Holy Tomatoes! Detroit News' Nolan Finley Plays Catchup

In response to Nolan Finley and those on the right attempting to spin the story that it's supposedly President Obama and Dems not the GOP that has been using 'social issues' to gin up votes.

Sez Brother Finley in "Obama milks social issues" (Obama gave Romney an implied snuggy) on May 11, 2012:

"Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney again took the bait, allowing himself to be drawn into this discussion. So again the campaigns are debating divisive social issues instead of fiscal policy. That plays to Obama's strategy of painting Romney as an extremist and avoiding having to answer for the economy."

Catch up to reality, Nolan. This is exactly what Republican Svengalis have been so artfully doing for decades; beginning under the nefarious tutelage of Newt "the genius" Gingrich or so he was labeled by friendlies until Newt crossed that thin red line and was tossed.

Rich Men Ride while the Rest of Us Run: Corporatocracy
and Income Inequality is THE current 'social issue'.

No one, no party, no group, no clique, no organized political faction does a better job milking the essence of divisive issue politics than the Republican Party; so weakened that the GOP can be taken over by the wealthy elites like the the Koch Brothers, the Club for Growth, various Christian Dominionists, religious and racial bigots, and radical militia elements (gun nuts) until the once sensible and civic-minded Grand Old Party is no more. Poof! Think Ike.

Let Ted Nugent go on wallowing in hate and incitement to mayhem; as evil as he is, he 's only a "scare'jim'crow" archetype of a certain redneck gnarl of lawless tyranny that smirks across the nation. Nugent's part of a cohort of wild and reckless men, dark alley troublemakers, civic hoodlums. And don't they love the trouble they incite... the attention they get!

For decades Newt Gingrich's distraction & negativatization of language made useful for undermining civil discourse has prevailed in the dark hearts of the "Hard Right," as former President Gerald R. Ford labeled them during the Pat & Bay Buchanan dominated 1992 GOP National Convention. It was at Houston where Pat Buchanan declared religious and cultural war on the nation. As a direct result George H. W. Bush, the standing president, high right off the First Gulf War 100 hour victory, when down to stunning defeat to William Jefferson Clinton.

From "Ford tells Gingrich He'd Better Tone It Down" by AP reporter Lawrence L. Knutson:

Ford believed Gingrich should leave "partisan attacks" to others. "One thing that speakers have to understand is that the speaker is speaker for the House. You have to keep that high-level attitude and let the partisan attacks come from your majority leader.... The Speaker (Gingrich) is better advised to stand back." Ford went on to say that looking at the wider future, he believes that if the "extreme-right" partisans within the GOP control the party's policies and dictate who is the candidate... "the party will lose at the polls."

Note: This account also appeared in the Grand Rapids Press, June 2, 1998 and is still spot-on for the 2012 election cycle.

Social Issues Aside: Our National Troubles & the Great Bush Recession Have Created Vast New Opportunities for Unscrupulous Business Opportunists & Scammers

The aggressive CORPORATOCRACY (see the expanded definition from Wiki below) had better get out their act together and begin to restore the rule of law in financial and banking affairs. So far they haven't. The plague created by Citizens United will make this a very reprehensible election season; bar none.

Corporatists were quick to sense an opening, an "opportunity" and they seized it. They have profited immensely from the great disturbance in the economy brought on by the buffoonery of George W. Bush, the Lesser. (The man no Republican can bring themselves to mention in favorable light.) The Bush TARP and the bailouts have put stunning amounts of cash in the coffers of bankseters and Wall Street schemers and shysters'; amounts so large and so excessive as to be incomprehensible in light of in historic perspective. Are we angry? You bet we are!

War profiteering has egregiously enlarged the holdings/coffers of Dick Cheney and Neo-Con Cronies.

Things are still in need of repair and restitution.

Corporatocracy for Idiots

"A corporatocracy is a situation in which corporate bodies interact with sovereign power in an unhealthy alignment between business and political power. In a corporatocracy an elite upper-class, maintains ties between business and government, sometimes by lobbying efforts or funding political advertising campaigns, or providing bailouts when corporations are seen as too big to fail, for the purpose of controlling government and dictating policy to serve its financial interests.

"A corporatocracy is viewed as anti-democratic or opposed to democracy or used to describe situations in which democracy has been manipulated negatively, sometimes resulting in a passive citizenry and subservient media.

"A corporatocracy represents what some see as economic exploitation, and the concept has been used to explain bank bailouts, excessive pay for CEOs, as well as generalized complaints such as the plundering of national treasuries, people, and natural resources. The concept has also been used by critics of globalization, sometimes in conjunction with criticism of the World Bank or unfair lending practices, as well as criticism of free trade agreements which, according to these claims, move high-paying jobs overseas.

"The term corporatocracy is a negative term, likened pejoratively to cancer, fascism, and Orwellianism, perhaps because, according to this view, business-government ties are seen as secretive, lacking transparency and accountability. The elite engaging in corporatocracy is sometimes termed the 1 percent."

Source: Corporatocracy on Wiki (Be sure to click on all the footnotes to this piece. Go from ignorant to informed.)

So Nolan, fearless thought leader, it's time you play catch-up. Pocket your rotten tomatoes, stop our carping, and do something substantive, pro-active about saving Michigan and America. You can begin by restraining yourself from "milking social issues" and move toward a sound economy and a restructuring of taxes so as to save Michissippi's middle class. Put aside your poison pen, and take up your Habitat for Humanity hammer, rise early, move out to save the day for a family in need. It would be a start.

Dump the tomatoes. Catch-up Finley, catch-up!

On the Reader:
List of Responses to Nolan Finley on the Gazette (Topic DATE):

• High up in Jim Crow’s Nest: Constant Cawing Incites Civic Upheaval by the Detroit News - Michigan View (General Idiocy and use of Racial Undertones February 2012)
• Nolan Finley: Maniacal Warmonger? (General Idiocy and Violence September 2011)
• Dead End/Bad Trade Off: Profitazation or Abandonment of Detroit’s Public School Children (Education June 2011)
• No National Honor Given Finley: Taking Down Detroit’s Public Schools is a Civic Crime (Education May 2011)
• Snyder, the Socialist, Takes on Local Democracy Calling it a "Status Quo" That Needs to Be Radically Re-invented.(Ideology April 2004)
• Honest Abel “AWOL” in Michigan just as in Wisconsin (Ideology March 2011)
• A one nostril false grunt from Nolan: It’s not my pigs that stink (Ideology June 2011)
• The Detroit News is "Tapped Out" (Taxes and Ideology February 2011)
• Nolan Finley Rocks Local Detroit High School With His Decision to Teach English to Sophomores (Education December 2009)
• Raw Revenge Raises Its Ugly Head (Education December 2009)
• An Additional Dollar a Day... (State Budget and Ideology November 2009)
• The only place a teacher gets a fair shake in the Detroit News is on its obituary page (Education June 2009) 
• Finley's Right Wing anti-teacher Crusade: A man with a forked tongue and a flaying pen (Education October 2009)

Related Slates:
More on Corporatocracy and the Republican Party on the Gazette.


Original.

High up in Jim Crow’s Nest: Constant Cawing Incites Civic Upheaval by the Detroit News - Michigan View

What is the cure for the angst infusing The Detroit News' Jim Crowism? First let's look at their loud rancorous screeching spreading race related fear.

Detroit News' Jim Crower answer for Detroit's inner city, according to Gannett's select cynics, is to starve them out, cut them off from assistance, send more to prison, force them to become religious, make life/survival so miserable and oppressive they will either behave, or move away. Or it may be, take over the infrastructure and force social change by total economic dictatorship via Emergency Management , [a system akin to "embezzlement by fiat," (authoritative order)] by which TeaPartisans have legalized and enacted targeted legislation which effectively cheats the citizens of urban Detroit out of their city's assets and valuable infrastructure via legal and corporate cannibalization. (Think privatize for profit: Cobo Hall, corporatize and privately operate Metro Detroit's International Airport, push the Detroit Waterworks under suburban control/ownership, strip the Detroit Institute of Art of its treasures, etc.)

Iconic Civil Rights photo by native Detroiter the late Bill Hudson (AP/UPI)
of Firefighters turning their hoses full force on demonstrators July 15, 1963 in Birmingham, AL.

