done a poor job of overseeing federal dollars sent to charter schools.”

Post reporter Lynsey Layton notes, “The agency’s inspector general issued a scathing report in 2012 that found deficiencies in how the department handled federal grants to charter schools between 2008 and 2011” – in other words, during Duncan’s watch.

Even more perplexing is that the largest grant of $71 million ($32.5 million the first year) is going to Ohio, the state that has the worst reputation for allowing low-performing charter schools to divert tax money away from educational purposes and do little to raise the achievement of students.

It's pretty bad when a former Democratic Mayor of Ohio writes Duncan a letter about such funds.

Ted Strickland, an ex-governor and now Democratic candidate for a U.S. Senate seat in Ohio, wrote Duncan a letter telling him to reconsider the Ohio grant. “Too many of Ohio’s charter schools are an embarrassment,” he states. Strickland quotes from a recent study showing charters in his state perform significantly worse than public schools. He points to a recent scandal in which the person in the state’s department of education responsible for oversight of charters had to resign because he was caught “rigging the books.”

October 8, 2015

Rahm's hand-picked public schools ex-CEO faces criminal charges. $23 million no bid contracts..

from CPS to her former employer.

Ex-CPS CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett, 4 others charged in contract scheme

The former CEO of Chicago Public Schools, Barbara Byrd-Bennett, has been criminally charged in connection with allegedly steering more than $23 million in no-bid contracts from CPS to her former employer, authorities said Thursday.

Byrd-Bennett — Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s handpicked choice — becomes CPS’ first CEO to face criminal charges in connection with her job. Federal authorities have been investigating the most controversial of those contracts — a $20.5 million no-bid CPS deal for principal training, the largest in recent memory — for more than a year.

Receiving that contract in 2013 to train principals was The SUPES Academy, owned by former Niles West High School dean Gary Solomon and his former student Thomas Vranas. It generated controversy at the time because SUPES was not known for training principals while many other, respected organizations did that very job. The deal continued to draw criticism as some educators questioned the quality of SUPES’ training.

......The feds allege that Byrd-Bennett, 66, and Solomon set up a kickback scheme, detailed in emails, in which Byrd-Bennett would get money in exchange for steering the CPS contracts to SUPES and Synesi.

.....According to the indictment, on April 29, 2012, Solomon sent an Byrd-Bennett saying, “When this stint at CPS is done and you are ready to re re re retire, we have a spot waiting for you. Hopefully, with even more work and more opt. In the meantime, if we can figure out a way to do deep principal PD at CPS, I can find a good home for (friends of Byrd-Bennett's) and others, and make sure principles (cq) in CPS get kick ass training with kick ass teacher and kick ass coaching.”

This was public money which could have been used for public schools that have been closed in Chicago.

October 7, 2015

FL bear hunt to go on unsupervised. Over 2000 licenses issued, limit 320 bears. Won't work.

Cartoon: @FLGovScott goes a-hunting. Via @BillDaytoons

Video from September:



Some activists are planning on seeking out orphaned bear cubs. Some are planning to "monitor" the bear hunt since the state is pretty much hands off. Video at the link.

Bear hunt activists plan to 'monitor' hunt

Chuck O'Neal, with Speak Up Wekiva, opposes the hunt and sued, unsuccessfully, to try to get it stopped.

"This is a poorly designed hunt," O'Neal said.

O'Neal is concerned that Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officials have no way of making sure hunters have a permit. He is also concerned that FWC can't ensure hunters will bring their kill to a check station to be counted, and that there is no way to make sure females are not killed in front of their cubs.

Also a concern -- that there is no way to let hunters know when it's over.

"We're depending on the citizens of Florida to make sure the hunters know when it's called off and the orphaned cubs are recovered once the hunt ends," O'Neal said.

The group is calling for volunteers to photograph license plates of vehicles carrying dead bears to see if the hunter is on the permit list. The group also plans to blow air horns to notify hunters when the hunt has ended, and they want to track and help orphaned cubs.

October 6, 2015

PolitiFact agrees Bernie was "there" on gay marriage 20 yrs ago. AND Hillary's words from 2004

The recent attacks by Slate and some at DU regarding Bernie Sanders' support for same sex marriage...are just too much. It's expected due to his rise in the polls and the huge crowds he is drawing...but it is not a valid criticism.

Tampa Bay Times Pundit Fact examines Chuck Todd's recent words about Bernie Sanders and his support for same sex marriage.

NBC's Chuck Todd: Bernie Sanders was 'there' on same-sex marriage 20 years ago

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and his presidential campaign serve as an almost constant reminder that Hillary Clinton has not always taken the lead on issues near and dear to the more liberal members of the Democratic Party. She only recently declared that she opposed the Keystone XL pipeline that would link oil from the tar sand fields of Canada to refineries on the Gulf Coast. On same-sex marriage, Clinton’s views evolved.

