Dead End/Bad Trade Off: Profitazation or Abandonment of Detroit’s Public School Children

Specious envy surrounds the sacred role of a teacher at a low period when unjust criticisms are being hurled about, as they are so often now days.

The kinds of snide remarks popping up in this blog are typical of the anti-intellectualism which has haunted the country from long ago and consistently undercut its greatness. Much of the anti-public schools spiel has the dark undertow of Michigan's historic KKK.

With all the puffery about the public wanting only the "best and brightest" to enter teaching, and knowing the uncertainty and vicissitudes of the occupation; why would an extremely bright young person go into teaching? Especially, as teachers now know, that one major political party, Michigan's GOP, has dogged and derided the profession (coming from every level from the Reagan Presidency on down, over decades) with every sort of encumbrance, criticism, and financial or legislated penalty that could be devised or contrived. Literally they are attempting to undermine public schools to de-certify the teacher's unions; and convert public schooling to a profit making industry via charters and vouchers- a monstrous blunder tainted with educational apartheid.

People Love Their Public Schools, They Are the Heart and Soul of Many A Community Communities celebrate the sporting events, the homecomings, the high achievements of PS science clubs and other extra-curricular activities. They follow their graduates progress into all manner of successes and higher achievement. And, of course, many graduates become teachers themselves. So many so that, there are hundreds of applicants for a single opening in schools--when schools are hiring.

How proud a parent is to say or learn their daughter and/or son will take up teaching! 

How welcome a new teacher is at the mortgage department of the local bank or as a new member of a place of worship; or as so many eventually do, a teacher becomes an elected local official or civic board member. Kill that spirit at your own peril, you mumbling detractors!

After 20 years of fierce and unrelenting Republican and "Anti-Tax" Libertarian attacks, cuts, and trash talk, the public still loves the schools. They respect teachers world's better than the politicians and far-rightist pundits who perennially attack and purposefully undermine public schools as an institution. Who are these greedy and cynical hacks-whose feral skills are on the prowl to tear it down the PS?

So many people say, "I owe it all to my teacher." What a testament to teachers! Teachers are the true heart of historic social acculturation and the proud soul/mentors at the core of this venerated institution. Except for inner cities, some depressed rural areas or isolated small communities, the Michigan school facilities are much better than those I have closely observed in Virginia or any number of other states.

Across Michigan, we take pride in our local schools. We really do want our children to have the best opportunities possible. Until Engler, the one very fundamental axiom of classic Republican scripture was local school control, which in Michigan was taken from us, ripped away by rouge Republicans in a bold manner in 1993. Now we see and realize the danger and the error of that plot. State control of local school funding is undependable and subject to the nastiest of politics and very anti-student.

The sad thing in all of this is, Nolan Finley. Finley has had moments when he was an advocate, supporter, and even a collaborator with MEA and public education. An important fact considering his own immediate family members, his daughters are members of the teaching profession.

Albeit, Nolan works for newspaper tycoons who have a very aggressive and dangerous ideological attitude/slant against public education. Such an un-civic attitude doesn't build good will, it doesn't foster cooperation; it cuts to the heart of the promise of our nation--a free and excellent education--underwritten by the public at-large.

The long dismal decline of Detroit is a humiliating, humbling, and a sadly tragic blotch on the pride of all Michiganders. The city's public schools reflect the systemic decline and despair of its trapped population, rather than produce that state of affairs.

Now comes the lowest suggestion, depraved conclusion of one Nolan Finley, "DEMO" DETROIT'S PUBLIC SCHOOLS: "DPS can't be saved. It pushed beyond the tipping point years ago, and must be allowed to slide into oblivion."

Aggressive Profitazation of public schooling as a new "disaster" capitalist's scheme: Profit at the direct expense of Children and their mentors. Don't even dare to call it "good for kids."


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Lord, Melt the Heart of the Stone-Coldhearted

Oh how insensitively Republicans disavow the poor and disadvantaged, including those forced by life-experience circumstances into poverty!

Ask your house of worship, at the next call for "special prayers," to intercede in prayer for a new sense of empathy from 3 heartless legislators who would inflict more pain and suffering on the souls of state's helpless and the distressed. Ask the Almighty to restore to them a renewed sense of human caring and loving empathy.

