Sen. Phil Pavlov is responding like a Pavlovian Dog: Mackinac Center Gollum & Grand Guide Ken Braun delights in the success of political “Puppy Training”

As outlined by Ken Braun, the rad-right has anti-teacher Phil Pavlov by the short hairs. Pavlov is trained to do the destructive work which his handlers have "puppy-trained" him to do. SEE original Mackinac Center article: "Politician Puppy Training"-  What the tea parties can learn from the dog by Ken Braun Dec 24, 2010.

Go out and do something super"nasty for your " control", your TeaPartisan corporate/Chamber handlers/rad-right wingnuts. When the bell rings salivate, bite, and submit destructive legislation just as DeVos's American Federation for Children (AFC), the Waltons, Heritage Foundation, Heartland Institute, and the Koch Brothers (Cato, Americans for Prosperity, etc): demand when they pull an elected official's choke chain.

Doggone if State Senator Phil Pavlov isn't the "best of show", the boneheaded Doberman has an aggressive/negativist attitude; Let's go get a pound of teacher flesh.

In "Michigan Bill To Privatize Public School Teaching Sparks Concerns" on Sept 2, 2011 Joy Resmovits writes:

"Michigan state Republicans said this week they are preparing a package of bills to privatize public school teaching -- eliciting concerns about working conditions and trading academic quality for cost effectiveness.

"The legislation prepared by state Republican Sen. Phil Pavlov, who chairs the state Senate's education committee, would allow private, for-profit companies to compete for teaching jobs in public schools and would limit the power of teachers unions in seeking compensation packages.

"But few specifics are known about the bill package, which has yet to be officially introduced. And Pavlov isn't divulging much more -- for now.

'I don't mean to be vague about this,' Pavlov told The Huffington Post. "I can tell you everything on Wednesday (9/7/11)."

Pavlov did provide a general outline of the plan, but with minimal details.

'This package of bills will increase choice in many facets in Michigan in a way that has been necessary for long,' Pavlov said. 'We want a large comprehensive choice package that includes the expansion of charter schools and dual enrollment, to really put more opportunities in front of parents and students in Michigan.'"

In a one state "depression," Michissippi can hardly wait to find out what "bone of contention" this "puppy trained" Pavlov will trot out to the Michigan Legislature to please his "handlers" and "controllers." The destruction of public education for partisan revenge, and for the purpose of lining the pockets of J.C. Huizenga's Heritage Academies, Michelle Rhee's radical program, et. al.

Taken together this regressive movement constitutes a viral civic evil, it entails the beginning of end for our American Freedoms and way of life. That is freedom from the Koch Bros. American Legislative Exchange Councils coup d'état placing the Corporatocracy in charge of everything public and part elements of the grand "commons" so much a part of American life heretofore.

"A coup consists of the infiltration of a small, but critical, segment of the state apparatus, which is then used to displace the government from its control of the remainder."

Wake up Michigan. A corporatist coup d'état is underway. Your way of life, as you know it will be changed forever if the Corporatocracy (Corporate controlled democracy) they represent should succeed. Our moonfaced Nerd, Rick Snyder, is helpless amid this blitzkrieg of reprisals and instructional destruction/devolution.

There are those who get it, and get very well. From Michigan blogger Eclectoblog on Daily Kos:

"When you have done nearly all there is to do to hurt teachers, what remains? It's simple, really. Outsource their jobs. Privatize the actual education of our children."

"School districts could hire school teachers through a private company, expanding a privatization program already allowed for lunch workers and bus drivers, under legislation being prepared by the head of the Senate Education Committee."

"As part of a significant education reform package sponsored by Senator Phil Pavlov (R-St. Clair), schools could privatize their instructional services, giving district a way to avoid the perceived high-dollar packages pushed by the teacher unions.

"'I look at it as offering options, 'Pavlov said. 'If there is something out there that can offer school officials the same options at a lower cost, schools need to take a look at that. It needs to part of the conversation on reform.'"  

Eclectoblog concludes thusly:

"We really are going over a cliff in Michigan. The main questions remaining are whether or not we can hold on long enough to vote these idiots out of office in 2012 and how much damage they can do to our society until we do." 

This posting drew hundreds of comments in support.

Mackinac Center for Public Policy Director Ken Braun details his Puppy Training/political control mechanism:

"Almost everyone loves puppies, at least until they start making messes on the carpet. With every puppy comes the responsibility of training it to become "man's best friend." The same can be said about legislators. WHILE THEY ARE, OF COURSE, NOT DOGS, THEY DO NEED TO BE TRAINED IN ORDER TO BE TURNED IN TO A VOTER'S BEST FRIEND. While most go to Lansing or Washington to do the right thing, MANY WILL END UP MAKING MESSES that result in less liberty."