As PolitiFact has described, in 1999, Clinton both supported the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defined marriage as between a man and woman, and legal recognition of civil unions. By 2007, she opposed DOMA, but fell short of backing same-sex marriage. Then in 2013, she came out in favor of same-sex marriage pure and simple.

Chuck Todd, the host of NBC’s Meet the Press, focused on same-sex marriage during an interview with Clinton on Sept. 27, 2015.

"Bernie Sanders has been where you are on these issues," Todd said. "Bernie Sanders was there when it came to marriage 20 years ago. Do you think one of the reasons he's doing well right now is some progressives think, ‘Well, you know what? He was there when it wasn't popular.’"

PolitiFact called it

Just a reminder of Hillary's words on the topic in 2004. She evolved much later than Bernie Sanders.



And a further reminder of how very far Bernie Sanders, even as Mayor, had evolved in 1985.

From the desk of Mayor Sanders:

October 3, 2015

So Hillary got the NEA endorsement. Did NEA tell the truth about Bernie's campaign? Or not.

Repost..I never found out anymore about this issue of truth-telling by campaigns, unions, and spokespersons. Was Bernie given the same access to the union leaders?

IMO today the NEA came out in favor of replacing public education with charter schools run by private companies without regulation.

Clinton endorsement divides teachers union

Subtitle: State officials and rank-and-file members plan to protest upcoming vote to endorse Hillary Clinton.

When it comes to the national NEA endorsement, however, Sanders’ campaign told POLITICO it did not get the same consideration from union officials as Clinton.

“There was recently a phone interview that was arranged for Secretary Clinton with their board of directors,” said a Sanders campaign official. “That was never offered to us.” An NEA spokesman did not respond to a request for comment about the phone interview.

But the spokesman said that Clinton, Sanders and O’Malley have all met in person with NEA’s president. And on July 2, the NEA reached out to the three campaigns to invite them to participate in a tele-town hall with members. They said Sanders never responded. “After multiple attempts, the campaign failed to respond to our efforts to schedule a time and date for this tele-town hall during the back to school period. Sec. Clinton was the only campaign to respond,” the spokesman said. Sanders’ campaign refuted that claim.

The Sander's campaign says differently.

"Our national field director, Phil Fiermonte, had conversations with the NEA's political director, Carrie Pugh, on more than one occasion and discussed possible dates for a tele-town hall with the senator," Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs said. "To say the Sanders' campaign 'failed to respond' is simply not true. In fact, a request by the Sanders campaign to allow the senator the same opportunity as Mrs. Clinton to speak with the NEA's board of directors was denied."[/blockquote

I predicted earlier that the NEA would endorse Hillary Clinton.

The money from the education "reformers" is vital to unions, it seems.

NEA remains faithful to Gates' funding.

NEA doesn’t directly receive the Gates funding. The NEA Foundation does.

...NEA and the NEA Foundation are two peas, same pod. The NEA Foundation is supported in part via NEA membership dues, and Garcia sits on the NEA Foundation board of directors.

Gates money to the NEA Foundation is Gates money to NEA. For example, consider these two July 2013 NEA Foundation grants:

Date: July 2013
Purpose: to support a cohort of National Education Association Master Teachers in the development of Common Core-aligned lessons in K-5 mathematics and K-12 English Language Arts
Amount: $3,882,600

Date: July 2013
Purpose: to support the capacity of state NEA affiliates to advance teaching and learning issues and student success in collaboration with local affiliates
Amount: $2,446,500

This $6.3 million was paid to the NEA Foundation but directed toward NEA members/affiliates.

The charter school views of Hillary Clinton are well-known, the Democrats have been strongly in favor. Education reform has advanced rapidly under a Democratic administration.

Bernie's education views are not really known yet. He supports public education, I know.

So it's safer for teachers' unions to go with the known.

I think though that members will give their votes to the candidate of their choice no matter who is endorsed.

I would just love to find out who is being honest about the tele-town hall.

October 3, 2015

Bernie: "What we are also talking about is transforming our corrupt campaign finance system"

Email from Bernie Sanders today.

Thank you VERY much for your financial support for our campaign.
When we talk about a "political revolution," we are not just talking about tinkering around the edges of American society.

We are talking about transforming our country in many respects -- the economy, health care, education, the environment, criminal justice, immigration and many other areas.

But what we are also talking about is transforming our corrupt campaign finance system -- a system which, as a result of the disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision, now allows millionaires and billionaires to buy elections and undermine the very foundations of American democracy.

What we have done together so far in this campaign is not only extraordinary and unprecedented, it is transforming American politics. What we have shown is that we can raise over $40 million dollars without having a Super PAC. What we have shown is that we can raise an amount of money which makes us financially competitive by securing 1.3 million contributions from, unbelievably, 650,000 Americans. What we have shown is that we can run a successful campaign without having to depend upon donations from the wealthy and the powerful, and that we can do it with an average campaign contribution of only $30.

Our political system is corrupt. Big Money controls much of what happens.

Together, you and I are changing that.

Thank you again for your support.