Just how did neophyte legislators,(the lead: a woman committee chair) TeaPublicans, become shills for mega-Banksters? Talk about bad timing! Who put them up to this and why?

It is hard, if not impossible, to believe that a newly-elected state representative could have the temerity to have just run a campaign that would actively include advocating a cutting down of constituents in her own district; real people, in such financial woe as to be, approaching foreclosure and calculatingly advocate against them in such a cold-hearted and faith-less way. How could she have said, "I hear your distress," The answer to your troubles is to call on your bank and plead with them to cut your foreclosure protection period in half. (That's cut the time you have to rearrange your mortgage or find a way to recover. The collapse of response time will go from 6 months down to a scant 3 months. Expedite she says, not elevate your distress. That kind of action doesn't make for a friendly coffee-stop campaign pitch out on the hustings; especially during this era where Michigan is in the throes of a "one state depression." But the public knows. It's a bill "very inspired by the (finance) industry" reports Karen Merrill Tjapkes with Western Michigan Legal Aid.

But no, stop, listen up! Look at what's happening here.

How heartless and cruel are these newly empowered, self-aggrandized members of the TeaPartisans' current "reckless abandon majority" led by Rick Snyder, the Stonecold Nerd: Michigan's new Corporatist Knothead.

"And no plague shall come neigh your dwellings" cold, imperialist ladies? Many bankruptcies and foreclosures evolve around unemployment and chronic or fatal/terminal illness which has/or is rapidly draining away the resources of many a desperate Michigan family.

One who has experienced, first hand the clammy desperation of such a catastrophic cataclysm of financial ruin will quickly realize that such is the lot of many others. Don't we see the glass canning jar at the local fuel/quickstop that has taped upon it a picture and a plea for small donations to fund a bone morrow donor or give a small hand-up to a family burned out of everything. Foreclosure is a dread bane for far too many of those of us in real life, but not apparently in the lives of these three newly elected TeaPublicans.

But just a moment...one of the three legislators, shills for Banksters, boosting for a legislated, shortened-by-half, foreclosure period is no stranger the kind of terrible distress and financial trouble can cause. She is witness to terminal illness and eventual death within her family circle. She knows the pain and sorrow first hand and has personal knowledge that her family had access to generous insurance coverage given-for-life to a former state legislator and lieutenant governor. It's generous coverage to ease or cover those huge cancer-related and/or other catastrophic medical expenses one may eventually face. She's the daughter of Snyder's current director of legislation; one who is still in a period of mourning himself. And still this grieving legislator would crack down on others far-less fortunate by far?

Pray, how can this be?



Original Post.

Greedy Bros Koch-Bought & Paid for Visi-Galts: The Randian Libertarian Spawn - Gleefully Storm the Gates of the People’s House in Lansing, MI

Commentary on Americans for Prosperity arranged Tea Party Rally in Lansing on April 14, 2011.


Greed mars man's earliest defiant quip was a departure from God's plan for mankind: "Am I my brother's keeper?"

Today, haughty and aggressive mavens and devotees of a "godless" Ayn Rand dain to gather on the Lansing capital lawn to demonstrate, to the bodaciously broadcast to the entire populace the grand scope of their rebellion against paying their rightful share in civic order and loudly lauding their pride in personal irresponsibility.

Tea Party rogues should be contributing citizens and taxpayers-problem solvers not trouble makers! Responsible Citizenship is vitally important to the common good of Michigan, local community and brotherhood.

Dick Morris and the "GOING GALT" - "JUST LEAVE US ALONE" rabble have captured the Michigan Republican Party. 

The threat that Tax Party rabble rousers have engendered is purposeful, it is intended to force a "John Galt" rebellion on Michigan thereby inflicting harm on the institutions of the state, turning away the needy, the poor, the elderly, and further punishing the already unemployed (400,000) with less help. This rally calls for a somber dirge, not a wild-eyed celebration of Know Nothing triumphism by radical tax-haters.

