One of the rationales for why Mayor Michael "Moneybags" Bloomberg is such a wonderful steward for New York City is that he has more money than God and is above all that dirty, money-grubbing kind of stuff less wealthy politicians have to engage in to run for the office.

The idea is, Bloomberg can bankroll his own campaign and ignore the needs of political donors, cronies and associated other hacks who corrupt more pedestrian politicians.

Only one problem with that rationale - it's wrong.

Bloomberg may bankroll his own campaigns and may not need to beg political donations from wealthy NYC movers and shakers, but that doesn't mean his administration isn't susceptible to a Rangelesque sense of entitlement:

The Bloomberg administration was so intent on obtaining a free luxury suite for its own use at the new Yankee Stadium, newly released e-mail messages show, that the mayor’s aides pushed for a larger suite and free food, and eventually gave the Yankees 250 additional parking spaces in exchange.

The parking spaces were given to the team for the private use of Yankees officials, players and others; the spaces were originally planned for public parking. The city also turned over the rights to three new billboards along the Major Deegan Expressway, and whatever revenue they generate, as part of the deal.

The e-mail messages between the aides to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Yankees executives were obtained and released by Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky, Democrat of Westchester, who questions whether taxpayers were adequately protected in the city’s deal with the team.

Mr. Brodsky said what emerges from the e-mail correspondence is a sense of entitlement ingrained in Bloomberg officials. He said that the city appeared to be pushing for use of the suite for not just regular-season games, but for the playoffs and the World Series, and for special events like concerts, too.

“There’s this ‘Alice in Wonderland’ quality to the question of, what is the public interest here and who’s protecting it?” said Mr. Brodsky, who conducted a hearing on the issue of public financing of sports stadiums this summer. “We can’t find the money for the M.T.A., or schools, or hospitals, and these folks are used to the perks and good things of life, and expect them.”

Gee, that's a good point Mr. Brodsky has there.

It's kinda like when Bloomberg announced some pretty draconian job and program cuts earlier this month but refused to make the same kinds of cuts in his own office and doled out raises to some of his high-level cronies in the Transportation Department.

Or like when Bloomberg said it is very important that Wall Street executives at AIG, Citigroup, and other companies that have received hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer bailout money continue to receive their end-of-the-year bonuses despite driving their companies to near bankruptcy and ruin.

Silly New Yorkers, accountability for performance is for teachers in the New York City public school system, not for Bloombergian cronies on Wall Street who have lost hundreds of billions of dollars in writedowns and losses this year alone.

And taxpayer-sponsored stadiums and tax rebates are for wealthy Bloombergian cronies while higher taxes and cuts in services are for middle and working class New Yorkers.

Private schools are not concerned. The rich can always be bailed out by the likes of you and me, and they still have money.

Michelle Rhee, DC Schools Chancellor, has over the last few weeks been plastered all over the NY Times, the Washington Post, Newsweek and Time (Various deep thinkers of the caliber who've fixed our economy now seek to fix education, and these news stories are, of course, a completely unrelated coincidence). Ms. Rhee's basic premise is that the only variable in education is the teachers. She knows this, of course, because she taught for two years herself.

During Ms. Rhee's two-year career, she was able to overcome every obstacle through sheer elbow grease and determination. There are, unfortunately, no records whatsoever to document Ms. Rhee's claims, but her word ought to be good enough for you, America (It certainly appears good enough for MSM reporters).

The problem with teachers, according to Ms. Rhee, is they have too many job protections and she cannot fire them whenever she pleases. This irks her, as she had no problem firing the principal of her daughter's school. Why shouldn't she be able to fire her daughter's teacher as well, that bitch, should she give too much homework?

It's well-established that working people have it rough these days in America. The only solution, in Ms. Rhee's view, is to make things worse for teachers, the last bastion of unionized employees in America. After all, Ms. Rhee's primary focus is children, and what kids need is consistency. Therefore, if there are no good jobs left, kids will know what to expect. We Americans have had it up to here with working people having job security, health benefits, and freedom of speech. Let them go to Canada or Europe if they want that socialist nonsense. This is America. We need to let teachers, like everyone else, be fired whenever Michelle Rhee feels like it.