The use of the "police-power" of law and enactment of radical legislation to set back and derail voter rights and disfranchise citizens of color shanks citizens who once had the right to be equal partners in their own governmental affairs only since the late 1960's (and then only by Supreme Court Order and Congressional action).

This is wrong. Dangerously wrong.

Jim Crowers certifying a permanent underclass by default: We now have a tribe of individuals so much isolated, inbred, cut off from the culture and the wider thinking, the manners and morals of the greater society of the state of Michigan as to be crassly and effectively become classified (by the Jim Crowers) as "homo sapiens detroitsis urbanus." A de facto mythical, degrading classification for a morphological, politically differentiated population.

So out of those in the universe of the Jim Crow crowd (race fearful who create by editorial slams, thinly disguised diatribe, and prejudice) arises a strong case for creating a de facto new classification of Detroit's inner city human beings (using the power of their media). It makes perfectly svengali sense. Theirs isn't a collaborative, progressive or humane effort. Their goals are not charity and human understanding or compassion. They strive outrageously for only political and cultural advantage. They seek a "bar talk" milquetoast excuse for their racial indifference and separateness.

The Jim Crower's use of statistics, alarming anecdotal news stories, religious conclusions, or ideological prattle has made it easy to practice and separate out an entire population from, and aside from, the vastly superior "others" they believe themselves to be. The Jim Crow branding of urban Detroiters as the mythical, deridable "homo sapiens detroitsis urbanus" is not only wrong, it is ultimately evil.

Segregation's bitter taste in the Jim Crow South (National Archives)

Such de facto labeling becomes a means by which to justify the harsh and aggressive attitudes and laws now being created to control and subjugate their economic and social gulag. It becomes a means of avoiding contact, fostering further isolation, and inveighing against and diminishing the necessary and vital economic underpinning for any hope for a better tomorrow no matter how long it takes to arrive.

"Ita finitima sunt falsa veris, ut in præcipitem locum non debeat se sapiens committere"-
"Falsehood often borders so nearly on the truth that a wise man should not trust himself to the precipice."
-- Cicero

Detroit has effectively become a TeaPartisan "Plantation" and its inhabitants are being relegated to a sub-standard group of disinherited citizens (indentured servants, or worse) who are considered and characterized by Jim Crowers unable or unwilling to fend for themselves. As a lawless and amoral society( as often described by Jim Crowers) there is a need for dictatorial leadership and direct executive control of the kind that comes down from Gov. Snyder and Andy Dillion via the all encompassing powers delegated to the Emergency (Finance) Manager.

Do these savants understand what they have done to themselves by the way of taking on the ongoing ownership and sole responsibility for Detroit? What then?

-----

The Business Leaders for Michigan, Rick Snyder, and the TeaPublican faction of the Michigan GOP aren't capable of staying the course to any reasonable outcome. It's an unmitigated and endless democratic disaster if future efforts in terms of state funding and personal investment (in pro-active involvement don't far exceed past efforts by these elements) are not put in place. Snyder's Detroit re-invention may be the perfect academic "worse case" study for poly sci majors far into the future.

The Crow's Nesters need to heed sage advice- "ex vitio alterius sapiens emendat suum - from the mistake of the other man, the wise man corrects his own."

Parting Note: Gannett's published stance published via its editorial statement, printed 1958, presented The Detroit News as a publication that is "consistently conservative on economic issues and consistently liberal on civil liberties issues."

Where is The News today based on this stance? Anyone's guess. But it's crystal clear currently "civil liberties" have been "consistently" put aside.


Background Reading: 
Recent examples of these behaviors on the Detroit News/Michigan View by Nolan Finley - Michigan is breeding poverty (February 12, 2012) - If life's cheap, murder's not news (February 5, 2012) - Michigan to end welfare as a career choice (October 7, 2011) - The three I’s of Detroit's decline (September 19, 2010) and by Henry Payne - Send 'em to Cranbrook (January 17, 2012) - The real crime (January 17, 2012) - Peters’ failed compassion (October 4, 2011) - MackGOP: The Republican fence (September 25, 2011) - Welfare trap = wealth gap (August 25, 2011 ) and an old piece by Payne in the National Review "Eminem’s Real Detroit" (November 18, 2002).  Also last posting by "the Blog Prof", aka Chris Kobus, now a frequent contributor on the Michigan View (WARNING Disturbing Content).

On the Reader:
Responses to racism on the Gazette - "RACE as the GOP’s Dog Whistle Political “Tool”" - "Michissippi: A Rotten State of Affairs - A Brief Overview" and "Déjà Vu (Part 2): Buchanan's Pitch of Racial Undertones - "Suicide of a Superpower" a GOP Dog Whistle"

Original.

Nolan Finley: Maniacal Warmonger?

Response to Nolan Finley in "Bombs instead of bells on 9/11" on September 11, 2011 in the Detroit / Mackinac News.

Is Nolan Finely a warmonger? Or is he truly a thoughtful , sane person? We would like to think the latter. But, when we are fed his diatribe about bombing 3,000 places to avenge the more than 3,000 lost on 9/11 one is put to wonder. (Finley: Bombs instead of bells on 9/11, 9.11.11).

Let's take a quick review. The 19 hijackers/suicide pilots who mounted the 9/11 attacks were mostly Saudis and a few Egyptians . To follow Finley's logic the United States should have bombed Riyadh or possibly Mecca. There are so few significant targets in Saudi Arabia other than oil wells, pipelines, oil storage tank farms, and such. As for Egypt; should we have bombed Cairo, Alexandria, the Aswan High Dam, or for full effect how about the Sphinx or one or two of the great pyramids.

Just what did the vengeful, let's-get-even, Finley, man of our collective opinion, have in mind?

For an editor with readership amongst a significant Middle Eastern/ American population as large and nearby as greater Dearborn; what is the proper way to state or recite one's personal, decade's-long angst, the kind that Finely is confessing he's feeling? Bomb 3,000 separate targets in the Middle East?

The very thought is irresponsible and unworthy. No great paper should allow itself to project such a terrible proposal, even if it be maniacal fantasy or fantastical. We have been denied photo journalism showing the heinous disfiguring carnage and slaughter of our bombing and white prosperous warfare events on the local populations- so called collateral damage-victims. What we have seen, that which is very limitedly available, is utterly disturbing and repulsive to every human instinct, sense, and emotion. And Finley would have more of the same?

We went to war. Two wars. Two wars we are still engaged in conducting. We did terrible things to prisoners. We lied to the world via the United Nations about Iraq. We have been involved in the killing of tens of thousands of civilians in the war zones. We have two men, a former president and a vice-president who dare not travel abroad for fear of being "Pinocheted" arrested and tried in the World Court as war criminals.

Today Associated Press's Paisley Dodds reports:

"Britain's universal jurisdiction law allows British courts to prosecute foreigners accused of crimes against humanity, no matter where the alleged crimes were committed. The principle of the law is rooted in the belief that certain crimes - such as genocide, hostage-taking and torture - are so serious that they must be addressed wherever a suspect can be detained." 

The Brits have just now chosen to amend this jurisdiction. However, other European countries have not relented on prosecution of war crimes and other crimes against humanity.

What Finley would actually do cannot be determined. He will never have the "red football" nor the power to push the button engaging bombing all of those 3,000 places he dreams need death and destruction in-kind for what happened on 9/11. But Nolan is so brazen as to say: Next time we should threaten "we'll flatten your miserable countries and everybody in them." Finley can't possibly mean Egypt and Saudi Arabia, or does he?

Wake up Nolan; the past is now history. The future is ahead. Mistakes were made. Evil was done in the name of all Americans.

Your daydream of bombing 3,000 targets in the lands of the actual hijackers home countries parallels the game plan aired by Talk Radio's fire breathing blowhard Michael Savage, who would have declared Baghdad's Sunni Triangle a kill zone and "bombed it back into the Stone Age."

We know you Nolan, you're no Savage.

Original.

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."


Original Post.

