The Alien

ArchPundit July 19, 2011 No Comments

With the debacle at News Corps, all I have been able to think about are Mike Royko’s blistering columns about Murdoch:

In Alien’s tongue, ‘I quit’ is ‘vacation’

Originally published: January 12, 1984

A Chicago politician called today and chortled: “Congrats, you’re one of us now, you sly devil, you.”

One of you? What are you talking about? I’ve never been indicted, convicted or even nominated.

He chuckled knowingly and said: “C’mon, you turned out to be a real double-dipper.”

A double-dipper? Me?

“Sure. And you remember how many times you’ve rapped us for double-dipping, don’t you?”

You mean for somehow managing to be on two payrolls at the same time?

“Right, you slicker, you. But now you’ve done it yourself. When are you going to run for alderman? Believe me, you’ve got all the instincts.”

Despite my protests, he was still chuckling when he hung up.

A moment later my Uncle Chester called and said: “I want to apologize. I just told your aunt that you’re not as dumb as I always thought you were.”

I appreciated that. But what changed your mind?

“Because I see that you managed to get two papers to print your stuff at the same time. How’d you swing that? I was always amazed that even one would do it.”

Me, too, but this isn’t my idea. I’m against it.

“Then, I’m wrong. You are really dumb.”

Let me explain.

“Don’t bother. You probably don’t understand it yourself. G’by.”

He might be right, but I’d like to try to explain this bizarre situation anyway.

As people who read both Chicago newspapers might have noticed, my columns have appeared in both of them the last couple of days.

The columns in this paper are new. The ones in the other paper are reprints of columns that were written and published in past years.

The reason there are new columns in this paper is that I now work here.

The reason old columns are appearing in the other paper is that I don’t work there anymore. But The Alien who now owns it doesn’t seem to understand that. So he keeps printing my old columns and saying that I’m on vacation.

I don’t know why The Alien is doing that. Maybe it’s a custom in his native land, which is about 6,000 miles from Chicago.

If so, it is a very strange custom.

I mean, in this country, most employers know when somebody does or doesn’t work for them.

Around here, if somebody walks into the boss’ office and says something like, “You’re kind of a disreputable character and I don’t want to work for you, so I quit and here is my resignation,” the boss would surely understand.

And the boss would say something like: “Good riddance. Turn in your key to the underlings’ washroom.”

But apparently, it doesn’t work that way in The Alien’s native land. There, I suspect, when a person quits and walks out, the boss smiles brightly and says: “Ah, he has gone on vacation.”

If so, they must have some really confused payroll departments.

Or maybe there’s another explanation. It could be that The Alien, in trying to learn about our customs, has been studying City Hall.

If that’s the case, then I can understand why The Alien is acting so strangely.

In our City Hall, it’s always been difficult to tell if people are working, on vacation, retired, or even dead or alive. And it’s made little difference. The work level has been about the same.

There have been documented cases of aldermen’s young nephews being hired as city inspectors and immediately vanishing, not to be seen again until they showed up for their retirement party.

It is said that a City Hall supervisor once showed up at the wake of a foreman from streets and sanitation. As he stood over the coffin, somebody said: “Did you know him well?” The supervisor said: “He worked for me for 30 years, so I came here to see what he looked like.”

But if that’s what The Alien believes, somebody should straighten him out. That’s the why it’s done in City Hall but not in the private sector. The custom is for the rest of us to work in order to supports our ancient political tradition.

I suppose this is the kind of confusing problem that we’re going to have to get used to in this modern world, with rich foreigners running in and out of each other’s countries to buy up each other’s business.

And it could be worse. As an anthropologist friend said:

“It’s a good thing for you the other paper wasn’t brought by somebody from the wealthy abut distant and remote nation of Manumbaland.”

Why?

“It is the custom there that when somebody resigns from his job, he is beheaded.”

I guess I was lucky.

But there’s still time.

The Slide Stays

ArchPundit July 18, 2011 No Comments

Which is good because my kids haven’t made it to it yet

The Giant Slide at the Illinois State Fairgrounds is getting a new owner.