That way, our kids will know that they too can be fired when Michelle Rhee feels like it. After all, we need them to work hard and keep their mouths shut, so that they can pay taxes and bail out failed corporations like the rest of us. When I was a kid, the guy across the street from me worked in a Taystee Bread factory, owned his own home, and supported a family of five while his wife stayed home and cared for them. Now he'd need two incomes to do that. And there's no good reason we can't dial back salaries, pensions, job security, and privileges enough to make it three, using good old American know-how.

So let's have more thoroughly uncritical coverage of Ms. Rhee and her utter lack of accomplishment. If she says she knows what she's doing, that ought to be good enough for anyone.

I was in DC a few years back, and on the metro there were all kinds of people handing out flyers and going to a demonstration about "protection of marriage." Actually, though, it wasn't about that at all. It was really about manipulating the prejudices and ignorance of the public at large so they'd vote against their interests, for Republicans who'd lower taxes on people making more money than they ever would.

Now there are places where they're concerned about the protection of marriage. Take South Korea, for example. Actress Ok So-ri is looking at an 18-month stretch for the crime of adultery. No scarlet letter nonsense over there, it's off to the hoosegow and we don't want to hear your excuses. Now it's true that this law has been sullied by vindictive partners looking for revenge, and it's true that this appears to be the only sort of instance in which their law is applied.

But if you really want to protect marriage, you need to toss adulterers in the pokey. And to be fair, you can't leave it at that. You have to jail the divorcees as well. True, these measures seem archaic and draconian. But whether or not gay people tie the knot has nothing to do with protection of marriage. What Rosie O'Donnel does or does not do won't affect my marriage and it won't affect yours either.

Measures outlawing divorce and adultery won't be popular, and they won't garner you nearly the number of votes among the ignorant yahoo segment your candidates may require (and no, I don't think everyone who voted for W. is an ignorant yahoo, but without them he'd never have made it, even with his brother's state, his daddy's court, and Katherine Harris).

But if you're for protection of marriage, and you're not willing to jail adulterers and divorcees, you're full of crap.

To all my teacher friends and readers--you have the best job there is, sullied though it may be by parties I won't mention today. Note where their notions of how the country (and our profession) should be run have led us.

To all Americans--another party I won't mention today, the one who pardons one turkey while others are slaughtered behind her back, won't be next in succession for President of the United States.

To everyone--one of my students said, "The past is history, the future's a mystery, and today is a miracle." I'm happy to be part of that miracle, and honored that everyone reading this has come along for the ride.

I'll be on the road today, en route to a family reunion many miles away, but I wish you all a safe, healthy, and happy Thanksgiving.

What are you thankful for?

Hank Williams Jr. wants to become a US Senator.

So declared one of my writing students yesterday, apropos of nothing. Most kids were busily trying to create paragraphs that would fool teachers into permitting them to pass the English Regents exam. I was perplexed.

"You're lost in this world?" I asked.

"I am," she affirmed. She was smiling as she made this declaration, so I thought perhaps she'd just had enough of writing about pasta. I couldn't blame her, as reading about it was making me hungrier by the moment. If anyone got between me and a plate of rigatoni, they were toast (though a crusty artisan bread would've been preferable).

"What you need is a map," suggested a helpful student. "Then you'll know where you are."

Another said, "No one uses maps anymore. You need a GPS."

I like my GPS, which has gotten me out of Darkest New Jersey many a time. But my lost girl just kept writing. I don't know if I can help her resolve her existential dilemma.

But I'm confident she's gonna pass that test in January, and at least that will get her one step closer.

Alan Colmes is leaving Hannity and Colmes. Apparently, he sees a contribution in his work:

I feel as though we have a Democratic President, House and Senate; I feel like my work is done," he tells TVNewser.

Doubtless Mr. Colmes feels he's shown Fox News viewers the error of their ways. Oddly, I don't subscribe to the Fox slant and I still found Mr. Colmes one of the least persuasive figures I've ever seen on what purports to be a news show. It appears Fox may allow Sean Hannity to fly solo, as it's almost impossible to find a talking head of Colmes' caliber.

In any case, we can certainly look forward to more first-class TV from the inimitable Sean Hannity.

Leo Casey, noted UFT big shot, has written yet another article about how wonderful Green Dot Schools are, and how privileged we are to have them in the Big Apple. I commented on the piece:

I certainly appreciate your informative posts about Green Dot. I am particularly fascinated by your assertion that Green Dot’s “just cause” provisions are better than tenure, since new hires can take advantage of them.