Suffer Detroit's Little Children to Become Victims of For-Profiteers

WE KNOW WHO MOST OF THE STUDENT UNDERACHIEVERS IN MICHIGAN SCHOOLS ARE:

*They are the poor.
*They live largely in urban ghettos.
*They live in high crime areas.
*They are exposed to constant gun violence.
*They are children in homes rife with abuse and neglect.
*They are hungry and go day-to-day without proper nourishment, staggering numbers qualify for free or reduced meals.
*They are the children of children, frequently the off spring of promiscuous mothers, often children themselves.
*They live in rundown, dangerous, or condemned housing. Many have lost their homes to foreclosure and eviction.
*They go cold in the winter without proper outerwear.
*They are exposed everyday to the drug culture.
*They are harassed, threatened, and controlled, herded about by gangs. They live in constant despair, terrorized by street crime and shots in the night.
*They are those who have been neglected or abandoned by the houses of worship.
*They grow up in a jobless environment and have no real hope for an adequately paying occupation.
*They are in large numbers teenage boys of color who drop out of school.
*They are unhealthy, too many die as infants, get few vaccinations, no pre-natal or little post-natal care.
*They are culturally deprived: living in areas with few good public libraries or free or affordable cultural activities.
*They have very limited access to banner stores such as abound in the suburbs.
*They are often in foster care, having been abused, neglected or abandoned by their parent(s).
*They have little opportunity to investigate the natural beauty or the beauty and wonders of the out state areas of Michigan, many have never left their neighborhoods, have never seen the open countryside, the dunes, or the Mackinaw Bridge.
*They have juvenile criminal records, often numerous misdemeanors.
*They are truant, or frequently fail to come to school.
*They have few books or educational stimuli in the home.
*Their caregivers are unemployed or on welfare.
*They often lack the basic social skills, at age five cannot perform such simple tasks as tying their own shoes, may eat out of bowls without utensils. .
*They are outside the profile sought by the "marketplace entrepreneurials," with the exception of drug pushers.
*They have not received the proper diets in the early critically formative years of mental development.
*They are victims of various kinds of political shams and disparaging debates, the flotsam and jetsom of Lansing debate and cynicism.
*They cannot move or play freely in their neighborhoods without fear and anxiety.
*They are the state's foster care kids (approx. 17,800 in 2010); the percentage of these kids committed to Michigan's foster care programs who do not graduate is very high, approaching 60% or more.

WHAT DOES THIS ALL MEAN WHEN IT COMES TO EDUCATIONAL ACHIEVEMENT?

Everything, if we comprehend the depth of the problem and nothing. If we shift blame and refuse to do what we can to correct this deplorable situation through a sustained, collaborate and costly effort, then, we ourselves, are at the heart of this egregious failure.

In a moment of pure honesty Grand Rapids former Public Schools Superintendent Jeff Grotsky said some of the best teaching takes place in our inner cities, predominately minority elementary classrooms, it doesn't show up in high test scores, but taken from where these students start out, how far behind educationally they come to us, the persistent progress that is being made reflects some of the finest teaching in the district. The love and dedication of these teachers is outstanding.

Our public schools rooms are "nurseries of our future and their wanton neglect entails a kind of social suicide."
Why are we squandering hope and help for a school generation moving through the inner city public schools while we repeatedly make public education the object of criticism and scorn, as the editorial board of the Detroit News is prone to do with its habitual harangues. When does the News become collaborative with teachers and go pro-active?

When are we going to hold the tax-hating Lansing pols responsible for their cynicism and neglect?
In spite of the many attempts to portray themselves as the promoters of "education reform" in Michigan, the Detroit News and the stonehearted TeaPublican Majority's civic and social blindness about life in the abandoned squalor of the state's dead and dying cities ignores the root causes of educational underachievement. In the their blame-laying fixations on test scores and measurements, that simply confirm the plight of our urban and poor rural area children, they have not become the answer, they have become enlargers of the problem.

Now, Nolan Finley, calls for the giant evil step: 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."

"Whoever is a cause of trouble to one of these little ones who have faith in the goodness of life, it would be better for him to have a great stone fixed to his neck, and to come to his end in the deep sea." -- Paraphrase of St. Matthew 18:6

Original Post.

No National Honor Given Finley: Taking Down Detroit’s Public Schools is a Civic Crime

Response to Nolan Finley in "Roberts must be demo man for Detroit Public Schools" in the Detroit News on May 15, 2011.

Dead-end pundit, Nolan Finley, has grown giddy breathing in all that anti-public sector gaseous blather of a cadre of defeatists and self-aggrandizing right-wing ideologues who have for years lived in and around Detroit and have succumbed to (even aided in) Detroit's slow psychotic swirl of social, economic and civil death.

Nolan is part of a group of so-called Libertarians ("Just leave us alone" trolls), who have no positive pro-active program for Michigan's largest urban area. His years of willful intellectual neglect have made the death spiral of its infrastructure and purpose as a dwelling place, a dead end. Nolan's outlook and advice have made Detroit worse not better, read on with the News blog's comments who daily expand and laud Finley's brand of brazen indifference.

"Give Detroit to Canada" has been the wise-guy mantra. Working every day in a news building since his early days as a copy boy, Nolan's finally charred and burned out. Not that he isn't featured in the social news of Detroit in black tie and tails or featured amid the "beautiful people" or that he isn't an Adonis back in Cumberland County, Kentucky where he is greatly admired as a local boy having achieved success.

Nolan expresses his willingness, license, to bemoan the implosion of a great city, give up and dance on its grave; defending his sacred right to ignore the "willful" poor, with such bromides Finley uses as:

"Our poor in Detroit are rich by comparison to people in sub-Saharan Africa."

This kind of intentionally misleading assertion does not account for what it means to be poor and unemployed, or worse yet, a foster child, mentally ill and/or unemployable in present day Detroit.

Hectoring does not assuage the Detroit/Mackinac Center News from culpability and responsibly in Detroit's accelerated- terminal slide-into a failed city abyss. .

Food banks, homelessness, and re-sale shops. which now abound testify to real needs of our urban neighbors. The growing blight and seedy/greedy "licensed to steal" trade shops e.g. the Cash Advance and the Auto Title Loan Outlets are covering old main streets like a black-leafed kudzu.

Boldly the Great Seer Finley calls out the final challenge: It's "Demo" time! Take down all of Detroit's public schools and sell them off. Privatize and profitize the education of the remnants who dwell in a civic hell of municipal dysfunction and crime.

Sez Dead End Nolan:

"If Roy Roberts is to succeed as emergency manager of Detroit Public Schools, HE MUST SEE HIS MISSION NOT AS SAVING THE DISTRICT, BUT DISMANTLING IT. DPS can't be saved. It pushed beyond the tipping point years ago, and must be allowed to slide into oblivion."
(See: Finley, "Roberts must be demo man for Detroit Public Schools", 5.15.11, DetNews)

There is no National Civic Medal of Honor bestowed on such an advocate of corrupted capitulation to the darkside of rigid-conservativism and racially-tainted conclusions such as this one: "...ALLOWED TO SLIDE INTO OBLIVION." Read that and weep for the children.

Years ago, a word of caution was spoken by one of Michigan's Appellate Court judges: What is Wall Street's view of Michigan? It is a state with the city of Detroit, which historically has a low threshold for racial tension and violence.

The National Census has shown us that a sizable portion of the exodus of population from Detroit is made up of middle class people of color. Those left behind, in this troubled city, will not long suffer the humiliation and disrespect of those who would take the city further down; while skimming tax monies off to private school vendors and profiteers backed by a highly partisan TeaPublican majority and propaganda mills such as Koch Brothers' CATO/Americans for Prosperity or Engler's Mackinac Center-all currently on a rip, bolstered by the unchecked, powerful and shameful abuse of one-party majority rule.

Original Post.

Snyder, the Socialist, Takes on Local Democracy Calling it a "Status Quo" That Needs to Be Radically Re-invented.

Response and commentary concerning Michigan Governor Rick Snyder's education plan announcements and Nolan Finley in "Gov's dozer knocks down another wall" in the Detroit News on April 28, 2011.

Nerd Snyder fool-heartedly takes on the Status Quo: Snyder trades the normal and healthy, reliable services provided by your local school board opting imperiously to impose a "socialized" state-run bureaucratic system, jammed with top-down mandates of the kind long-backed and sought by anti-public school activists and opponents.

