Wrestlemania 2016

On Monday night I decided to take a peek at the debate. I didn't need to get up early on Tuesday, and figured I'd have little to lose. With luck, I'd fall asleep and miss most of it. For me, it's usually good enough to watch the little pieces on TV.

But fortune was not smiling on me and I stayed awake through all of it. I'd read about how Trump had assembled a group of women who had grudges with Bill, along with a rape victim whose attacker had been defended by attorney Hillary Clinton. Thus, his response to being caught on camera saying things most people would find unacceptable from a 12-year-old junior high school loser was to make it into even more of a reality show than it already was. Honestly, attorneys represent all sorts of clients, and I understand some even represent Donald Trump. It's pretty creepy to judge them for doing their jobs.

At the actual debate it seems like Trump was really pushing the edges of his limited vocabulary to describe how bad Hillary was. She was the dumbest, the worst, she was a disaster. And everything was her fault. Why didn't she change it when she was in the Senate? After all, you get one of a hundred voices over in that place. It was controlled by the Republicans, she said. But Trump thought that wasn't good enough. Maybe she should've twisted everyone's arm until they came over to her way of thinking.

And then it was Obamacare. Yes, what a disaster. I'm personally upset to have my daughter covered until she's 26 under my policy. What a horror that is. And oh, she wants single payer. They have that in Canada, and all the Canadians are climbing over one another to get here and have surgery. Only they aren't. Unless you're incredibly wealthy you can't afford to do almost anything in an American hospital, which charges you thousands of dollars a day simply for being there, let alone having anything done.

And unfortunately, Hillary is not for single payer anymore, having failed to push it through when her husband was President. I've read that she supports a public option, which beats the hell out of having to choose between various predatory insurance companies. But Trump will magically have those companies compete and offer reasonable options, even though they have never done so before and have, before Obamacare, pretty much excluded anyone who actually had the temerity to get sick before wanting to be insured. (Actually the public option would give them something serious with which to compete.) Yes, single payer would be a disaster. How awful to free doctors of having to bill 500 insurance companies and patients of various copays and fees over which they have no control whatsoever.

And then there's the tough guy routine. Trump favors the law and order that's dumped over 2 million Americans in prison, and when he wins, he'll appoint a special prosecutor and place Hillary there too. How dare she state he's unfit, let alone run against him? He'll show her. He'll put her in prison, just like his pal Putin. And if those Dixie Chicks, or anyone else, dare speak up against him, he'll dump them in a cell somewhere, just like Putin did to Pussy Riot. Maybe he'll dump them in Hillary's cell. None of that free speech crap for the Donald. If you're gonna be a tough guy you can't tolerate such frivolity.

And when they ask him about his remarks about women, he says I'm sorry but I'm going after ISIS. Somehow, in his mind there's a connection. Maybe we're supposed to be afraid that if we don't vote for him, ISIS will somehow become more powerful. They're not open-minded, like we are. Maybe they'll torture people, you know, like Trump says he wants to do. Maybe they'll win elections and imprison or otherwise wipe out their opponents. Stuff like that happens, you know.

Honestly, I can't believe I sat through this nonsense. I'm glad I'm not a social studies teacher who assigned students to watch it. I'd probably be on charges for corrupting our youth or something. Did you endure this? At the very least, shouldn't we all get a prize for it?

The Accountability Scam

Sean Crowley, my brother blogger from Buffalo, has a great column about how educational leaders are popped into place with no public input. A secondary point he makes is about accountability. This is the word we invariably hear when insane systems are initiated. Why should teachers be judged by test scores? Accountability. Why must every kid, no matter where he or she comes from, get the same test? Accountability. Why is our tenure and union under frontal assault? Accountability.

Reformy politicians love accountability. If you didn't know better, you'd think it warmed the remote nether regions of their ice-cold hearts. You'd think they care about the progress of our poor underprivileged impoverished children. You'd think that because that, in fact, is what they say when they pimp common core, value-added ratings, and firing as many teachers as possible.