Perchance we ask, why shouldn't some delusional individuals be caught up in the current angst, anger and confusion? We've seen such before. We are now being reminded of other cults that arose in the land, that had in their misshapened mindsets. Cultist ardently belived in revolutionary "good they would do" in compliant submission to the exaggerated perception created by their cunning leaders. Such cult movements have arisen out of a yearning for a "shortcut" to more personal power outside the rules and order of democracy and the rule of law which underpin a just, functional, and caring society. We have recently been reminded of other cults e.g. the Ku Klux Klan which marched, 17,000 strong, on Lansing in the 1920's to express their anger and fear, attempting by doing so to call attention to their regressive agendas. This recollection is not to equate the Koch created and owned Americans for Prosperity, Dick Armey's Teapartisans, and associated groups gathered today with the Klan per se; it is but to warn; extravagant and radical deviation from the personal part we all must play in the welfare of our community and stubborn withholding of our caring attention to our fellowmen are on the slick and selfish path to chaos and ruin.

"Going Galt" is going to godless ruin! 

Be warned. We should not glory in repeating the error of serious destabilizing regression into the annals of dangerous ideologies in the regretful past. Tearing down is much easier than building up. Neglect of civic institutions and proper government is much easier, and less costly than their proper maintenance and enhancement.

Ayn Rand's Visi-Galts, marching on Lansing today, are entirely convinced that they and they alone can make things "better" by cutting down America and Michigan-as we have known it. They are activated because they feel their property and assets are threatened by government and the hated tax. Fixing things civic is not in their toolboxes. They are radical "Taxhaters." This could, and can only, happen because of the Wall Street/Bankster economic crisis (brought on by complete and utter dedication to the worship of Corporate Selfishness and Greed) has undermined our nation's stability and way of life. It is true: There is great turmoil and there are great fears. These Tea Party/Koch Libertarians, political usurpers, all glory in their opportunity created by this great historic economic crisis.

The Visi-Galts, the Teapartisan/civic barbarians, fervently denying personal responsibility to the community, selfish and greedy, thrive on fear and aggression which enhance their campaign. Disaster Capitalism suits Teapartiasns in their delusions.

The Tea Party rally today is a neo-pagan bacchanalia; a bold display worshiping their "godless" goddess, Ayn Rand, creator of the factious John Galt. - It's an UGLY & UNHOLY veneration of SUPER SELFISHNESS drawn across the background of our monument: The Peoples'House.


Original Post.

Just-Leave-Me-Alone Tea Party Hero John Galt Be Praised: The High Hypocrisy of Galt’s Creator, Ayn Rand

Commentary on Michigan Tea Party announcements of showing Ayn Rand movies, and upcoming Rally run by American for Prosperity in Lansing on April 14, 2011.
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Just-Leave-Me-Alone Tea Party Hero John Galt Be Praised: The High Hypocrisy of Galt’s Creator, Ayn Rand, Who Died Ignominiously Swaddled in Her U.S. Government Benefits of Social Security & Medicaid

St Ayn didn't die nestled with her fabled John Galt in her imaginary mountain enclave, known as "Galt's Gulch." She took Government subsistence.

Rand took benefits under the name Ann O'Connor (her husband was Frank O'Connor). Thus the harsh, arch-anit-social welfare activist and critic died swaddled in U.S. GOVERNMENT HEALTH CARE AND SOCIAL SECUITY!

Tea Party's, "godless" St. Ayn expired bestowed with full government entitlements. This Tea Party false heroine none-the-less will be lauded on Lansing's capitol steps tomorrow. by the nefarious Dick Morris. How bogus is that?

Ayn Rand: 

"The only proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breaches or fraud by the others, to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law. But a government that initiates the employment of force against men who had forced no one, the employment of armed compulsion against disarmed victims, is a nightmare infernal machine designed to annihilate morality: such a government reverses its only moral purpose and switches from the role of protector to the role of man's deadliest enemy, from the role of policeman to the role of a criminal vested with the right to the wielding of violence against the victims deprived of the right of self-defense. Such a government substitutes for morality the following rule of social conduct: you may do whatever you please to your neighbor, provided your gang is bigger than his."

- Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)

In St. Ayn's view accepting government assistance and social programs (paid for by the general public to serve us all in our old age or hour of greatest need and fewest/depleted resources) is the to give into an act of a "gang" that is "bigger" than the individual. It must be the lone man, standing alone, who must to be a true man. That ideal man, Galt, must be the sole source of his own destiny and welfare. The government, in Ayn Rand's eyes, as expressed by her rugged individualistic fictional hero, John Galt. (Now the main character in the new and much ballyhooed Tea Party/Libertarian cult film: Rand's Atlas Shrugged, just released) is "a nightmare machine designed to annihilate morality (a specialized definition by Rand espousing "selfishness as a virtue, and egoism as the highest achievement of her view of "morals.")

In Rand's Atlas Shrugged, the government, when it puts regulations and lawful restraint upon the intense and selfish purposes of man or corporations, takes up the "role of man's deadliest enemy" and most significantly Rand's assertion leads to her false conclusion that by extracting taxes from John Galt, St. Ayn's fictional, rugged entrepreneural individual, government is "welding" coercion and force, via its police powers, to collect taxes.

Washington Independent's David Weigel reported the following from "Ask Dr. Helen" Smith and others the subject of Atlas Shrugged:

"Smith (who is know for resurrecting the Galt Theme) was a little ahead of the curve of what has become an incredibly popular meme. Across the broad conservative movement, from members of Congress to activists to economists, Rand's final, allegorical novel is being looked at with fresh eyes. According to the Atlas Society, a think tank that promotes and analyzes Rand's work, sales of "Atlas Shrugged" have tripled since the presidential election.

"One congressman says that Rand wrote a "rulebook" that can guide conservatives through the age of Obama; another calls Obama's policies something right out of the mind of Rand. One economist says that Rand's fantasies have become reality. "Smith is one of many activists citing Rand to explain their decisions to sell their stocks, or to explain why the president's "demonization" of run-amok CEOs is aggravating the economic slowdown. The popular meme is giving critics of the president's policies a way to explain why, they believe, it's doomed to fail - because Rand predicted all of this.

"'...Rep. John Campbell (R-Calif.)- in an interview with TWI, 'I had a guy come up to me in my district and tell me that he was losing his interest in the business he'd run for years because the president wanted to punish him for his success. I think people are reading 'Atlas Shrugged' again because they're trying to understand what happens to people of accomplishment, and people of talent and energy, when a government turns against them. That's what appears to be happening right now.'

"The plot of Rand's novel is simple, despite its length - 1,088 pages in the current paperback edition. The United States is governed by bureaucrats, 'looters' and 'moochers,' who penalize and demonize creative people. The country is in decline because creative people are disappearing - they have followed the innovative John Galt to a mountain enclave, 'Galt's Gulch,' where they watch society crumble. Creativity has gone on strike (the working title of the novel was 'The Strike'), and the engine of capitalism cannot run without it."
Ayn Rand's Intellectual Dishonesty and Rank Hypocrisy: When the reality of cancer and pending death faced her, she willingly applied for and accepted the U.S. Government social programs: Social Security and Medicare."

Joshua Holland, writes the following in an article "Ayn Rand Railed Against Government Benefits, But Grabbed Social Security and Medicare When She Needed Them THE TEA PARTY AND THE RIGHT":

"'Ayn Rand was not only a schlock novelist, she was also the progenitor of a sweeping 'moral philosophy' that justifies the privilege of the wealthy and demonizes not only the slothful, undeserving poor but the lackluster middle-classes as well.

"Her books provided wide-ranging parables of 'parasites,' 'looters' and 'moochers' using the levers of government to steal the fruits of her heroes' labor. In the real world, however, Rand herself received Social Security payments and Medicare benefits under the name of Ann O'Connor (her husband was Frank O'Connor)."

St. Ayn was a hypocrite, but she could never be faulted for failing to act in her own self-interest. As Michael Ford of Xavier University's Center for the Study of the American Dream wrote:

'In the end, Miss Rand was a hypocrite but she could never be faulted for failing to act in her own self-interest.'