Add in Snyder's draconian cuts to school funding designed to manhandle local units. Then top that off with the Snyder's outright thief, by political trickery and manipulation, of an existing school fund surplus over $600 million and a healthy up-tick in sales tax revenue of producing another $500 million toward school funding and we have the stage for a Snyder Shortage Snafu of epic proportions.

Rick Snyder is under a grand illusion related to his personal "accomplishments": "My staff keeps trying to slow me down," Snyder says. "They joke that if I get everything done the first year, what am I going to do the next three?"

Look carefully at what Snyder labels "Reform." We've been diddled on that concept before by John M. Engler and now "reform" in many forms of disenfranchisement. is back as what Nolan gleefully calls "Bulldozer" Snyder.

Reform of education should yield in an improvement, for students, not the hatchet job Rick and old-order Engerlites in his cabal are enforcing.

Grand Rapids School Superintendent Taylor sees the Snyder education "reforms" as further imploding his already tattered district. More Charters. More profit for J.C. Huizenga? He sees more public tax money going down to "no return for community" privateers' bottomlines. As Bernard Taylor sees it use of public tax money for faux public academies is heading his Grand Rapids Public Schools to relegation as the almshouses of the very poor and the greatly disadvantaged. But the Republicans have the new formula for improvement: Just send in Mrs.Coswell and McMillin, they have special understanding and superior understanding for care of the needy...NOT!

Rick Snyder is not an expert on education and the team that he assembled was top heavy with perennial critics: "school funding raiders," pro-voucher teammates of Betsy DeVos' national crusade, anti-teacher association ideologues, and Michigan's craven insurance interests-out to harvest ever more profits via "takings" from teachers.

According to our sage Nolan Finley: Snyder "couldn't care less about political ideology. He's all about the bottom line." Right on, Nolan. You got it right! Thus, Snyder fits well with Betsy DeVos and other raiders of public funds for private profit.

One curious source of media misinformation and statistical manipulation about public schools is EAG (Education Action Group)

One weasely wise guy, MI GOP state committee member, Ryan Olson, a greenpea novice/clumsy outside-shill for the Mackinac Center (kid brother of Dr. R. Olson, previously in charge of education policy at the Mackinac) is worthy of a second look at his front EAG. Olson has a partner in his efforts, Eric Doster (Board Member of Betsy DeVos' Great Lakes Project and also a MI GOP lawyer. Olson and Doster have been "placed" to become an "outside source" for/and of wild anti-public education activism. Perhaps you recall a national news exposé; Ryan's attempt to pull an contrived and deceptive "Acorn Video Event" by lying to, and then taping a New York University professor, under false pretenses, in order to gain national attention for himself. Olson's crude activities (Thug Watch) are funded by secret backers and scooped by all-too-willing, lazy news sources looking for controversy, have uncritically used Olson's embarrassing and ambitious attempts to smear and demonize the teachers in every way he can.

So to say that there is no interest in Snyder's hard right ideological attacks on public education from Snyder is to mis-underestimate the power of this aggressive coup against public education. It's all part of a much larger, "state legislature centered" attempt to forever alter the future of your beloved and cherished neighborhood school and diminish and punish faithful teachers for the work they do mentoring your children and grandchildren.

Snyder, the Socialist; Takes takes down Local Democracy Calling it the Status Quo. Local control, an ideal and a vital system, needs to be radically "Re-invented." So sez Snyder!
Original Post.

Honest Abel “AWOL” in Michigan just as in Wisconsin

Response to  "AWOL [Wisconsin] Dems defy ballot box" by Nolan Finley in the Detroit News February 27, 2011.

Nolan Finley may have attended an underfunded school, or have been AWOL when his history teacher covered the wonderful career of that saint of saints in American esteem and honor: Abe Lincoln.

If Nolan knew more about Abe and Lincoln's legislative career; Finley would not make such a dreadful, embarrassing mis-under-estimation of the power of "taking a walk" on hamfisted, dirty politics for high moral purpose.

Nolan chides and digs Wisconsin Democratic Senators:

"American-style democracy holds together because no matter how nasty the political game gets, the players honor a few inviolable rules. We obey the laws, even the ones we disagree with. We respect the ballot box. And after even the most bitterly contested election, the loser accepts the results, works within the system and awaits another chance to prevail with voters." ("AWOL Dems defy ballot box", Nolan Finley, Detroit News, 2.27.11)

The thrust of Finely's opine:

"Democratic lawmakers in both states fled to neighboring Illinois, where they hope to win with their absence what they couldn't at the ballot box - namely, the right to control policymaking."

However, Nolan's history is a bit shallow: The Wisconsin State Senators act; "Their choice of refuge is eminently appropriate, for Abraham Lincoln himself famously tried to deny his political opponents quorum through a very unorthodox method of departure in 1840." As so well put by History News Network staffers.

Whoa! Let's go back to class, Nolan:

"Ward Hill Lamon was Lincoln's friend in Illinois, and served as Marshal of the District of Columbia during the administration of President Lincoln. When the state bank was threatened in the Illinois legislature, the Whigs came to its defence (sic) by absenting themselves to prevent a quorum, leaving just Lincoln and one other behind to call ayes and noes. When the Sergeant-at-Arms rounded up some Whigs, the dedicated Lincoln jumped out a window in a failed attempt to thwart a quorum."
-- Ward Hill Lamon, The Life of Abraham Lincoln, 1872, pp. 216-8

Now, you know.

Can you emulate "Honest" Abe and retract your condemnation?

Original Post.

Kill Michigan, Kill Michigan: Howling Hyenas Take a Jaundiced View

Comment of the Michigan View on January 20, 2011.

As predictable as frost on a pumpkin, or that the offal left by a lioness, in the Serengeti, will be visited by the lurking hyenas, Michigan Views' muckrakers and Hard Right Trolls jump to steal their scrap of the lion's "kill."

Kill Michigan, Kill Michigan

Is there a better way to push Michigan's economy and prospects further into the bath tub for a vicious "drowning" (as suggested by anti-government, uncivil Grover Norquist, Wolfram, Payne, Finley, MacCen, et.al.) than to savagely and prematurely begin their vicious ideological attacks on newly elected moderate Gov. Rick Snyder-trying to stymie Snyder's programs, proposals, and leadership-right at the starting gate?

Be aware these attacks are not optional, they are vital to the success of private, elitists, and their bottom lines. Controlling and hectoring from these curmudgeons are classic tomes that are totally mandatory, necessary to protect the private and clearly corporate interests who want what they want, damn the consequences?

Keep this up boys, and it will be the Granholm v. legislature disaster (deja vu) you all had so much sport ridiculing and vilifying-while ignoring the downward slide of the Michigan economy and life quality.

If we want the state to come back, suggest we vaccinate the Hyenas for rabies.


Original Post.

Déjà vu: It's Educational Apartheid All Over Again!

Commentary on the Michigan View on January 16, 2011.

SHUT DOWN ALL DETROIT NEIGHBORHOOD PUBLIC SCHOOLS - Quick Find a Charter School:

1. Charter School Administrative Services
2. Leona Group, LLC
3. Evans Solution Management Company
4. Professional Contract Management Inc
5. White Hat Management
6. Bardwell Group
7. National Heritage Academies
8. Schoolhouse Services and Staffing Inc
9. Solid Rock Management Company
10. Midwest Management Group Inc.
11. Nataki Talibah Schoolhouse
12. Black Star Educational Management
13. Education Management and Networks
14. Innovative Teaching Solutions
15. 777 Educational Management Company
16. Hamadeh Educational Services Inc
17. New Urban Learning

Here, for the public's first look, is a nearly complete list of proprietary owners of private educational for-profits, siphoning off public tax dollars for loosely regulated, privately administered, middle man, manpower-style academies.

The Detroit taxpayer cannot participate in the operations of these privatized education mills, the funding is public, the operations are strictly private.

The owner of National Heritage Academies appeared on national television bragging his faux public academies had returned him a 12% profit.

Chartering sponsors under Michigan law include a small, two feather upper peninsula Indian Tribe, perhaps better suited to running gambling casinos than educating our children with our tax monies: supervising charters schools for a 3% cut. The entire thing a phony Engeresque arrangement.