I’m very interested in how these provisions work. Kindly tell us how many teacher positions this “just cause” provision has saved. Also, how many times has it been used?

Green Dot’s website proclaims its teachers have neither tenure nor seniority rights. Oddly, it neglects to mention that its teachers have protection superior to tenure.

By the way, do you think it benefits working teachers to have no seniority privileges?

Thank you in advance for your response.

Alas, Mr. Casey, despite my gracious thank you, has thus far declined to respond. And here's the response Edwize saw fit to run:

It looks like being caught in an outright misrepresentation on the Green Dot Charter School makes some folks want to change the subject.

This is a misleading and false accusation, much like the one Mr. Casey made when he blamed me for the words of the LA Times editorial board (suggesting teachers throw tenure out the window to join Green Dot). It refers to a piece from the ICE blog, a piece I had nothing whatsoever to do with, which Mr. Casey refers to as "groundless speculation and factual misinformation." The writer refutes this in the comments, but meanwhile, on Edwize, Mr. Casey declines to respond to the membership he is paid to represent.

My question is simple--if Green Dot openly refutes tenure, and the UFT claims they have a system that's better, how does it work in practice? Didn't they check before agreeing to partner with them? I've seen no evidence to suggest this.

I've asked repeatedly, and no one from the union has seen fit to respond.

And there's the other question--Green Dot openly rejects seniority, the UFT has not offered any justification or rationale for that, so do they think it's a good thing? Have they considered it?

It appears they have not.

So I have to ask, if the UFT leadership has not bothered to examine such fundamental questions, if they don't plan, if they don't think things through, how can they deal with someone like Joel Klein, who clearly has his eye on the future?

And if they refuse to respond to serious basic questions from real working teachers, what on earth are we paying them for?

...and the details are right here.

Why New York parents should be grabbing their torches and pitchforks.

President-elect Obama puts mayo on a corned-beef sandwich.

Ruh, roh.

New Marist poll out yesterday shows only 51% of those surveyed would vote for the little dictator, Mike Bloomberg, over 37% who would vote for Congressman Anthony Weiner in next year's mayoral race.

Bloomberg beats Comptroller Bill Thompson 52%-32%.

Ignore the numbers for Weiner and Thompson for a minute and just focus on Bloomberg's.

51% want to vote for him against Weiner? 52% want to vote for him over Thompson.

Those are very scary numbers for an incumbent - just ask any number of GOP incumbents who enjoyed such numbers last year what happened to them this year.:

The slim lead "can be troublesome for an incumbent," said Marist pollster Lee Miringoff who added that "51% is about as slim a majority as you can have at this point."

Now does this mean the little dictator won't cruise to victory?

Of course not.

He's set to drop upwards of $120 million on the race, most of which will be spent on negative ads to turn Weiner and Thompson into unacceptable alternatives.

If I had to bet the mortgage of the farmhouse on the election, I'd still say the little dictator will win next year.

But the poll does say one thing.

People noticed the backroom wheeling and dealing he pulled last month to overturn term limits for city officials without putting the change to a vote and don't like it - even former supporters.

As Wayne Barrett said in the Village Voice this week:

Last month's 29-to-22 council vote to do Bloomberg's bidding was the most tawdry moment in city politics I've ever seen. More camera crews and reporters attended the vote than any other session in City Council history—some said the passage of the bill was as close as we would get to a mayoral election in 2009.

...

The Bloomberg who came into office as the anti-politician, promising to transform city government, has been transformed himself. Some of us liked him precisely because his wealth insulated him from the kind of horsetrading that diminished his predecessors. But seven years later, Bloomberg has not only proved himself to be a master politician, as hungry for power as anyone we've ever seen, but he's also ended up putting nearly everyone who deals with the city deep into his political debt.

Indeed.

President-elect Barack Obama and his wife Michelle have chosen to send their daughters to the Sidewell Friends School, a "prestigious academy that has educated generations of this city’s elite."

I've written before about a notion a right-wing friend of mine had, that public schools would improve overnight if we required that politicians who administrate them send their own kids. Can you imagine Michael Bloomberg or Joel Klein sending their kids to classes of 34? Can you imagine their kids learning in trailers and closets, or running around in buildings stuffed several times their capacity? It's not hard to imagine that would become an emergency akin to, say, building a new baseball stadium.