Her ideas about government intervention in some idealized pristine marketplace serve as the basis for so much of the conservative rhetoric we see today. 'The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand,' said Paul Ryan, the GOP's young budget star at a D.C. event honoring the author. On another occasion, he proclaimed, "Rand makes the best case for the morality of democratic capitalism.'

Wrote Rand in a 1972 newsletter:

"'Morally and economically the welfare state creates an ever accelerating downward pull.'"

------

Journalist Patia Stephens wrote of Rand:

"'[She] called altruism a 'basic evil' and referred to those who perpetuate the system of taxation and redistribution as 'looters' and 'moochers.' She wrote in her book 'The Virtue of Selfishness' that accepting any government controls is 'delivering oneself into gradual enslavement.'"

Rand Capitulated to the Lure of Collectivism

Rand also believed that the scientific consensus on the dangers of tobacco was a hoax. By 1974, the two-pack-a-day smoker, then 69, required surgery for lung cancer. And it was at that moment of vulnerability that she succumbed to the lure of collectivism.

Evva Joan Pryor, who had been a social worker in New York in the 1970s, was interviewed in 1998 by Scott McConnell, who was then the director of communications for the Ayn Rand Institute. In his book, 100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand, McConnell basically portrays Rand as first standing on principle, but then being mugged by reality. Stephens points to this exchange between McConnell and Pryor:

"'She was coming to a point in her life where she was going to receive the very thing she didn't like, which was Medicare and Social Security,' Pryor told McConnell. 'I remember telling her that this was going to be difficult. For me to do my job she had to recognize that there were exceptions to her theory. So that started our political discussions. From there on " with gusto " we argued all the time.'

"'The initial argument was on greed,' Pryor continued. 'She had to see that there was such a thing as greed in this world. Doctors could cost an awful lot more money than books earn, and she could be totally wiped out by medical bills if she didn't watch it. Since she had worked her entire life, and had paid into Social Security, she had a right to it. She didn't feel that an individual should take help.'"

Rand had paid into the system, so why not take the benefits? It's true, but according to Stephens, some of Rand's fellow travelers remained true to their principles.

"Rand is one of three women the Cato Institute calls founders of American libertarianism. The other two, Rose Wilder Lane and Isabel 'Pat' Paterson, both rejected Social Security benefits on principle. Lane, with whom Rand corresponded for several years, once quit an editorial job in order to avoid paying Social Security taxes. The Cato Institute says Lane considered Social Security a "Ponzi fraud" and 'told friends that it would be immoral of her to take part in a system that would predictably collapse so catastrophically.' Lane died in 1968."

Original Post.

Things That Make a Governor Great

First, what's the Governorship Not About?

It is not about power...
It is not about ambition...
It is not about profit...
It is not about instituting arbitrary/dictatorial authority over local communities...
It is not about retribution or revenge...
It is not about looting the public's investment in civic institutions...
It is not about sanctioning the majority to abuse or undermined the rights of the minority...
It is not about putting profit and loss above the public good...

What's the governorship all about? Statesmanship.

It is about community and our children--the future!
It is all about credibility- expressed in constructive public policy.
It is all about serving to protect and enhance the commons, the natural resources.
It is about modeling honor and respect for the historic achievements of human and individual rights.

It is about protecting the weak, the poor, the elderly, and the victims of crime, the disadvantaged, and the mentally ill; and it is about defending the public servants who serve them.

It is about the deeply human spirit.

It is understanding that sacred sense of the high office and knowing the hearts of the people of your state, coupled with a driven sense of leadership that encompasses the broader and deeper spiritual sense of the "common welfare of all."

In a word, it is about doing the right thing in good times and bad. Acting on an equal basis regardless of race, class, achievement or life circumstance, putting people ahead of enterprise, denying favoritism and powerful players, for the good of every soul dwelling within one's state; so help you God.


Original Post.

Quote: What kind of system is it when...

"It is recognized by its determination to covert all public services to private entrepreneurship; all non-profit organizations to profit-making ones--so that the narrow but protective chasm between governance and business disappears.

It changes citizens into taxpayers--so individuals become angry at even the notion of the public good.

It changes neighbors into customers--so the measure of our value as humans is not humanity or our compassion or our generosity, but what we own."

--Toni Morrison, Nobel Laureate & Author