And this Mr. Finley is what you have been hankering to see come to pass!

Detroit, Michigan-to become the nation's first urban school district to shutter ALL its doors and TOTALLY SURRENDER ITS LIMITED TAX DOLLARS TO PRIVATE PROFITEERS AND IDEOLOGUES WITH UNKNOWN AGENDAS FOR CHILDREN; The Detroit/Mackinac News' ANTI-PUBLIC DREAM AGENDA/OBJECTIVE about to come true.

Déjà vu: It's Educational Apartheid All Over Again


Original Post.

A one nostril false grunt from Nolan: It’s not my pigs that stink

Response to Nolan Finley in “Oink, Oink” Detroit News Dec 15, 2010

Nolan may have had the chore of swilling the pigs back home years ago.

Now so dandy-like, in his 3 piece editorial suit, he takes a gloating parting shot over the relatively minor part that congressional earmarks play in the trade-off, oiled process of compromise and commerce as practiced for eons in the U.S. Congress.

This new stiff-necked pledging to a small-minded, small-soul-ed, pinch penny, that Dickensian Scrooge, Grover Norquist, who owns the BIG Promise Pledge book on all those signers who pledge to only, always say "NO!" to new taxes, is utter pigsty nonsense!

Norquist has lit a sour gas smoldering cinder in the coal-hearted misanthropes who are marching to Washington under the guise of a resurrected Tea Party, claming to be Founder-blessed "patriots."
Those Norquist-controlled Congress people have taken an impossible and absurd pledge, a pledge that their oath of office makes dishonest and unconstitutional.

The U.S. Congress has an obligation to raise the taxes and revenues to carry on our government. To refuse to raise any new taxes-when the economic ship of state is taking on water like the Titanic in its final 2 hours- is as nonsensical as some other "ideological nut" may attempt-getting willing pledgers-to likewise "never spend or allocate" new revenue, even if raised, refusing to meet the ongoing obligations and responsibilities of our federal government at home and abroad.

Pigs may wallow in gooey slime, but even they don't attempt to eat muck-out of pure instinct for survival.


Original Post.

The Detroit News is "Tapped Out"

Response to Nolan Finley in "A tax hike is a tax hike is a tax hike" Detroit News on February 18, 2010.

Each and every day outside Denny's Restaurant or other local eateries the Detroit News stands at the door like a miniature billboard projecting its view of the world in the form of a major headline. The News which as served so well as the regurgitation press for John Englerites and his cathouse friends and cohorts at the Mackinac Center try once again to project and propose their defeatist and business-before-families and community attitudes and agendas.

Just as surely as the state defeated the MacCen/Amway sponsored voucher petition drive in 2000 by 2 to 1, when the state shutdown again last September 30th the polling stateside showed that by 2 to 1 those polled showed they favored a tax hike to help the state survive the steep dive that the Detroit News and John Engler were so instrumental in NOT PREVENTING and in fact took positions and pushed for policies that did not enrich the state's economic status as a premiere manufacturing state and location. In fact, there was no evidence that the News had much "pull" in helping GM in its decades long haughty headed slide to the bottom.

NoviReader has the tiger by the tail:

" Finley wants to pretend that government can provide the same level of service with a lot less in revenue. If people don't want to pay for those services anymore, that's their choice. But stop the false claims that lead people to believe that they can have more government (services) with less money."

We are workers and eager livers here in Michigan. But take our jobs and fail to lead us to see that bad things happen when corporations and business are made the main interest of the major news rags and the hidebound legislature --then watch the quality of life slide.

Nolan, take a moment and tell us how you and your paper have made an actual, positive difference in stopping the 20 year decline. Please give us, as evidence, a dozen examples where you and your publication have improved the quality of life in real terms for the ordinary Joe and Suzie.


Original Post.

Nolan Finley Rocks Local Detroit High School With His Decision to Teach English to Sophomores

Response to Nolan Finley in "Test scores should rock Detroit's soul" in the Detroit News on December 10, 2009.

In recent and very open comments to columnists and to editorials a careful reader is finding the ground level noise about what is actually going on in the troubled Detroit Public Schools (DPS) system.

It's altogether possible that there is a pervasive and street savvy sub-culture running through the city's youths. In a place so seemingly hopeless, with so little to cause a child to dream or aspire, there has developed a youth counter-culture that hates what it sees a life confined this wrenched poverty and black-on-black crime, and flatly refuses to play the game other Americans better placed embrace.

Hopelessness. If money corrupts, then complete hopelessness and endless poverty goes money one further into total despair and eventually open rebellion. Many of the higher values of our nation are build around the American Dream become thusly spurned and ridiculed, believed unattainable from these streets.

When we learn that students in the DPS have a habit of bringing down student achievers and hurling distain and hatred toward those who study and perform well in the classroom (calling them Uncle Tom's and other derisive or obscene names, even assaulting them when they get "A's") there's a grievous, oppressive condition afoot. Such a pulling down of students, one of the other, is apparently widely accepted by active student counter-culture. Outcast student populations come to rule the developing social lives of younger students, driven by peer pressure, and cause kids to undermine within themselves any desire to make better achievement.

It is said that Detroit students did as poorly, or more poorly, on the math testing than if they were guessing. Yes, what if the students purposefully did not properly take the test and simply guessed? That has to be a partial possibility.

What is the future work place prepared for an all "B" DPS student, McDonalds? And beyond that what? Good jobs have left the city. Students are keenly aware of the depressing number of good jobs and limited possibilities for college or trade school that remain available to them. Where will the money for tuition, for an ITT institute come from?

When there is no respect for the authority of the teacher, the law enforcement officer, the fireman, the principal or any adult with contact with these youths, then swearing, obscenity, and great verbal and physical disrespect become rampant the situation is out of control.

Tell me how a man with great math ability (let' say recently cut out of the General Motors Comptrollers Office), a mind like a Einstein or a brain like Hawkins, is going to find suitable conditions and success when he steps in (under Erne Duncan's R2T) to take up a desk and attempt to teach a class of 34 sophomores right in the middle of this kind of blackboard jungle?

There may be cultural differences and solid reasons why the classroom has become this kind of zoo, but no educational program will succeed until the troublemakers are removed, order and respect are completely restored, and attendance is strictly enforced.

Let's get Nolan Finley to take up the challenge. Let him get placed into one of "low achieving" high schools and let him teach English for an entire semester, then come out at the end of that time and report his significant, spectacular progress.


Original Post.

Raw Revenge Raises Its Ugly Head

Response to series of articles and Op-Eds (mostly in the Detroit / Heritage / Mackinac News) railing against teachers and public schools, and Nolan Finley piece on December 4, 2009.

Growing up deep in the rugged hollows of Cumberland Co. Kentucky, Nolan Finley is very familiar with the real menace of a chicken-killing cur.

This present unvarnished, red-meat edict/opinion of the Detroit News is likewise on a total blood letting tear. What can be done with a chicken killing dog?

The not-so-thick gloves are off. The News and the Mackinac Center are now emblazoned  to go in for the "kill." It's bone ugly. It's totally counter intuitive. It's pure naked reprisal with a "to-hell-with-MEA" angst that has been building violently for a very long time on the pages of this newspaper.

Engler's Part in Monumental Shortfalls
There is a national financial crisis, there is a major crisis in Michigan. The shortfall was created in part by John Engler whose $4 billion plus cuts in state revenues took effect just as he was leaving office, and on top of that Engler left Gov. Granholm and the state over a billion in debt.

Political Slap-downs
However, the current legislature has instituted moves against the MEA which have far less to do with economic specifics than they do with aggressive opportunistic take-backs from teachers, turning the clock back to the late 1950's.

Hardened foes are exacting a long-sought slap-down of the ability of the Association to protect and defend the entire education community:  students, teachers, associated staff, and, yes, even the interests of principals, superintendents, school board members, associated businesses, and not least of all parents. No entity works for the public schools better legislatively or more effectively than MEA.