But here's the thing--accountability does not, in fact, mean taking responsibility for real problems. It simply means passing the buck. If the problem in the United States is that children are not getting high enough scores on standardized tests (and it isn't, by the way), you can say, "See? Those lazy teachers aren't doing their jobs! They're sitting around and reading the newspaper while our children are suffering and failing!" That's what a whole lot of editorial and op-ed writers would have you believe.

The problem, though, is not in our stars, nor in ourselves. The problem is in our communities. Despite Governor Cuomo's valuable lip service that some workers in NY State will receive $15 an hour in a few years, a whole lot of people are just not making in in this country. When two parents work 200 hours a week each and still can't make ends meet, they don't have a whole lot of time for parenting. Unfortunately, the people who fund reformies like Andrew Cuomo are profiting enormously from low wage workers. Uber-reformy Whitney Tilson of DFER has no problems hyping and profiting from the likes of Walmart and McDonalds.

But the race to the bottom in American employment is in fact a huge factor in why kids don't do well on tests. Parents who haven't got a minute to read with their kids, who haven't got a minute to read themselves, who haven't got a minute to visit schools or teachers have serious problems. And the very reformies who vilify teachers not only contribute to this problem, but also directly profit from it. And as if that weren't enough, they've now got their fat grubby paws in charters, cyber charters, and various other schemes to divert even more money from those of us unimaginative enough to have to work for a living.

In America, we don't need circuses, because they're everywhere. Over a dozen GOP candidates debate and not one addresses minimum wage. They stand there arguing over how to defund Planned Parenthood and feign outrage when Donald Trump makes some juvenile crack about one of Fox's bleached blond talking heads. They present us corporate funded union-busters and rail about President Obama's program to bring health care to more people. You might leave one of those debates outraged over Obamacare rather than the fact that every other industrialized country offers its citizens health care as a matter of course.

Reformies love accountability only because they can dump it on us. By blaming unionized teachers for all the world's woes, they are held totally blameless for their miserable and perpetual failure to help working Americans. And for all the crocodile tears they shed for our children, they will soon grow up to be working Americans, and thus shunned and ignored by those who claim now to be their advocates.

And who is it who actually spends time and energy on these children?

That would be us, the educators. The tinhorn politicians and tone-deaf op-ed writers who vilify and libel us for a living profit off of the misery of those we serve every day. We can't afford to let them make us miserable too. It's our job to tell the truth, no matter how much it hurts Frank Bruni, Andy Cuomo, Arne Duncan, or any of the other demagogues who infect our media.

When any one of them or their ilk wishes to actually be accountable rather than toss the word around, it will be a miracle akin to the one pictured above. 

Troglodytes

The United States Supreme Court made two important decisions yesterday. First, they decided that employers need not fund health care decisions that conflict with their religious views.

So if you want your health care to entail birth control but your employer doesn't believe in it, too bad for you. Some religions have other reservations about medicine. Let's say your employer doesn't believe in antibiotics or blood transfusions. Maybe he doesn't believe in surgery or routine medical checks. That would really be tough, wouldn't it?

I wouldn't be surprised if the CEO of Exxon Mobil were forming a new religion right now. Think of how economical it would be for a business required to insure the health of people whose boss didn't actually believe in health (for strictly religious reasons, of course).

But this court believes deeply in individual freedom. That's why it took up the case of some health care workers, who were apparently so offended by a raise of over 50% they went to federal court. They don't believe in union. How awful. I wonder why they didn't return their raise in protest. But as long as people believe in more work for less pay, they have the right to insist on it.

The court decided this decision was valid because the health workers were only "partial" public employees. Maybe it's because the public just pays their salary but doesn't actually fully participate in their services. Look for them to determine teachers are only partial public employees because they only teach some kids rather than all of them.

This is essentially the same court that gave us GW Bush in 2000, deeming it too dangerous to count votes. As long as it's 5-4 on the wrong side, they won't come out in favor of working people any time soon.

Of course I'm not a Supreme Court Justice, and I don't understand all the intricacies of rationalizing anti-woman and anti-union nonsense. I'm just a lowly teacher.

But I'm very proud to be one nonetheless.