On the other hand, as President, Barack Obama will not directly administer any public school system. Furthermore, as children of the President, his kids will need extraordinary care and protection. I sincerely hope the school they've chosen can provide it. And were he to have chosen the DC public schools, his children would've become pawns in the union-busting plans of Michelle Rhee. While it would be nice to see the President's children in public schools, it's a good thing that conversation was sidestepped.

Personally, I think he made the best decision under the circumstances. What do you think?

Hillary accepts Secretary of State position.

This week we're doing a task from the English Regents in my class. Actually I found a Kaplan book with mock exams and tried one. I'm really tired of having to read all the sample comps available on the net so as to catch those of my kids who think copying off the net is the best preparation for a two-day writing test.

Kaplan has a piece about the role of pasta in Italian culture. It's a little less detailed than what NY State usually provides, and has the added drawback of making everyone who hears the lecture impossibly hungry. Nonetheless, we plod on toward the test in January. It's discouraging, though, that some of these kids have either never studied or never grasped basic English grammar and usage.

I did a quick review of present and past tenses in English, hoping it would take in my newcomers. Still, they present me with sentences that make me want to rip my hair out and scream. I'm not sure that would be the best path to merit pay, but what do you say to a kid who poses a question like this:

How can Italians used to pasta?

What you do is you walk away for a moment, regain your composure, and return to say, "I'm sorry, but I don't understand that." The kid looks at you blankly for a long, long moment. Then he smiles the smile of one who's been enlightened, furiously moves his eraser, and presents you with the new and improved version:

How did Italians used to pasta?

He's so happy you don't know how to tell him you still don't understand it. So you move to the next kid and save that conversation for later. You move on, and you see this:

The food is the important thing of human being, every person must eat food every day.

And really, who can argue with that? I did read somewhere that food was an important element of a balanced diet. If only I could make the kid narrow the topic to Italian food and culture rather than all food and culture, if only I could make the kid identify subtopics, if only I could understand anything else the kid had written...

Well, New York State says these kids need to pass a test designed for native speakers of English. New York State doesn't recognize that people need at least a couple of years to master a new language. New York State doesn't recognize that it takes a few more years to acquire academic language.

So folks like me, who could help these kids acquire English faster, who could seduce these kids into loving to read, must force these kids into writing bare-bones, minimally acceptable comps that pass the Regents exam they should not have to take.

Leo Casey, resident propagandist at Edwize has yet another post about what a great job he and Ms. Weingarten are doing for the ATRs. It's odd he needed to do that, since he wrote last April that the "hold harmless" clause would mean principals could hire senior teachers at no additional cost. Doubtless it didn't occur to Mr. Casey at that time that principals could hire two newbies instead, and might prefer to do so.

In fact, it's odd that Mr. Casey needed a "hold harmless" clause at all, since he and Ms. Weingarten enthusiastically endorsed the 05 contract which was directly responsible for the ATR mess. Here's Edwize writer City Sue on the beauty and wonder of the clause that caused the entire mess:

In fact, there’ll be more transfer opportunities. The only thing is, like in the real world, you’ll have to sell yourself. See a vacancy? Just apply! All vacancies will be declared, not just half. No limits on how many jobs you can apply for. No release needed from your principal. No limits on how many teachers can transfer out of a single school. No discrimination in hiring allowed, not even for union activities — or age, race, etc. No involuntary transfers. It’s a free market, for those who dare! And for excessed teachers, there’s always a job for you back home (in your school or district) if you can’t find anything else.

Unfortunately, it didn't turn out that way for the hundreds of teachers consigned to perpetual substitute teaching. I corresponded for some time with a young woman so demoralized by her time in the absent teacher reserve that she quit. I'm afraid Mr. Casey's agreement is a little too late for her.

So will the agreement help? Perhaps. Unfortunately, everything I've seen suggests that in the chess game between Klein and the UFT aristocracy, Mr. Klein has a long term vision that Ms. Weingarten and her patronage mill sorely lack. Ms. Weingarten's flunkies were wrong when they said the "open market" system would help. They've posted several articles on how successful it is, noting the number of transfers and pointedly ignoring those teachers stuck in the ATR brigade. They said the "hold harmless" clause would help, and it didn't.