The Detroit News No Longer Attempts or Pretends to Be Civil or Polite
The News has become hectoring, overbearing and demanding. There's bitter tinge on the New's hamfisted edict, made loudly and without apology, the legislature must repeal a Republican governor's (George Romney) signature on the educators' right-to-bargain legislation-passed in back in 1965. If revision can be accomplished, it would literally move Michigan to the end of the line educationally-in a country with many low-achieving states far less accomplished and educationally advanced than Michigan, prior to now.

Fascistic Moves
The News' demand reflects a menacing, emerging Fascistic philosophy, partially hidden, yet so pervasive in the catacombs of the News, albeit seldom seen, but now revealed in all its bare tarbelly ugly for all to see in this moment.

Power-seeking, Greed and Control,  Have Bust Out Into the Light of Day
It's very simple:  When the demands of business and commerce must always trump, rule over, all other aspects of governance there is a fundamental democratic problem.

Look what happened in the State House yesterday. Tourism lobbyists vigorously blocked the very "reform" legislation that the News supports (even aligning themselves with the dread MEA momentarily)  for one specific self-interest purpose. It was not the good of education the tourism industry were angling for.  They fought to protect one more weekend for their business opportunities-delaying school openings until after the Labor Day Weekend.  Forget the educational impact such a “business move” would have.   Mind you, these are the “very same” individuals and groups that are fomenting  their specific “education reforms” they say will “improve”  Michigan education.  Most of their reforms involve taxes or labor law thus providing  a direct economic benefit for the “reformers” without tangible pro-active quality improvements for students or public education.

Government and business interests when they become as "one," totally united in goals and operations, encompassing even aggressive privatization of all public services, point to a condition where we have the basis for Fascism, or what we may call "friendly Fascism."

When it comes down to powerful business and corporate interests, which demand and receive full control over the institutions and governance of the state and communities (in full partnership with the legislature and the government), we find ourselves marched meekly into the dark night of a treacherous new era. Blind to history, we parade naively, ensnaring ourselves in divisive cultural war and calamity.

Outrageous Demands
There can be no good outcome in succumbing to the ill-driven powers behind the demands of the Detroit News and its radical right cabal demanding: Strip the teachers of their status, their salaries, their benefits, legislated security, and their voice in school affairs. After all we learn, everything educational belongs only to the all-powerful business/state government Lansing combine. Force the teachers take whatever "we" (the business/government cabal) decide to ladle out, without recourse.

Snarls the cur: Just shut up and teach.


Original Post.

Legislature should ensure school districts allow taxpayers to sit in on labor negotiations & many other government functions too

Response to Detroit News Editorial "Legislature should ensure school districts allow taxpayers to sit in on labor negotiations" on November 23, 2009.

Intro of Detroit News Editorial:

"This fall, Michigan school districts are negotiating with teacher unions, trying to stave off budget deficits and even bankruptcies. Taxpayers should have a right to know what these talks include so they can make their wishes clear to school board members."

End of Editorial:

"Since the negotiations involve taxpayer money, they should be transparent. State lawmakers should amend the law to make sure taxpayers have an open window on contract talks between school districts and teachers."

-------

WHAT A GREAT IDEA !

Open teacher/school employee negotiations to the public in a local school district. That kind of transparency is totally worthy and sensible, or so the Detroit News Editorial staff professes.

I'll take the taxpayer's interest and their right to see exactly what is going on one tiny step further.

Let's open the caucus rooms of both political parties in both the state House and the Senate to the taxpaying public-no holds barred. In the spirit of total transparency let the taxpayers have "an open window" on how our legislation and lawmaking are really hatched here in Michigan. Don't forget to include any discussions between a lawmaker and their staff and/or aides, or other specialists in departments such as the Michigan Treasury.

And just for good measure, let's have the right to see and hear all the discussions and contacts between lobbyists and legislators-so that we can determine exactly whose interest is actually being served by the outcomes of these contacts and meetings.

And hey, that isn't going to be good enough; Let's enact legislation so the taxpayers have direct access behind the scenes-a "window" over at the Michigan Supreme Court, wouldn't that be a hoot!

Hell will become Hawaii before these things occur.

This Finley inspired editorial is just another in a long string of ill-will, obfuscations and sandbagging-proposed and promoted by a stoneheaded paper with a business-interest-only dogma spiked with aggressive intentions-to further take down, not only teachers and their professional organizations, but the entire public school system.

On the other hand readers, don't forget that the co-op that operates the combined Free Press/the Detroit News has a wretched record concerning staff and skilled trades negotiations with their in-house unions. Wouldn't we have liked to see what those long, protracted and bitter negotiations were like with C-Span style coverage-open public access to that bargaining table.

Wait a moment, those bargaining sessions are closed to the public because the paper management group is a "private" corporation.

Just because schools are run with contributions from citizens in a district and on their behalf does not mean that every business function of that district has to be exposed, without reserve, privacy and/or full confidence in its duly elected representatives-to operate with integrity in closed "work sessions" just as a township, a city council, or the state legislature conduct their closed meetings.

Imagine having to poll a "teabagger" audience to get a final mutually agreed decision pertaining to a contract.

Absurdity in the extreme.

Original Post.

Gov Granholm’s tax hike is the wrong or right thing?

Response to Nolan Finley "Gov’s (Governor Jennifer Granholm) tax hike ploy is reckless" in the Detroit News on November 15, 2009.

Intro of Finley piece:

"There's something Gov. Jennifer Granholm isn't mentioning as she barnstorms the state to leverage the deep cuts she orchestrated in school funding into the sales tax hike she's long coveted. The governor isn't telling angry and fearful parents that there's at least $1 billion, and perhaps more than $2 billion, in education money to be had if she'd stop obsessing over the fact that there's still a few dollars left in our wallets she hasn't taxed.

"She's absolutely looking for taxes and ignoring the low hanging fruit that could be had from reform if she had the leadership to pursue it," says Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop, who's tired of Granholm blaming him for the cuts. "

Another Clip:

"House Speaker Andy Dillon has proposed placing all public employees into a single health insurance pool to save, he says, $900 million. But that's going nowhere, again because of the MEA's opposition and Granholm's indifference.

It's a reform that wouldn't cost a single teacher job. And as an added benefit it would make obsolete the MEA's insurance affiliate, MESSA. MESSA is sitting on an estimated $450 million reserve, money skimmed from the school districts it serves. It would be worth exploring whether the districts would have a claim on the money if MESSA was reformed out of business."

-----
Gov’s tax hike is the right thing

Would to God Nolan's neck were not so stiff and frozen in a naysayers nod. Perhaps he needs a therapeutic message, hopefully he could afford such.

One has to wonder if Finley can make a move without consulting with that hovering covey of cathouse ideologues at the Mackinac Center or the one-note, business first last and always, State Chamber of Commerce.

Just a quick review of the unfolding of the Mackinac Center’s  "50 fixes for Michigan" shows the real agenda that drives Nolan's thought patterns.

Looking back over years of clippings from the News and other papers plus reading and rereading those columns, statements, news items, releases and editorials from statewide sources, one realizes that for well-over 20 years the Detroit News has been hamstrung by repetitive and negative attitudes and has been short-sighted, if not a blind-sided ideologue paper trumpeting long-sought goals that do not embellish or improve the public square or the common good.

As much a negativist and as self-serving as John Engler was, he was always a pragmatist.

I recall observing first hand his going into the Republican State Senate Caucus for a desired purpose and coming away angry and empty handed. Did he huff and puff publicly, like the much weaker, milquetoast Michael Bishop? No. Engler simply sent into the GOP caucus Al Short, MEA's head of governmental affairs, and got the result he needed.

Sen. Bishop is tethered to an oath not to raise taxes and he is powerless, if not helpless to do anything but obstruct and obfuscate both the governor's leadership and the general public's desire, which polling shows, would support some tax increases to tide the state over this very difficult period of economic downturn.

To quote John Engler from his State of the State in 1997:

"Being for public education means making sure that every school, every classroom, every teacher, every student is safe."

"BEING FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION MEANS KEEPING EDUCATION OUR TOP PRIORITY!"

"One key to quality education is quality teachers. Proud, passionate -- these professional men and women are making a difference in the lives of students every day. That's why I was outraged to read in the Detroit News that in one high school this year nine teachers have been assaulted."

