PALAST: Why is Obama considering GOP scammer for Secretary of Education?

Obama is considering Joel Klein for Secretary of Education. Klein has no background in education and fired teachers while wasting billions on software and "consultants" for the GOP-backed testing obsession after being appointed by Michael Bloomberg to run New York City schools.

Americans rejected failed Republican ideas on foreign policy, economics, and human rights when we elected Obama. It would be fair to assume that Republican ideas on education belong on the toilet of history as well.

I teach community college and my fiancee teaches middle school special education, and a choice like this would be demoralizing.

Why do Democrats tolerate the appointment of those who know nothing about education as superintendents, chancellors, and even secretary of education?

Even those with degrees in public administration seem to do about as much good as MBA's have done to Wall Street and American business in general. Their bean counting expertise is needed, but when they are not subordinate to those who actually know and care about the product, in our case education, they do exactly what they did to Enron, subprime mortgages, and the American auto industry. They cook the books to create the illusion of success while crippling the institution's ability to fulfill its actual function. In K-12 education, this is done with endless testing and accountability for teachers that amounts to a mountain of paperwork that takes longer to fill out than grading papers and writing lesson plans, rather than mandating smaller class sizes and providing effective ways to deal with students too unruly to be in regular classes or even be on the playground with other kids.

For those of us in higher education, this process is just beginning with nonsense about "student learning outcomes" that duplicate course objectives. Next will come the paperwork on how well you comply, standardized tests to grade your work, and standardized curriculum, sold by the politically well-connected.

If Obama appoints this guy as Secretary of Education, who Michael Bloomberg previously appointed to run New York schools, it will be an endorsement of continuing this attack on education rather than a repudiation.

Why not pick someone who is an excellent teacher, and make these bean counters their lieutenants instead of continuing to pick those more qualified to help Walmart figure out new ways to screw their employees?

This is worth contacting Obama and telling him we want real change, not a new face to sell an old scam:

Tell Obama NO MORE SCAMMERS in EDUCATION!

KEY EXCERPTS:

Obama's "Way-to-Go, Brownie!" Moment?

by Greg Palast
for the Huffington Post

But here we go again. Trial balloons lofted in the Washington Post suggest President-elect Obama is about to select Joel Klein as Secretary of Education. If not Klein, then draft-choice number two is Arne Duncan, Obama's backyard basketball buddy in Chicago.

Klein, who lacks even six minutes experience in the field, was handed management of New York's schools by that political Jack-in-the-Box, Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The billionaire mayor is one of those businessmen-turned-politicians who think lawyers and speculators can make school districts operate like businesses.

Klein has indeed run city schools like a business - if the business is General Motors. Klein has flopped. Half the city's kids don't graduate.

Klein is out of control. Not knowing a damn thing about education, rather than rely on those who actually work in the field (only two of his two dozen deputies have degrees in education), Klein pays high-priced consultants to tell him what to do. He's blown a third of a billion dollars on consultant "accountability" projects plus $80 million for an IBM computer data storage system that doesn't work.

What the heck was the $80 million junk computer software for? Testing. Klein is test crazy. He has swallowed hook, line and sinker George Bush's idea that testing students can replace teaching them. The madly expensive testing program and consultant-fee spree are paid for by yanking teachers from the classroom.

Ironically, though not surprisingly, test scores under Klein have flat-lined. Scores would have fallen lower, notes Jane Hirschmann, head of watchdog group Time Out From Testing, but Klein "moved the cut score," that is, lowered the level required to pass. In other words, Klein cheats on the tests.

Nevertheless, media poobahs have fallen in love with Klein, especially Republican pundits.The New York Times' David Brooks is championing Klein, hoping that media hype for Klein will push Obama to keep Bush schools policies in place, trumping the electorate's choice for change.

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The Sopranos, Bush, & collapse of Lehman Brothers

The collapse of Lehman Brothers made a story from a couple of weeks ago float to the surface: Lehman Brothers hired Jeb Bush as an "advisor."

This reminds me of how Tony Soprano ran protection rackets on construction sites. In addition to a cash pay off, the contractor was expected to provide a certain number of "no work" jobs, where his guys showed up but didn't have to do any work, and "no show" jobs, where they didn't even have to show up.

The purpose was to give Tony's henchmen some legitimate income to make it less obvious that they were full time thugs.

In exchange, the construction company avoids missing supplies or massively inflated prices on them, vandalism, strikes by certain unions, or even extra grief from building inspectors who are on the mafia payroll or whose bosses are.

When a corporation hires the wife, child, or brother of a politician, in this case the president of the United States. A business that hires someone in that capacity might find the investigations of regulators or even law enforcement suddenly becoming less aggressive or even going away--in this case, at least long enough to hide money off-shore and burn the books.

Donations are the more obvious way of doing it, as was the case with Charles Keating and the five senators (including presidential candidate John McCain) he bought to chase regulators away from finding out he was robbing his S &L by making loans to friends who wouldn't pay back the loan, but would figure out a way to cut the loot with him. Depositors were robbed since their money was what was loaned. Keating's S & L ended up costing taxpayers $3 billion for the portion of their deposits that were federally insured. Overall, the looting caused by deregulating S & L's cost taxpayers $125 billion minimum.

Charles Keating's scam is a lot like a bust out on the Sopranos. That's when they get their hooks in a business, use the business to buy things they have no intention of paying for, and sell them for 100% profit, run up the credit cards, and give all the proceeds of the business to their friends and not employees, and once the business is bankrupt, sell everything in the store and the fixtures. It is done in such a way that the Sopranos are not responsible for any of the debt, but the original owner is destroyed financially.

That is also what the Bush administration is doing to us.

They have run up a massive debt to transfer wealth to their corporate cronies in contracts in Iraq and "no work" weapons systems like missile defense. Once our credit is destroyed, they will tell us we need to privatize and sell off everything from our police forces to our education system, to the water from our tap.

Once they have drained everything of value from us, they will move to the Cayman Islands, Paraguay, Dubai, or simply build the walls around their gated communities that much higher and hire more Blackwater mercenaries to protect what they have stolen.

I wish this was just a dystopian, science fiction fantasy, but in fact, it is what we did to South America since the 1970's, starting with Pinochet in Chile, Russia and the former communist countries after the the fall of the Soviet Union (actually LOWERING life expectancy and the standard of live from Soviet times), and just before the turn of the century, we did to Asia, causing an economic meltdown there. It is called neoliberalism by those who invented it, but increasing called "the shock doctrine" by those on the Left who survey the damage.

None of this helps the middle and working class, but instead robs them to put money in the pockets of thugs in Brooks Brothers suits.

How many more times do they have to steal workers pensions, do the "bust out" on some financial institution like savings & loans or mortgage banks, or their attempted raid on social security, before we treat these guys like what they are: criminals.

More on Sopranos & Bushies