Charter School Group Caught Lying

Congratulations Albany!

The citizens of Albany, NY have pushed back against a blatantly dishonest, last minute campaign by a corporate charter school group.  While the fight went to the final round, the honest people of Albany chose to support the education of children over the profits of the charter chattel school system.

Yesterday the Times Union published a story which revealed a Big Business campaign against the Albany School District's budget -- using fliers with out-right false information -- wait, I'll say it LIES about taxes.  Then there was a push poll.  In the event you aren't familiar with them, push polls are an inherently dishonest means to propagate lies.  Well, maybe not always lies but the methodology is a deliberate way to try to obfuscate a direct message through suggestion.  Someone receives a call, agrees to take a quick survey, and then is fed a series of leading questions to the ultimate conclusion the push poller wants.  An example might be something like "Do you approve of Candidate X's refusal to address questions about marital infidelities?"  It doesn't matter if Candidate X even has a history of cheating or even has ever been accused of cheating.  The impression has been left in the voter's mind that X is of questionable morality.  Push polling is nothing but emotional and psychological manipulation.

Further proof, I suppose, that, if Corporations were people, they'd be psychopaths.

Albany is a city which has seen considerable scandal and failure in the realm of education.  Simply put, Albany is failing its children.  However, blame can not be placed solely on the education system.  Sure, it plays a major role but poverty, I believe, is the prime-mover of Albany's  education problem.  Chattel schools, at least in Albany, don't seem interested in the solving the problem.  Instead of supporting the community with committed, Unionized teachers, these corporations seek to make a profit first.  Their teachers are, I'd guess, no less committed than the Public School teachers but they aren't Unionized and that has real drawbacks.  They have no job security; have no real say over their work conditions or retirement, and are paid less.  Their stress must be greater in some ways than the Public School teacher's.  They are expected to perform with less support and less stability.

The obvious campaign of lies and deceit by the chattel school industry was geared to destabilize the Albany Public School system.  I presume this would have then been used as a lobbying wedge-issue as well as a means to try to get more chattel schools built in Albany.  Despite having the Mayor in their back pocket, chattel schools recently lost in an attempt to get a new school built.  Chattel school accountants must be looking at their balance sheets.  No new schools = no new profits.

Wait a minute!  Isn't the point of education our children?  By lying about the Albany School District budget, the chattel school industry has illustrated just how much they value children.  Chattel schools are supposed to be a compliment to Public Schools -- not a for-profit replacement.  By trying to get Albany's Citizens to vote down the District's budget, the chattel schools were, in effect, saying "defund your schools, don't support education and teachers, harm your children, and hand them over to us."

Chattel schools do not view themselves as partners in education with Public Schools.  They see themselves as competitors.  The free market belief system holds that the better school will get more students.  What does "better" mean anyway?  Unfortunately for kids, it does not necessarily mean "education".  The corporation better at misleading parents, better at cutting enriching services, or better at scaring honest citizens could also be a top performer -- without benefiting a single child.  It's a despicable shame, on a National level, we value under-served children so little that we'd wash our hands of the problem and hand them over to corporations with the mentality of Ayn Rand and compassion of a cactus.

I'm certain charter schools have a place in the education landscape and I am no fan of the Albany school system.  I moved out of Albany, partially, because I have a child and I do not want her in Albany's schools.  While I could afford to leave, there are many people who can't.  They are stuck in a cycle of poverty and, in the developing economy of the future, education may be the only way out.  If we are to "win the future", people have to stop handing it over to corporations who are willing to lie in order to profit off our kids.  Through grass-roots action like a Facebook page, citizens of Albany chose the future over corporate profits.  They won a fight for kids who really can't speak for themselves.  Way to go!  While the margin was not great, I feel the Albany School District should use this affirmative vote (despite the lies and lobbying) as a mandate.  In a troubled, inner-city school district, the budget passed and did so in a time of Cuomo education starvation as well as other financial hardships.  This opportunity can not be wasted adn teachers, staff, and administrators must rededicate themselves to improving the education and future of the District's children.

Belated Earth Day Post! Save Money and Help the Environment

Reducing your impact on the environment isn't just some Hippy dream or agenda to turn us all into vegan bark-eaters. While I'm not denying a lot of Progressives seem focused entirely on the environment to the detriment of other important issues such as Human Rights and Social Equality, I would like to point out that some of their ideas and approaches can be beneficial to your budget, help the environment, and do damage to the heartless corporations and oligarchs which currently rule our country. As this blog is for Labor and other Human Rights issues, I've been slowly illustrating ways you can save money at home (benefit to the individual) and, in doing so deprive corporations of their life-blood -- your hard-earned cash (benefit to the country).