Springfield resident Dennis Herrington has owned the slide since 1995 and put it up for sale last month. He says five bids were submitted for the 130-foot-long slide, which has operated at the State Fair since 1968.

Herrington tells The (Springfield) State Journal-Register that the winning bid was from a local buyer who plans to keep operating the attraction at the fairgrounds.

Cicero Never Disappoints

ArchPundit July 18, 2011 No Comments

Or from Proft to Hanania

Why did the Town of Cicero buy 250 rubber chickens?

Or more than 200,000 pens, pencils and highlighters since 2005 when Town President Larry Dominick took office?

Or more than 9,500 backscratchers?

Or 6,000 custom balloons with the name and phone number of the Town of Cicero Rodent Control Department — just a portion of the more than 30,000 custom balloons it bought?

Not to mention the 1,200 beach balls with the same rodent information, out of a total of 11,200 beach balls that the town has purchased.

Those are just some of the hundreds of thousands of promotional items — many with Dominick’s name on them — that the Town of Cicero gives away at its many events for seniors, school kids and residents.

“We use them as promotional materials to promote the Town of Cicero,” said town spokesman Ray Hanania. “The public loves the items.” Some of the items go to town children as free school supplies.

It’s always amazing and very telling the kind of people attracted to working for Cicero.

Fine Moments in Obama

ArchPundit July 13, 2011 No Comments

Hysterical:

Since pulling the plug on the deal, Boehner has been largely silent in the meetings, leaving House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) to present details of the House’s position. On Tuesday, people in both parties said, Obama tried to reestablish Boehner’s primacy.

Cantor, who is advocating a smaller deal, at one point demanded that Obama offer the details of his vision for a “grand bargain.”

“Where’s your paper?” he asked angrily.

Obama snapped back: “Frankly, your speaker has it.  Am I dealing with him, or am I dealing with you?”

Oops…Old Guy Walking With Cane Not Guilty of Assaulting Healthy Young Guy

ArchPundit July 13, 2011 No Comments

The Kenneth Gladney joke comes to an end:

t took a St. Louis County jury less than 50 minutes to return a not guilty verdict in the assault trial featuring Kenneth Gladney and two union members who were charged with attacking him outside a two hall event during the tumultuoussummer of 2009.

The altercation itself was regrettable and was over almost before it began: the type of heated scuffle that happens countless times everyday in this crowded country, and everyday people move on with their lives.

But because this particular clash was captured on tape, and because Tea Party members went bonkers hyping it, and because right-wing media carnival barkers like Dana Loesch and Andrew Breitbart operate with no moral compass, the Gladney story blew up overnight and became a (demented) cause celebre among hardcore conservatives who hatched a weird fantasy about run-away union violence in America, not withstanding what was captured on the Gladney tape.

It’s difficult to capture just how madly the right-wing media overreacted to this story, doing its best to blow it up into a seismic, Rodney King-type of event. Fox News aired at least 20 segments mentioning Gladney, according to Nexis. Glenn Beck obsessed over the story. Breitbart penned a “I Am Kenneth Gladney” column in solidarity for the Washington Times. And CNN’s Lou Dobbs played dumb on the massive scale while hosting Gladney.

I was at the event, but had left a little bit before this all happened.   From what I could piece together from talking to people there, it was probably a slap fight that got out of hand and essentially mutual combat by slap fight.  Joy.

It was at this event I realized how out of control some of this was getting.  I posted some videos here and here

There were two problems who were liberals outside in the demonstration area and a few of asked one of them to leave. She was later arrested.  I’ve maybe seen that kind of anger at some abortion protests, but violence breaking out even in the form of a slap fight was fairly inevitable.

A Bit Late on Edelman

ArchPundit July 13, 2011 No Comments

Busy early part of the week, but Jonah Edelman’s controversial remarks were responded to by the teachers’ unions who I think had the best response:

Stand for Children’s Tactics—Bad For Education and Politicians

7/12/2011

Statement from the Illinois Federation of Teachers, Illinois Education Association and the Chicago Teachers Union regarding the comments by Stand for Children’s CEO, Jonah Edelman, recorded at the Aspen Ideas Festival.