"Training legislators, as with training puppies, must be done with care and common sense. Puppies don't learn to bark before going outside because their masters have set an example by peeing in the backyard themselves. That type of 'communication' would just confuse a puppy (to say nothing of the neighbors). INSTEAD, AN EXTERNAL SYSTEM OF REWARDS AND PUNISHMENTS IS USED TO GUIDE THE PUPPY TOWARD DOING THE RIGHT THING."

"THERE'S A LESSON IN THIS FOR TEA PARTY GROUPS WHO SEEK TO COMMUNICATE THEIR CONCERNS TO POLITICIANS. YOU DON'T NEED TO EXPLAIN THE PRINCIPLES OR SPEAK THEIR LANGUAGE TO GET YOUR POINT ACROSS. INDEED, THIS IS OFTEN THE LAST THING THAT WILL WORK."

(emphasis added)

Russia's Dr. Pavlov accomplished a number of studies:

"Further work on reflex actions involved involuntary reactions to stress and pain. Pavlov extended the definitions of the four temperament types under study at the time: phlegmatic, choleric, sanguine, and melancholic, updating the names to "the strong and impetuous type, the strong equilibrated and quiet type, the strong equilibrated and lively type, and the weak type."
-- Wikipedia

What type of temperament types does Sen. Phil Pavlov represent on Dr. Ivan Pavlov's scale?

Outside Michigan, people are becoming highly aware, and are catching on, as to the drastic anti-American heritage uprising the TeaPublicans are fomenting as ideological/fear-filled Mackinac Center, et. al. "puppy trained" Pavlovian dogs.

Ken Braun, Michigan's "Pavolvian "puppy trainer" and and leader of Michissippi's march into regression advocate, is the MacCen's Gollum: "Where would you be without me, gollum, gollum? I saved us! It was me! We survived because of me!"

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TeaPublican/ALEC Tenure Reform: A Michissippian Throw-Back, Let Workplace Harassment Roll

"It was with that first class that I became aware that a teacher was subservient to a higher authority. I became increasingly aware of this subservience to an ever growing number of authorities with each succeeding year, until there is danger today of becoming aware of little else."
-- Marian Dogherty, Teacher, Boston, 1899

Take Me Back to Ol' Time Bossism, Let Workplace Harassment Roll

The changes in the Michigan Teacher Tenure legislation done by a greenpea legislature (where where about a quarter of the elected have not sought or received a degree beyond a high school diploma) have taken the profession back to the days of the late 1800's when Marion Dogherty penned these observations and assessment: "It was with that first class that I became aware that a teacher was subservient to a higher authority. I became increasingly aware of this subservience to an ever growing number of authorities with each succeeding year, until there is danger today of becoming aware of little else." -- Marian Dogherty, Teacher, Boston, 1899

TeaPublicans have been trying their darnedest to heap reprisal and retribution on the teachers and their choice to associate together in a coordinated effort to raise teaching standards and give the profession a solid basis for participation in the act of teaching, employment perimeters and a kind of professional codetermination" in educational policy (This collective bargaining act-with local contracts, creates agreed parties who work together) The giving of the right to collective bargaining legislation was signed into law by Republican Gov. George Romney).

Teachers teach, it the thing which they alone do. It's egregious and wrong that the TeaPubican rabble of Michigan has turned back the clock and chocked the pendulum (in order to serve the interests of the American Legislative Exchange Council the Chamber of Commerce and a myriad of supporting subgroups across America such as: the public school hating Mackinac Center here in Michigan and the notorious and divisive promoters of educational apartheid, Dick and Betsy DeVos and the Amway Clan, not to diminish the anti-public school subversion of the WalMart Waltons, and "for-profit freelances such as Michelle Rhee.)

The archaic power to hire and fire teachers "at will"( the 19th century industrial model) has been restored to administrators; who have been saddled with a overweening unnecessary demand, in revised law, to "evaluate" teachers on a intense schedule, in a not-so-hidden effort to weed out the "ineffective" amongst them. We all know the bottom lines: Increased intimidation and control, and replacement of experienced teachers with high salaries with newbies with much lower. The ability to conduct short term rollovers of staff is put in place. None of this assures anything less than the gradual erosion of educational achievement in Michigan.

This undefined term "ineffective" so hastily passed by anti-teacher foes, and now left to insider, smoke-filled legislative caucus/committee action, to flesh out and delineate what that term of choice "ineffective" may mean and how the process of "removing" those instructors whom a non-certified administrator SUBJECTIVELY DECIDES TO RELEASE or DEMOTE, takes form is yet to be decided. The entire question regarding "due cause" goes back to the"right-to-fire-at-will" process/setting observed by Marion Dogherty, Boston, 1899, a teacher is meant to be subservient and docile: "I became increasingly aware of this subservience to an ever growing number of authorities with each succeeding year, until there is danger today of becoming aware of little else."