"When teachers are attacked in their own classrooms, academic performance is also a casualty. I may be old fashioned, but it seems to me, if a student lays a hand on a teacher, that student is gone."

And so what did Engler put forward? Confrontation and stalemate, No, never. He called for collaboration and cooperation from two well-known sources, the Federation of Teachers and the Michigan Education Association.

Here's the Engler quote:

"Further, I invite the leadership of the Michigan Federation of Teachers and the Michigan Education Association to join with us in developing and passing this legislation."

Finley's sour cynicism and harping has resulted in comments such as this from whyareyousoangry, Rochester, MI:

"(Finley's) logic--if there is any--is laughable, and I am SO tired of his hatred of teachers, state workers and anyone else who worked for any of the automakers, EXCEPT the company CEOs who mismanaged them into the ground. Finley loves company execs, even when they are proven incompetent. It's a viewpoint I can't wrap my head around, as the EDUCATED owner of a small business trying to make it in this state. He is a great example of why people like me cannot stomach the Republican Party anymore." And the comment concludes: "I am not the only one who thinks Nolan Finley is nothing but a worthless shill for a few SE Michigan moguls. Hope those moguls are ready to bail the Detroit News out when all the readers are gone."

Pretty Boy Bishop is running out of time and electability for any future statewide office. He must sense it now, and what can he do? He's lost control. Mike's caught in the timeless methodology and inertia of a state legislature that has gone "out to lunch" in terms of tackling the real problems of Michigan, or should we say "out to hunt?"

All the arguments and comment about how dire the situation is, and how desperate the legislature is to resolve it (with more taxes or without) are "blown away" by their craven self-indulgence and stoic indifference to the needs of children and families in this once great state. We say "get to work!" Get to work co-operatively right now.

In this crisis, which incidentally is just one of many from the past, relabeled "the 2009 budget crisis," has all the ingredients which are basically the same; repeated often in the last 20 years, the projected solution always includes some form of "reform" and as relates to education. The "crisis" always includes demanded give-backs or something punitive.

A lot of foul hot air goes into the rhetorical posturing, such as the recent You-Tube speech of Sen. Alan Cropsey, where he projects the blame wherever he likes (his favorite whipping object, MEA), but not at his own stiff-necked party of covenant-bound hostages, held to a foolhardy oath extracted by the out-of-state no-tax wingnuts the GOP has come to fear more than the state's economic collapse.

Many taxpayers would gladly give a $1 a day to move Michigan forward.

Original Post.

An Additional Dollar a Day...

Response to Nolan Finley in "House Dems won't face budget reality" Detroit News Blog on November 11, 2009.

Nolan:

What is the difference between your opinion and that of the standard Mackinac Center fare?

What would Michigan be like if the center had gotten 80% of all the things they lust after? (Most often, with your blessing, one might note.)

The MacCen sees this present economic hardship time as a precious opportunity to finish work they've been whittling at for decades. This "crisis" for them is a super "opportunity."

Just what would education quality and taxpayer responsibility for education be if MacCen got its every wish?

Those cardinal controling influences in the MacCen, who cheer for an end to MESSA (and its excellent Blue Cross health care packages for school employees),ask just what would other (Mackinac Center friendly) insurance companies provide?

Think inadequate. How long would it be before they used their influence and cunning to reduce the service provided to something, not equal to the private sector, what ever that means, but less than the best of private sector benefits. That new health plan sought by the MacCen wouldn't be more competitive or less expensive without reductions in services and coverages. And who, Nolan, has decent private sector health care and benefits, as of this Michigan moment? Don't look to the GM workers for a baseline, don't turn to the ubiquitous Wall-Mart for a adequate health care model.

The core of the Michigan GOP is held hostage to the tax-haters and groups like the brown-bagged-headed-unknowns, secret bundlers of cash used to bring national influence to bear on a rural district like that once held by former Rep. Joe Schwarz.

When the intrepid clod buster Jack Welborn wanted to stigmatize the "high spending" legislature he brought over to the capitol a giant cow with an enormous utter, then Welborn prattled on about his opponents sucking up for tax monies.

Then it was Leon Dorlet and his begged and borrowed pink hog, which lingered on Capitol square, hoping to chide and hector the legislature into refusing to raise revenue and taxes. Dorlet was just carrying swill for a well-known national organizer against taxes.

Then came the Beltway weasel, Grover Norquist, who smoozed on Mackinac Island with Sen. Nancy Cassis. "No new taxes, no new taxes." This year's entire proceedings in the Mackinac Island leadership sessions were sponsored, run by the no-taxes lobbies and the endless varieties of flat, fair, or no tax fanatics (including John Fund) who believe themselves the keepers of the holy grail. Starve the state's services into oblivion and all will be well.

A large number of the GOP legislature has given up their rights to outsiders, carpet baggers from DC, when they swear and take an oath never to raise new taxes. Thank God for term limits.

The hard-hearted, conjoined twins of no-tax legislation in the state senate are Mike Bishop and Alan Cropsey. What an odd couple, if ever. Both are ambitious and both have a shed full of axes they love to grind. Bishop loves embarrassing Gov. Granholm and Cropsey won't ever miss a swipe at the Michigan Education Association, ever since he threw in with the fearful home schoolers hoping to scotch maternity, creeping secularism, and of course, the teaching about evolution by holing up in the kitchen with course books designed to propagate the fanatic ideology and race relations teachings of Bob Jones University, Cropsey's alma mater.

So then, who's reality must a citizen chose between: . Democrats who are weakly trying to save the future for our kids against the entrenched GOP Senate, or the ranting GOP which sees no end of pleasure in tearing down Michigan and its children in their hour of need. They are holding out for the equivalent of a cup of less-than-Starbucks coffee a day.


You'd get the idea from Bishop and his clique that it would bankrupt our struggling personal budgets to give just an additional dollar a day (in miscellaneous taxes and closed loopholes) to save our public schools in this their hour of need.


Original Post.

The only place a teacher gets a fair shake in the Detroit News is on its obituary page

Response to Nolan Finley in "Teacher perks bleed budget Dry" in the Detroit News first published on October 7, 2009. 

DetNews reader BruceSimpson asks: What is the status of an educator in the Republican Party?

The Republican Party is one of only two major political organizations that are said to represent the public in legislative endeavors. If you are not part of one of these two parties you are totally out of the loop. For example, it has been particularly precious to give a big compliment to Gov. Mitt Romney and/or Scott Romney every time they are about the area.

Say I, "I'd like to thank you again on behalf of your father, George, for singing into law the provision in 1965 that gave teachers the right to bargain." 

Of course this causes consternation and a flummoxed look on their faces, because they don't want to admit to that signal event and certainly don't support what "professional bargaining" has accomplished.

George's boys have allowed themselves to be caught up in the anti-tax, starve government, wingnut mood created by treacherous ideologies that have invaded the historic Republican Party. A party which has always, heretofore, been a party of support for public education, the nation's historic institutions, and worked for the common good, albeit in a decidedly conservative vein.

The current crowd of GOP'ers in Lansing are like burrowing termites. Below the painted surface of the beautiful capitol edifice they are chewing to dust the very institutions and governmental structure that sustains and supports our forward progress. Scarce noticed until the entire state topples in a cloud of sawdust.

How do I know this? What is the perspective of a Republican educator?

I have faithfully and personally witnessed hundreds of hours of the school funding legislative struggle since July of 1993: 1.) Stabenow/Engler. That event removed all school operating funding then and led to Prop A. 2.) The infamous state showdown/shut down of September 30, 2007, and 3.) The wacky fiasco of Wednesday into early morning Thursday, 2009.


I know many of the players. I've observed the games and parliamentary stunts.

When are we going to see a legislature that doesn't "play house" with state budgets and school funding--now that Republicans have (since Proprosal A) taken over school operating funding and destroyed their once venerated and sacrosanct demand for maintaining local control?

For years I have personally read and taken notice of the stream of venom which has perpetually issued forth from the Detroit News toward teachers and their professional association e.g. (Teachers derail budget, Online Editorial, Detroit News, 10.1.09).