Video highlights of Edelman’s remarks can be found on YouTube.

We were disappointed to hear the views of Stand for Children’s leader and his own assessment of his organization’s involvement in Illinois politics.

We heard a lot from Jonah Edelman about power in politics, power over unions and management power over teachers. Sadly, we didn’t hear anything in that hour-long session about improving education.

Frankly, Edelman was never actively engaged in that collaborative process.

By falsely claiming to have manipulated people engaged in honest negotiations, Stand for Children’s leader jeopardizes the ability of education stakeholders to work collaboratively in the future. That can make it harder to improve education quality for children. That’s wrong.

What’s worse is that these false claims clearly show an organizational agenda that has nothing to do with helping kids learn.

Jonah Edelman’s mischaracterization of the SB7 negotiations will not change our commitment to do what is right for kids and to make sure the adults are treated fairly.

However, his openness about Stand for Children’s tactics and agenda will make it very difficult for any education advocate or politician to interact with the organization in the future.

Edelman apologized, but I’m not sure it really does any good given his entire bit was about trying to break up the teachers’ unions.  Rich has much of the coverage today.

I think Rich’s take is pretty fair.  Edelman did get one thing and that was Chicago teachers now cannot strike without a really extraordinary vote.  However, it’s unclear to me that he got anything else that wouldn’t have happened.  My first reaction was that Edelman was right to understand Madigan would remain in power and backing him was smarter.   I’m sure Bruce Rauner and others did hate to hear that, but it was reality.  However, I’m not sure other than the Chicago strike provisions, Stand for Children got much more than what would have happened without them.  IOW, the Speaker found someone to give him a lot of cash for doing things he’d have done anyway plus he got to annoy the unions on top of it.

From his statement:

After the election, Advance Illinois and Stand [for Children] had drafted a very bold proposal called Performance Counts. It tied tenure and layoffs to performance; it let principals hire who they choose; it streamlined dismissal of ineffective tenured teachers substantially – from two-plus years and $200 thousand-plus in legal fees on average to three to four months with very little likelihood of legal recourse. And most importantly, called for the reform of collective bargaining throughout the state, essentially proposing that school boards would be able to decide any disputed issue and impasse – so a very, very bold proposal for Illinois and one that six months earlier would have been unthinkable, undiscussable.

Tenure and layoffs are tied to performance and subject field so this section is partially a win for Advance Illinois, but not a big jump.  Dismissal changes I think are not as extreme as he makes it sound. It’s tied to the forthcoming evaluation of teachers ISBE is putting together to go into effect in 2012 in some districts.  The code he is using to me suggested he thinks this is all tied to test scores or such as these debates go, but the reality is that the system being put in place requires peer and principal evaluations on overall performance of teaching including lesson plans, classroom technique, etc.  There is some tie to test scores which is  a joke given the testing scheme isn’t adequate to actually measure performance of students and certainly not to tie it back to individual teachers.  However, the other portions of the evaluations should provide a reasonable process.  This process was in place since 2010 though and before Stand came into the state in any significant way.  Tenured teachers can’t be fired for the first bad evaluation though so he’s vastly overstating the timeline.  Instead of focusing on firing people right off the bat, the system is designed to provide coaching and mentoring for deficient teachers. This makes sense because what do you do if you just fire the teacher?  Hire a new teacher who you don’t have a good idea of how they will do? However, if they do receive bad evaluations and a second set of evaluators review the process, the ultimate firing process is sped up.  That hasn’t been terribly controversial, the question has been how to streamline the process, but still provide due process.  If the evaluation system works–and that’s a serious question given all the parts to it, this will be a much improved process. It’s hard to say then that Stand for Children got much in this arena.

On the issue of striking outside of Chicago, the right is retained, but both sides have to disclose their final offer, submit to some arbitration and then a strike can take place. That is nothing like giving school boards unilateral power.

