Last week, New York’s ACORN mayor Bill De Blasio announced he is evicting Success Academy, a widely praised charter school from the Harlem public school building it occupies. Two other charter schools will be blocked from opening. He claims elementary-school kids wouldn’t be safe in a building with high-school students. His excuse is as absurd as the propaganda Vladimir Putin is using to justify the occupation of Crimea.I understand his first draft included "stuck on stupid" and the Dark Enlightenment, but was trimmed for space.
Try to imagine a normal person reading that and thinking, yes, I see the connection. There's plenty to say about why most political writing is so incredible shitty, and one important reason is that the apparatchiks thus engaged aren't trying to clear a path to truth; they're just sticking pebbles in pieces of shit.
UPDATE. Hmmph! I wished to talk about style, but some commenters insist on addressing the charter schools issue, in which conservatives who squawk any time taxpayer money feeds a starving bum will suddenly burst into tears if a city refuses to use that money to prop up a charter school. Susan of Texas quotes from Fund, who complains that "charging the rent Mayor de Blasio’s backers envision [for the charters] would result in 71 percent of the city’s charters running deficit." "The free market fails again," Susan observes. She also observes that the charter in question isn't necessarily delivering value for money -- as does Diane Ravitch, via commenter mds: "When the New York State Comptroller attempted to audit Success Academy’s use of public money, Success Academy sued to prevent the audit..." I've seen some good charters, but this kind of thing ain't helping.
Also commenters are at least as interested in the "ACORN Mayor" sobriquet as they are in the Putin/Crimea analogy, which is what caught my eye. ACORN we will have with us always -- as a wingnut curse-word, if not as an actual living organization -- but comparisons of local expenditure issues to geopolitical military crises are as of yet rare, unless you count the Third Reich.
Tea Party Mad Libs.
ReplyDelete"Because Obama wouldn't bomb Iran and Syria, Putin stole Crimea and now we have to cut Social Security."
ReplyDelete- Fred Hiatt and company
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Needs more reverse vampires and saucer people.
ReplyDeletethe acorn mayor, pictured below.
ReplyDeleteHe claims elementary-school kids wouldn’t be safe in a building with high-school students. His excuse is ... absurd
ReplyDeletePlease now to be pointing to the hundreds of thousands of school districts that have all their grades in one building, with nary a problem. We'll wait.
Closest I've ever seen--and I've worked on a ton of schools--is the school-district-on-a-single-plot-of-land arrangement some Texas towns/counties have. Makes sense, if the district has available a nice chunk of land purchased from/donated by a local rancher. All nice and centrally located, which makes sense for a rural SD where 99% of the kids are bused. But they're all in fucking separate buildings. Why? Because, back when everybody was a Liberal, that seemed like a good way for the Takers to waste the Makers' mone...
Anybody got an aspirin? Trying to channel one of these idiots gives me a headache.
I was joking last night with "The Endorkenment".Really I was...
Do I even want to know what a reverse vampire is?
ReplyDeleteI think you are being a bit harsh. I believe he's also trying to stick a few feathers and some glitter on the shit.
ReplyDeleteNo, because then we'd have to kill you.
ReplyDeleteACORN, the dog whistle that will never die. Even after its been dead for half a decade.
ReplyDeleteYour logic is impeccable.
ReplyDeleteAh, yes, "widely praised."
ReplyDeleteFrom a correspondent at Diane Ravitch's
Etc, etc.
Socialize the risks; privatize the profits. Where have I heard that one before? Shame on De Blasio for pushing back against a grift which doesn't give a flying fuck about chidren if their performance negatively impacts the bottom line.
In their case, "Dork Enlightenment" would be the more appropriate term.
ReplyDeletethe apparatchiks thus engaged aren't trying to clear a path to truth
ReplyDeleteHow do you clear a path to a place you've never been?
It's like breaking a path through really deep snow, except in this case, the snow is brown and smells like shit. Because it is.
ReplyDeleteAlso, ACORN? Seriously? From Han von Spakovsky's BFF, no less. Look, John, you've already made it abundantly clear that you hate it when the subhuman darkie filth get to vote. Maybe if you cut back on the "OMG minority voters OMG" a little, you could be slightly more convincing when pretending to give a shit about Harlem schools.
ReplyDeleteI would've gone with "picking corn kernels OUT of the shit" but that's why I'm not a rootless cosmopolitan writer like Roy.