So I am not surprised that the habitual harangues which have been the staple of the News should project themselves unto the state's teachers--who have so valiantly protected the quality education of the children of this state and championed the neighborhood schools (so shabbily treated by such perpetual nabobs as the News and its wicked twin sister the Englerite/Dow Mackinac Center).

The only place a teacher gets a fair shake in the Detroit News is on its obit pages. An educator must literally die in order to get positive treatment way back in the pages of the News.

When one considers the burdens that are borne by heroic teachers and the ubiquitous silence of the News toward the Federation (based primarily in struggling urban Detroit, but seldom the target of political mudslinging by the News), it becomes clear that the editorial stance of the News continues to be anti-teacher and anti-autoworker, and anti-anyone courageous enough to stand up to the froth of a tone deaf and greedy core of Mackinac Center-hobnailed Republicans. They are advocates of so-called Right-to-Work initiatives. It was and is the goal of this cadre to bring down the MEA, and if they hurt kids or destroy entire systems such as Grand Rapids in the process, who cares?

So it is a treat to see, in this round, responsive and responsible Republicans who are willing to risk the wrath of the "no new taxes" covenant makers and do whatever it takes to assure that we put kids first.

Think about it. It is senseless to take an oath to uphold the state constitution and at the same time make a pledge, in a cast iron way, not to raise new taxes. Just so, it would be insane and senseless to pledge to some other pressure group that as a legislator one would never allocate or approve expending any new or future revenue. The constitutional duty of the legislature is to levy taxes and to disperse such funds as are needed to carry out the needs, mission, and the duties of state government.

Note too, the News has sat on its hands as the Big Three have folded under the negative and arcane cloak of apologetics from an elitist Richard D. McLellan or a David Littmann--just when skilled workers have been ejected from their jobs and vital research and development have been transshipped overseas.

Littmann makes himself more than abundantly clear as to where he and the Big Bucks Mackers come from: "The single most important element in reform " long-lasting, durable economic and financial reform " for this state, so that we can become a magnet for attraction of business and jobs " is to make it a right-to-work (state)," says Littmann in an online Mackinac Center interview "A free-to-choose labor state. Without that, there's no reason to be in Michigan. Absolutely no comparative advantages."

Michigan can not simplistically continue to "cut" its way to economic and manufacturing success. There must be a positive vision and freedom to plan and spend to make success, in the place of failure, possible. That's what we expect from the legislature and the governor. It's Michigan's pro-active total "culture" that will attract and keep new start-ups and key to "culture" is education.

It will be clear, someday quite soon, that the teachers' association and the neighborhood public schools are more essential, vital and enduring in Michigan's communities than an empty and rusting News dispenser--witnessing as we are the creeping death of a once mighty Detroit News whose goals and values are not ours as ordinary citizens and do not advance Michigan's necessary rebound and recovery.

Those education dollars spent on the public schools are the absolute vital heart of the essential economies of so many of our towns and cities in Michigan, their turnover keeps economies healthy and going. MESSA insurance payouts support and aid hospitals to underwrite the un-insured and the under-insured, who, by federal law, are receiving emergency room treatment paid, in part, by such insureds as teachers and school employees.

All this transpires without nary a peep from the New's chattering nabobs--whose gilded ideological cage continues to be lined on its bottom with the molding editorial pages of past News negativist frippery.

The News's own economic future? Likely we will have to do without its cynical opines as its readership continues to drop.

Original Article.

Finley's Right Wing anti-teacher Crusade: A man with a forked tongue and a flaying pen

Response to Nolan Finley in "Teacher perks bleed budget dry" in the Detroit News on October 4, 2009.

Nolan Finley, like his most recent predecessors at the News, is a shrewd man with a forked tongue and a flaying pen.

When Finley openly admits, yet again, that his source for facts and projections, concerning anything to do with public education, comes from that corporatist ideological cathouse, the Mackinac Center, so well-known as the far right's animal house for political antics and wild abandon and factual hyperbole, he reveals his bias and lack of credulity.

Can the Michigan teachers match the easy access that the Mackinac Center has to the major papers, the electronic media, the inner sanctum of the Michigan Republican Party, and the GOP legislative crew? NO.

Millions of dollars from tightly sphinctered, vested corporations, ideologues, and miserly trusticants, have fed this group of fact-twisting-ferrets a rich diet of hulls and shells, washed down with a slithering dash of anti-public service/privatization Kool-Aid.

Time and again, it is the threatening pronouncements and entrapping art of Mackinac Center that has carried out the vengeful goals of John Engler and his shrewd legislative tactics henchmen: Richard D. McLellan and Larry Reed, emeritus head of Mackinac.

It was Reed who exposed his tar-pitched bias during the 1993 Republican Senate Hearings on the shutdown of all school operating funding, when he characterized the MEA as "a Leninist organization", his chosen, passionate statement of belief. Larry would later deny, by lying, he ever said such a thing at Hope College in Holland, when he was on a road trip pushing privatization and the decertification of MEA in front of aspiring teachers.

The influence of predigested talking points and prefab legislation in opposition to MEA has been circulating for decades. During that major funding crisis, the summer of 1993, the News had a rollicking field day. They were so close to their so-called Right-to-work nocturnal dream that they were elated and delirious with verbiage and puffery. Nolan is still chained to the bench from which such venom and spite was set to type.

House Speaker Paul Hillegonds was asked during the '93 crisis where the facts and figures source for the kinds of harsh measures he and the radicalized Republicans of that time were espousing, his source: The Heritage Foundation. What a tight little circle! The big player in both the Mackinac Center and in the Heritage Foundation (brought on line in the time of Reagan, well-known for PATCO and much anti-union angst and activity) is the Amway clan.

Young Dick DeVos was put on the board of Mackinac and the Amway crowd has been a generous supporter and funder of its nefarious missions against MEA.

It was the DeVos family, in particular, that pushed ahead with anti-public service campaigns nationwide and harsh political attack activity, spectacular failed efforts, in which they have wasted millions of their billions in profits.

Say again will you, Nolan, who are the real "bullies" and the perennial rock throwers in this classic battle?

We didn't see Mackinac Center backed Dick DeVos chain himself to the exit gates of to any failing manufacturing operation in Michigan, such as Greenville, as Dick frittered away his personal tens of millions on a disastrous gubernatorial campaign, did we? NO.

Have we seen a well-tuned, pro-active program to keep manufacturing alive in Michigan or make the kind of systemic and tax supported efforts to intelligently and wholeheartedly pave the way for new industry in Michigan--in the manner of say, Chattanooga and the state of Tennessee?

Cry over the fact that John Engler killed the concept--proposed by Gov. James Blanchard--to put in place and develop a university anchored high tech corridor in Michigan 19 years ago. Just imagine what an advantage that would have given us and how it could have saved us from our lack of diversification in industry.

So we are left with milquetoast sophistry about how teachers--with 5 years of undergraduate training and apprenticeship and the continuing responsibilities for even more costly post graduate training--should be relegated to what Nolan describes as the wage of "an ordinary worker" because as he states, "teacher perks have bled the budget dry." This is the same device used by Sen. Wayne Kuipers when he led the move to shut down state government exactly two years ago.

Does Finley really see teachers as ordinary workers? Is that how Nolan appreciates--"as a father and father-in-law of public school teachers", (Teacher perks bleed budget dry, Finley Editorial, DN, 10/4/09) the role and work of professional educators, even those in his immediate family circle? If so, how sad.

And as for the benefits Nolan and the Mackinac/Heritage howlers rage on about:  Where are those health dollars spent? In Wisconsin?

What value do MESSA dollars add to the entire medical economy? To what degree do school employees continue to underwrite the under-insured and the uninsured, who seek emergency care in places like the Amway invested medical operation in Grand Rapids--a billion dollar health complex?

How many teachers do you think, holding a MESSA administrated Michigan Blue Cross health package, are turned away from admission by Amway's endorsed and sponsored Spectrum Health? None of course, they are VERY WELCOME. MESSA clients help pay the bills for those unable to pay their way.

The local economies of so many of our communities and towns are greatly enriched and sustained by the local dollars spent and invested by school employees and their ancillary efforts to build other community organizations, volunteer undertakings, and churches.

Nolan, it's time you think for yourself and step up to the plate for Michigan's future in a positive and helpful way.





Original Post.