After the election we went back to Madigan, and I confirmed – reviewed the proposal that we had already discussed and I confirmed the support. He said he was supportive. The next day he created an Education Reform Commission and his political director called to ask for our suggestions who should be on it. And so in Aurora, Ill., in December, out of nowhere, there were hearings on our proposal. In addition, we hired 11 lobbyists, including four of the absolute best insiders, and seven of the best minority lobbyists – preventing the unions from hiring them. We enlisted a state public affairs firm. We had tens of thousands of supporters. … We raised $3 million for our political action committee. That’s more money than either of the unions have in their political action committees.

Bragging that you got the absolute best insiders misses the point that the unions themselves don’t need a ton of outside lobbyists and unions don’t need money as much because they have the votes to provide to candidates.  More than anything, it’s incredibly slimy to do it, let alone brag about it.  Given Stand didn’t get that much, it should also be embarrassing if you hired that much firepower and didn’t get much for it.

Since the initial takeover in 1995 of the CPS by a board appointed by the Mayor, the unions have been generally a very reasonable and positive force for educational reform in Illinois.  This nonsense that the Tribune and people like Rauner spread about how they block any real progress is easily shot down by the results of the charters which don’t have great records of improved test scores.  There is a reason for this–poverty is the primary problem for our school systems poor performance.  Let’s look at the PISA scores that supposedly show how bad the United States is doing compared to other nations around the world.

When you control for poverty, the United States is at the top of the performance ranking in schools with the same level of poverty as schools in nations with that level of poverty.  The problem is that few developed countries allow their children to group up in the level of poverty the United States does.  Finland, with its teacher corps with everyone has a Masters, it doesn’t even do as well as the United States when you control for poverty.  We have a world class educational system, but we have a piss poor social policy that allows poverty to fester.

There are things we can and need to do to address the educational system in high poverty districts.  Those districts face extra challenges and often are in rural or urban areas where the school system has been allowed to decline over time and due to usually worse pay and work conditions are a repository for bad teachers even while most of the faculty is still quite good and committed.  However, none of that will solve the entire problem until we address high concentrations of poverty.  Changes in high poverty districts can improve things, but will be tinkering ultimately.

The path being followed mostly is to use student testing to determine the quality of a District. The problem is that we do not collect adequate data and the data we use to evaluate student performance is mostly statistically invalid for the purposes we use it.  The new Illinois teacher evaluation system is an improvement over simply using testing data to evaluate teachers, schools, and districts, but it will be very difficult to implement.  If successful, it will improve accountability while also providing a fuller picture of teacher quality.

Teachers aren’t the problem largely. The problem has been high poverty districts where neglect by administrators and sometimes byzantine rules kept the portion of poor teachers sticking around.  Punishing them through taking away of collective bargaining as people like Edelman seem wont to do is nothing more than class warfare on top of an incredibly amount of ignorance about how to actually improve education.

Rare Video Of Michelle Bachman’s Family Life

ArchPundit July 5, 2011 No Comments

One should also read what I would have sworn was an Onion article over at Petey’s site.

Going into the “leather market” was an experience. I started at the back of the room, with the intention of weaving my way through the aisles, so as not to miss anything and see all of the vendors. But I was inundated with images of rough men doing rough things to one another, and paraphernalia on sale for people to do rough and obscene things to one another. There were whips and chains and straps to tie people down; dildos [fake penises] in the size and shape if animal species’ erect penises. They were labeled baby elephant, donkey, horse…and the thought of where those things would go and what would be done with them, made me nauseous.

You know a way to avoid being grossed out by such things? Don’t go to the convention.

The Devil is Dancing Tonight

ArchPundit July 5, 2011 No Comments

This is almost as good as Jack Van Impe

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyH6XDaenJs[/youtube]

She is truly as bad of a demagogue as Beck.

Must be a Friend of Petey Labarbera

ArchPundit July 5, 2011 No Comments

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8oyA5JV7kA[/youtube]

AKA The new Friends of Dorothy.

They need to be disciplined!

Get Me a Black Man!

ArchPundit July 5, 2011 No Comments

In a really odd op-ed published in Progress Illinois, academic argues that Herman Cain would be a great opponent for Republicans to put up against Obama.  One can only wonder if Dan Proft and Bill Pascoe will sue him for plagiarism of their argument for Alan Keyes in 2004.