ReplyDeleteThe only thing that could make this better is if it were reversed:
ReplyDeleteObama wears momjeans and this led Putin to invade the crimea and as a result Acorn McMiscegenation and pro lesbian Mayor of New York is emboldened to throw a charter school out of a public building.
Also, I can't even see the name "John Fund" in print without wondering whether he's pressured any young daughters of former girlfriends into getting an abortion lately.
ReplyDeleteMayor of New York is emboldened to throw a charter school out of a public building.
ReplyDeleteIt would be more exciting if the Mayor of New York threw Eva Moskowitz out of a public building ... and not necessarily via the door.
I think the connection is all too clear: ACORN not only runs de Blasio, but also Putin. Do none of us remember ACORN's dying words? "If you strike us down now we will become
ReplyDeletemore powerful than you can possibly imagine." THAT REALLY HAPPENED, even though the liberal media tries to pretend that it didn't. Why else would ACORN be hiding out on Tatooine?
P.S. Can I be a highly paid conservative scholar and media personality now? I believe I've successfully failed the mental health test.
Someone needs to watch more Simpsons. Maybe Jonah Goldberg can lend you his box sets.
ReplyDelete"If you strike us down now we will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine."
ReplyDeleteI dunno, conservatives can imagine an awful lot.
this may be the comment that brings the force back into balance.
ReplyDelete"The New York Daily News reports that he has spoken with de Blasio and agrees with his approach. “I think that there is nothing wrong with charter schools having to pay rent,” he said, neglecting the fact that charter schools are public schools and that charging the rent Mayor de Blasio’s backers envision would result in 71 percent of the city’s charters running deficits and potentially 577 teacher layoffs in 2011."
ReplyDeleteThe free market fails again. We need charter schools to replace failing public schools because free market competition would solve schools' problems. But charter schools are public schools and must be subsidized.
Also:
"Success Academy, the charter school chain that boasts sky-high student scores on annual state tests, has for years used a “zero tolerance” disciplinary policy to suspend, push out, discharge or demote the very pupils who might lower those scores — children with special needs or behavior problems.
State records and interviews with two dozen parents of Success elementary school pupils indicate the fast-growing network has failed at times to adhere to federal and state laws in disciplining special-education students." http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/education/success-academy-fire-parents-fight-disciplinary-policy-article-1.1438753
I think I'm beginning to detect a pattern. The elite grease the wheels to get their plans in motion. The right ignores the warnings of damage. The plan fails to help anyone but the elite. The elite pay the right to say success leads to failure; just see how successful our elite are! The right blames the left for their misery, especially the elite left.
I had a similar thought--an NRO-O-Matic chart per the old Spy magazine. Take one from each column (Democrat; Supposed Scandal; WW II Fascism Trope; Current Outrage; Violated Patriotism Trope) and generate your own NRO piece.
ReplyDeleteThat explains why the more Obama tightens his grip, the more America will slip from his fingers.
ReplyDeleteJonah's chart includes another column: Faaaaart
ReplyDeleteMakes no sense at all. You're hired.
ReplyDelete-Fred Hiatt's boss.
Once again we have a prominent conservative voice speaking in deep code that only the splinterish True Believers (TM) can understand.
ReplyDeleteI'm especially fond of the invocation of ACORN, years after the group was destroyed by an entirely false and fabricated video by seeker after truth O'Keefe. It's like telling modern-day Israelis that Netanyahu's opponent has ties to the Amalakites.
I'm very much impressed how much John Fund cares about minority children in our cities. What a guy.
ReplyDeleteGod, that Dark Enlightenment link. Dreher, seemingly approvingly, quotes some reader's blather: "no one is allowed to extrapolate the obvious conclusions of evolutionary
ReplyDeletebiology that genetic cohorts (i.e., races) have differing rates of
intelligence."
Of course you're allowed, just like I'm allowed to point and laugh at the person who apparently thinks intelligence is a favorable survival trait only in some regions.
Hmmph! I wished to talk about style
ReplyDeleteSorry, Mr. Edroso, but while you were laying out John Fund's approach to firing a shit-loaded shotgun at a barn to see if anything sticks, Steve Deace in The Washington Times was declaring MIchael Sam a distraction ... from Benghazi. Tying Bill De Blasio's school policy to the Ukrainian situation is now officially not quite crazy enough.
He's a Putsch.
ReplyDeleteEspecially the well-larded parts of America. Can I interest you in a Chik-Fil-A sandwich?
ReplyDeleteCharter schools are schools like for-private 'technical institutes' on late-night infomercials are colleges. They are run by, and defended by, people who see students as marks.