Dealing with disruptive bullies and students lacking concern for their own educational progress-in this new Michissippian throw-back atmosphere-is a tough assignment; it takes teachers back retrograde to those ruffian times of "Let's get our teacher fired." This same tenor now exists in the adversarial relationship between administration and teachers; codified and put into law under the recently legislated tenure reversals imposed by Michigan Republicans.

If this be REAL education reform: Let's give up WiFi and limit ourselves only to the telegraph! Teachers will be judged on their proficiency-with slate and chalk.

Forced by Landrum/Griffith Act, co-authored by Sen. Robert Griffith-R of Michigan, teacher professional associations were constrained and forced to act as part of the more traditional frame/definition; a "union." New federal regulations were put in place that dictated changes that made the teaching profession more synonymous with "rank & file" industrial unionism than with the American Bar Association or the AMA.


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Déjà vu All Over Again

Great teachers pack up and go somewhere else for the duration of a noxious "silly season"-the era of "teacher bashing," obstructing, and de-funding of public education. It's a radical rightist, pro-profitization agenda that hangs over Michigan like a black cloud of doom.

Hopefully you'll be able to return at a later time, but it will be years before Michigan will be once again ideologically hospitable to "great public school teachers."

Posted earlier in "Great Teachers: Pack-up & Go":

"Great teachers are intelligent, they are caring, and they are insightful. They know that a state legislature such as the TeaPublican radical rabble now in control of Michigan's education funding and legislation (made brazen by a complete majority in all 4 branches of State government) is no friend of theirs. TeaPublicans are highly primed to do harm to public education armed, early on, by the Engler Revolution which seized and destroyed local school control and funding. Militantly marching onward, TeaPublicans have now shown they are bitter and implacable enemies of the mission and goals of a true mentor-teacher of children."

The reality is such that smart college graduates will find a professional life in a more cultured and less-antagonistic and anti-government locale, far away from the provincial taunts hurled in the hostile manner of these Know Nothings of Michigan.

The civic sins of our past are heavy now. The way out and back to what Snyder mocks as the previous "status quo," the healthy normal, is nowhere in sight.

Like Engler, Snyder proudly touts his snide attack on what he derides as the current "status quo"- the peaceful and productive civic order we all depend on.

Now the lesson. What is meant by an attack on the Status Quo? It is an effort to cause trouble, challenge the status quo, disturb the balance, make a stink, upset the apple cart. Further, it is A CONTRIVED EXCUSE TO DO HARM to vital parts of our civic structure and tradition, all for short-term political and ideological gain.

Are these the types of disruptive social attitudes we really need in Michigan at this very critical time? Whatever happened to consensus, co-operation and collaboration between the powers that be and those who teach our children.

Great teachers teach, but perhaps not near so many (will choose to teach) in Michigan, currently under such virulent disrespect and dishonor as displayed by the TeaPublicans now in power in Lansing.

Follow Up: On the program, Hardball, Chris Matthews asked former U.S. Secretary of Education Bill Bennett, a while back, the all important question. What should school teachers earn? BENNETT REPLIED GOOD TEACHERS SHOULD BE PAID $80-85,000.

Final Note: Excerpt from our Previous Posting (11/21/10) "Coming Michigan Teacher Shortages":

"It will not be long and Michigan will again be desperately seeking new teachers to fill jobs that were passed over by bright and cautious graduates who will take up their careers in other states more teacher friendly and more progressive than the retro-Michigan dominated by muckrakers at the Mackinac Center and those who back their political mud runs."

Meanwhile In Meltdown Michissippi
As the reams of news articles begin to come in, reflect on the terrible social and civic sins of this vengeful Governor and his subservient super-majority of wingnuts, the public will be rightfully repulsed and very angry; ready to back recall various efforts.

What a terrible mistake the TeaPublicans have made! They set out to kill public education to please vicious vixens Michelle Rhee and Betsy DeVos-hyper-critics and nascent profit-takers, intent on harvesting millions of dollars from the implosion of public schools-as we, the public, have loved and supported our cherished neighborhood schools for generations.

As Nietzsche warned: "Beware of those whose urge to punish is strong." The nation is beginning to see the deconstructive dirty work of DeVos/Rhee and understand it is top-loaded with "punishment."

Cry too for our communities that surround and depend on the wonderful public school for local economic and social survival.

Alas, it will be too late for an entire generation of school children, just now being thrown to these selfish wolves. Kids are being unpardonably neglected by those TeaPublican ideologues (led about like sheep by powerful national partisan and corporate forces, such as the Brothers Koch), Neo-antichrists, and tax-haters. The Snyder led TeaPublican Super-Majority have become A.L.E.C. cyborgs who would not, could not, collaborate and work cooperatively with educators to make Michigan whole and good again.

This outrage is unacceptable to informed citizens and local business leaders who care about hometowns and historic institutions in a genuinely conservative, Christian manner.


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