To that end, you can easily make your own laundry detergent in your own kitchen.  I made my own yesterday and it only took about 30 minutes (tops) to do -- and that was only because I was making my daughter lunch at the same time!  The recipe I used only has 4 ingredients:  Fels-Naptha® (Ivory soap can also be used), Borax, washing soda, and water.  With the exception of the water, all these ingredients are probably in the laundry isle of your local supermarket.  Combined, the ingredients cost me about $9 after tax.  "But that's not cheap!" you're probably shouting at your screen.  Hold on.  The recipe only uses ½ of the bar of Fels-Naptha®, 1 cup of Borax, and one cup of washing soda.  When these volumes are considered, the cost per batch is reduced to about $1.70!  Frugal eh?  Where are you going to find laundry detergent for that price? 

What would you do if I told you that it costs $1.70 to make not 1, not 3, but 5 GALLONS of laundry detergent!

Now are you interested?  Now, go out and get yourself a 5 gallon bucket (around $2 from a hardware store).

Here's the recipe:

1. In a saucepan or pot, grate ½ of the Fels-Naptha® bar and top off with water -- filling the saucepan.  Don't worry, you won't ruin your pot or poison your kids, this stuff is only soap and less harmful than the stuff you use to wash it normally.
2. Heat the water at medium-high and stir every so often to help melt the soap.  This will probably take about 15 minutes.
3. Fill up your 5 gallon bucket with hot water from the tap leaving some room for the melted soap mixture.  I did this in my bathtub.
4. To the water in the bucket, add 1 cup of Borax and 1 cup of washing soda, and stir.
5. When the soap has completely melted in the saucepan, pour the mixture into the 5 gallon bucket and stir.
6. That's it.  You've made liquid laundry soap.  However, it does need to cool so wait overnight or so.  You'll find the liquid soap has congealed a bit.
7. Once cooled, mix up the liquid soap and pour into what ever smaller vessels you may have laying about.  I used my old laundry detergent container, gallon milk jugs, an empty shampoo bottle....

When you do your laundry, use ¾ a cup per load.  When you do the math, the cost of soap per load for your new, environmentally safer liquid laundry soap will be somewhere between 1 and 2¢!  Beat that!  The savings can go into your bank account and stay away from greedy corporations and their plutocratic overlords.  On top of that, your liquid laundry soap isn't being transported from some factory (reducing carbon emissions), adding phosphates to the environment, encouraging the abuse of petrochemicals (whether in the manufacture of the detergent or its container), and reducing landfill waste (you're reusing containers you would probably throw away).

There you have it:  good for your bottom dollar, good for the environment, and bad for greedy bastards.

The Right's War on Labor and Everyone Else

Ignorance must be blissful. Otherwise, I can not see how Conservatives live their lives. How else can one deliberately deny the evidence they can see with their own eyes? How else can they forget recent history? It does not matter if the issue is Global Climate Change, Human Rights, or Poverty, Conservatives will almost certainly vote against their best interest and for the interests of Big Business. Now, the nascent Astroturf (né “Tea Party”) movement gives a populist shine to the corporate turd which it conceals. This continues despite the evidence of the Koch brothers' direct orchestration in the movement and the continuing disparity between the moneyed oligarchs that run this country and the Citizenry.

Americans, it seems, go around believing they are going to become millionaires someday. Sorry to piss on your parade but the odds are very slim this will ever occur to most of us. Somehow deluded into this belief by billionaires, these people then vote as though they were greedy millionaires. See, I don't believe they view themselves as greedy. Of course they don't – they're voting “responsibly” (because that's what the Kochs and their ilk have told them). Lacking any sort of critical thinking skills and an inability to take into consideration their actual situation, these people vote to put more money into corporate coffers and less into their own pocketbooks.