Perhaps principals will now hire ATRs, and if they do, it will be a good thing. But what about those who will inevitably be left behind? Will they provide more fodder for The New Teacher Project, Joel Klein's bought and paid for propaganda project?

Sadly, it's hard to trust Mr. Klein, and worse, it's just as hard to trust the paid mouthpieces of Ms. Weingarten. Que sera sera. But along with the rest of my colleagues who actually do this job, I'll be watching.

When you're Randi Weingarten, part-time head of the UFT (and part-time head of the AFT) it takes a pretty big event to get your attention. But Michelle Rhee, the Chancellor of still-awful DC schools, has determined that the woes of the school system she administrates are largely due to job protections and regular raises for teachers. It's well known that what's important is children. What children need, of course (when they grow up), are more jobs from which they can be fired for no reason whatsoever.

So Ms. Weingarten has decided to meet with Ms. Rhee. And nothing is off the table except vouchers, which Ms. Weingarten has determined are bad. Things that are on the table (which Ms. Weingarten has apparently determined not to be bad) are loss of teacher tenure and merit pay. After all, who can determine better than Michelle Rhee whether or not teachers deserve to keep their jobs? She, like Ms. Weingarten, knows all about being a teacher, having taught for a year or two herself.

Ms. Weingarten is a new kind of union leader, and she is most definitely not some cigar-chomping union thug. For one thing, Ms. Weingarten thinks nothing of rolling up her sleeves and giving away twenty years of gains for less than cost of living. Now the cigar-chomper might say something like, "What are you, nuts, to offer such a crappy deal?" but not Ms. Weingarten. She gets her entire patronage mill out to campaign for it, to vote for it, and doesn't regret it for one solitary minute.

But the question really is this--what motivates AFT President Randi Weingarten to get involved with a local, and not even the one she still runs (part-time)?

The Washington Post seems to know:

...she criticized Rhee's consideration of measures that would release the District from its legal obligation to bargain with the Washington Teachers' Union. These include seeking revival of the city's ability to open nonunion charter schools, and legislation that would declare a post-Katrina-style "state of emergency" that would effectively allow Rhee and Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) to create a new, union-free school system.

Obviously, once Rhee and Fenty decide to go this route, that would be trouble for Ms. Weingarten. Ms. Weingarten would perhaps have to oppose it, and as she's lacked the gumption to oppose mayoral control, unilateral repeal of term limits, the school-based pay that condemns senior teachers to ATR status, or even Joel Klein for education secretary, how could she oppose this? People might get mad at her, or think she's an old-time cigar-chomper, or even a socialist.

And regardless of all that, there are dues to be collected. Don't you think for one minute, Michelle Rhee, that you're gonna mess with the collection of dues. You can have tenure, you can have merit pay, but there are conventions that need to be funded, and who's gonna pay for that once you deny our members of their much-treasured dues checkoff?

After all, just because we give up on tenure and merit pay in DC, it doesn't mean we have to do so anywhere else, right? Michelle Rhee doesn't exist simply because we gave up everything we possibly could in NYC, does she? Are these things related? Will there be consequences for our giving up everything en masse?

Nah. Of course not. You go girl!

Someone I met yesterday told me an interesting story. She and her husband have three kids, and they make less than three thousand dollars a month. One of the very few benefits of living on an income like that, apparently, is Medicaid. This is particularly helpful to them because they have a young daughter with leukemia. The treatment is brutal and it seems once they get through with one thing, they move onto another.

And somehow, even though Governor Paterson's cuts haven't been approved yet, Medicaid is paying less. I know a dentist who told me they've cut payments to the point where she can't even pay her supplier. And the woman with the sick child just got a bill for three thousand dollars her family doesn't have. Worse, it appears more may be coming.

A comment yesterday suggested the New York State plan that covers sick kids only works until the kids get really sick, and once that happens they're on their own. Just about every other industrialized country in the world covers its people. We, on the other hand, spend all our money fighting pointless wars and bailing out banks.

Here in the US, we have laws to protect credit card companies from losses when people go bankrupt. But we have none to protect people from losing all they own due to catastrophic medical emergency.

The guy in the picture might as well be running this country. I hope our new leader does better by us.