These same people, for the most part, have shunned the Labor Movement in the private sector of the economy. They actually believe that Home Depot is an “employer of choice”. What the hell does that actually mean? Home Depot wants you to believe it means you don't need a Union to represent your interests and that they've got all your needs covered. Despite this fact, I personally know at least two Home Depot employees who continued to work with serious conditions when they should have been home recuperating. Additionally, I have exchanged stories with workers at one store where plantar fasciitis is a chronic epidemic. These people can barely stand on their feet – despite the fact their job requires they stay on their feet all day without appropriate measures to prevent this type of an injury. Why do they stay? Easy. They need the money. They live paycheck to paycheck. A work force that is underpaid is a workforce that is easily manipulated. These people, as a group, have not utilized their right to organize and be represented because it has been placed in their heads that the Labor Movement is “bad”. What are the results of this blind acceptance of the message put out by the wealthiest and corporations? The adjusted income for non-unionized private sector workers has decreased. For the first time in history, the standard of living of a child can be expected to be less than that of his or her parents!

In an effort to continue a concentration of their power, the oligarch and plutocrats that run this country have now set their sights on the last stronghold of Unionized Labor representation – public sector employees. Social workers and their kin have managed to hold on to their standard of living. While the private sector's income has decreased, the modest income of public sector workers has held and, in doing so, has become a source of envy and jealousy. Not being stupid, Astroturf founders have utilized these emotions to gain a foothold in public opinion. You see, they don't want people in the private sector realizing they can Unionize or worse, acting on it. You see, public employees are not paid too much – the private sector is paid too little.

The United States of America is a Corporatocracy. Pure and simple. If you doubt my position, just take a look into the money that is thrown into politics and where it comes from. Not only that, lobbyists often write laws that are then voted on completely unaltered. The concept of Democracy has been corrupted when corporations are writing our laws. Now, corporations are considered “people” when it comes to free speech thanks to a Supreme Court dominated by individuals beholden to the moneyed oligarchy operating our political system. In New York, we have Andrew Cuomo who was bought by the Kochs (they paid him more than Wisconsin's Governor Walker). His recently passed budget directly attacks things like public employees, public education, and MedicAid. All of these areas are ones where the Kochs of the world lust after in the hope of turning a profit. We also have other legislators who have been bought and paid for by their respective lobbies trying to pass laws to mess with our fully-funded pension plan, and undermine the Triborough Amendment.

Privatization was once hailed as the answer to all of Governments problems. In a society where the Poor and Middle Classes are under represented by their government, I say somethings should never be privatized. In the interest of representing everyone, the government must maintain control of certain areas. As I write, conservative Republicans are now suggesting the privatization of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. This really is an attempt to drive more money and more profits to the ruling class. Corporations are salivating at the money in pension plans, Social Security, and Medicare-aid yet they can't get to it. They can't make a profit on that money and, in turn, reward their masters with enormous bonuses. Privatization is nothing more than an attempt to redistribute wealth from the poorest in society to the wealthiest. It has nothing to do with efficiency or savings. There is a class war going on but it isn't coming from the Left.

We have to stop this trend in centralizing power. Hell, the United States was founded by people dead-set against the centralization of power in an elite few. Yet, we, as a nation, are allowing it to happen. Fortunately, history is on our side. It is because of Progressive movements like Labor that women can vote, slavery was abolished, and people can expect to work in a safe environment. We can do it. We have done it in the past. Now is our time to take a stand and push back against the rich elitists and their faux-populist movement. Not just for ourselves as individuals but, rather, for everyone regardless of the amount of money they have.

Liberté, égalité, fraternité!

Andrew Cuomo's Koch Problem

I was handed the flyer below by a student at yesterday's rally in support of Wisconsin Public Employees and Worker's Rights by a student.  I foolishly forgot to ask his name so that he could get proper attribution for his work.  However, he did some leg work I was planning on doing and, low and behold, he found what I expected would be the case -- Andrew Cuomo has a Koch habit.

As you can see in the pdf below, Cuomo has accepted $92,000 from the Kochs -- yes those Kochs who are working as hard as possible to eliminate the Human Right of Collective Bargaining in Wisconsin, Ohio, Illinios, and New Jersey.  The very same people, so addicted to greed that they feel entitled to trample on the lower and middle classes in their quest to acquire more.

Cuomo's Koch Problem

In case you were wondering if this was faked, I went and checked it out myself.  Granted, the first time I did it was the really dumb, hard way of scrolling through names (I didn't see the link for the search page!).  As this student demonstrates, there is an easier way.  You can check for yourself by going to the New York State Campaign Financial Disclosure Database's Search Page and entering the search criteria he outlined above (Andrew Cuomo 2014, Inc.; 1/1/2009 to 1/1/2011; donations from $1 to $100000).  If you want to skip entering everything online, you would get this page.  Then, just hit <alt>F in your browser to find text and enter "Koch".  You can see for yourself.

If the student who distributed this flyer reads this post, contact me if you want me to give you appropriate credit.

Conservative Misrepresentation of the Triborough Amendment

Here in New York, there has been some discussion from the far right and their corporate lackeys in government (read: Andrew Cuomo through his senior advisor Larry Schwartz) and corporate lobbying groups (read: Committee to Save New York [for Corporations]) to repeal or "selectively" enforce New York's Triborough Amendment.

If you were to read stories in papers such as the Times Union or any of the far right, conservative or anti-labor/pro-corporation blogs, you would be left with the conclusion that the Triborough Amendment is a law that was passed to, somehow, make public sector employees a (as Koch-brother-supported autocrats like Governors Walker (WI) and Daniels (IN) say) "privileged" class.  Quite to the contrary, the Triborough Amendment levels out a profoundly skewed playing field created by New York's Taylor Law

The Taylor Law, basically, establishes the right for public sector employees to organize and have Union representation. Think of it as New York's version of the Taft-Hartley Law.

However, the very same law prevents public employees and civil servants from exercising something their private industry counterparts can -- the ability to strike. Section 210 of the Taylor Law clearly states, "No public employee or employee organization shall engage in a strike, and no public employee or employee organization shall cause, instigate, encourage, or condone a strike." In case you missed it in high school Social Studies class, the strike is Labor's last recourse against abusive management.

Taking away the right to strike (on a legal level) effectively made Civil Servants and Public Employees a kind of indentured servant. Maybe that is a little hyperbolic but there was nothing that really could be done if management treated Labor poorly. Civil Servants could quit but what good would that do the State in the long run? If the State wants to attract quality employees away from the private sector, this is not the way to manage their employees. Generally speaking, the Government does not pay as well as the private sector when comparable jobs are examined side by side.  While many public employees are willing to take the decrease in pay in exchange for a reliable pension and benefits, and many work in the civil sector in the interest of helping their fellow citizens, almost all are unwilling to do so if there is no protection of their rights. The Triborough Amendment aims to help protect those rights.

Section 209-a, subsection e of the Taylor Law states:

...to refuse to continue all the terms of an expired agreement until a new agreement is negotiated, unless the employee organization which is a party to such agreement has, during such negotiations or prior to such resolution of such negotiations, engaged in conduct violative of subdivision one of section two hundred ten of this article.

This is the Triborough Amendment Big Business and the Koches of the world have set their sights on. What this section is saying is that the contract settled on by Executive Branch and voted on by the Union membership will remain in effect even if the old contract expires and a new one is not negotiated to fill its place unless the Union strikes.  Previous to this amendment, a Governor could refuse to negotiate, allow a contract to expire, and then do what ever the hell he felt like (I say "he" because New York has yet to have a woman Governor). Hardly fair when you are the head of the State and dealing with people who can not strike.

So now you can see why corporations want Cuomo to repeal, erase, or "selectively enforce" the Triborough Amendment -- to undermine the Unions and force a Big Business agenda down the throats of honest, hard-working, tax-paying New Yorkers. To hell with the fact those honest, hard-working, tax-paying New Yorkers are Public Employees. Corporations do not care about people. It is not even in their DNA. Humans are only resources. They care about the almighty dollar.

Is it not curious that the rhetoric being propagated by Big Business and their media cohorts seems to omit the fact that Public Employees are tax payers too? I doubt they want people to realize that Civil Servants are shouldering their obligation to the State. It is easier to paint them as greedy do-nothings.  I digress....

If one spends any amount of time online researching this topic, they will encounter one particular argument over and over -- that the Triborough Amendment gives the Unions too much power over the Government. As I have already pointed out above and provide links to that you can read for yourself, the Triborough Amendment does nothing of the kind. It is a part of the Taylor Law's checks and balances. It should also be noted that the Administration can (and has) use the Triborough Amendment to its advantage. In times of plenty a Governor can hold off or delay negotiating with the Unions in order to increase revenue for the State. Governor George Pataki did exactly this maneuver much to the chagrin of the Unions. I suspect there are a lot of boards of education and mayors across the State who have done similar things. So, contrary to what the far right says, the Triborough Amendment does not tip the scales for the Unions and it must be kept in place to maintain appropriate checks and balances within the Taylor Law.