ReplyDeleteI eagerly await his next column, based on macaroni art and finger paint.
ReplyDeleteMayor of New York is emboldened to protect the property of the taxpayers he is chief executive for
ReplyDeleteFixed
"Success Academy, the charter school chain that boasts sky-high student scores on annual state tests, has for years used a “zero tolerance” disciplinary policy to suspend, push out, discharge or demote the very pupils who might lower those scores — children with special needs or behavior problems."
ReplyDeletePump up the Volume was not an instruction manual. Except for the part where Samantha Mathis took off her shirt. Can I get the instructions for that?
It's like telling modern-day Israelis that Netanyahu's opponent has ties to the Amalakites.
ReplyDeleteJust in case you're not making a subtle sarcastic joke here, does Bibi himself labelling Iran as the Amalekites get close enough? Or when the former Chief Rabbi of Israel called the Palestinians Amalek in 2004? Hell, Rabbi Cohen of the Shas party recently declared that anyone wearing a knitted kippah is an Amalekite. The Israeli right hardly ever shuts up with the Amalekite invocations. So it wouldn't actually surprise me if if turned up in an electoral campaign.
Gosh, people used to be so enthusiastic about the public school system in America. Any levy or bond would pass, and my public schools were educational palaces.
ReplyDeleteThen came school desegregation, of course, and education had to take a back seat to finding a solution for it. And thus "charter" schools. Who are they trying to kid?
Amazingly, he wants poor and minority kids to be poorly educated and then not have the right to vote. ACORN, of course, was dedicated to the opposite, therefore, using my runes and chicken entrails plus my Cap'n Wingnut Decoder Ring...carry the two...the lower intestine looks like an S...Ah, yes, Fund is a racist, loathsome douchebag who looks like a fucking boil.
ReplyDeleteMy name's not Shirley, and I'm not kidding!
ReplyDelete---------
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-HV2cglnbsIU/UxYBExFMN7I/AAAAAAAANrU/q65QTDz_XGA/s1600/President_Obama%E2%80%99s_foreign_policy_is_based_on_fantasy-The_Washington_Post-2014-03-03.jpg
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Was Donald Graham, now Jeff Bezos.
ReplyDeleteIt makes no sense that Hiatt and his deputy (Jackson Diehl) still have jobs...unless you realize that we're living in a kleptocracy.
Which makes it that much funnier when these turds are complaining about Russian oligarchs and the rule of law.
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It's your own goddam fault, for wanting to serve your country, and concealing your mental problems! Multiple deployments don't affect healthy people!
ReplyDeleteHas John Fund stopped beating his wife?
ReplyDeleteI don't follow Israeli politics, but I'll take your word for it that the extreme right of Israel invokes the Amalekites the same way the American right invokes ACORN.
ReplyDeleteI guess there are big swaths of people in every country who simply cannot live without some monster lurking under their bed. It's like they can't feel safe unless they're threatened.
You mean his ex-girlfriend's barely-legal daughter? Morgan Pillsbury, I believe her name was...
ReplyDeleteAlso this: His excuse is as absurd as the propaganda Vladimir Putin is using to justify the occupation of Crimea. is just too much to bear. First, just TWO WEEKS AGO, they were kneeling at the altar of the butch dom Russian leader compared to our pansy assed black President. Second, nothing, nothing at all, can ever compare to the absurdity of Shock and Awe and then occupying Iraq in response to Saudis bombing NYC. That Putin is also a war criminal who lies to his Russian rubes in no way absolves propagandists like Fund who wants to critique the stagecraft of his Russian counterparts in the militarist hack brigades? Jesus. He really should kill himself.
ReplyDeleteSecond, nothing, nothing at all, can ever compare to the absurdity of
ReplyDeleteShock and Awe and then occupying Iraq in response to Saudis bombing NYC.
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There goes your shot at a jerb at the WaPo, Jay B.
http://ifthethunderdontgetya.blogspot.com/2011/01/war-criminal-post.html
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If you have STP on your hands, this actually happens.
ReplyDeleteWhen I see the words "John Fund" I picture it on a canister with a slotted lid on a little shelf next to the sanitizer in the clubhouse bathroom...
ReplyDeleteHmmph! I wished to talk about style
ReplyDeleteBut shirley you realize the shittiness of rat wang political writing extends far beyond mere style. I know, I know, there's style, then there's substance, and it's easy to aim straight for the style, assuming in advance a total lack of substance, but...fuck, I just proved your point, didn't I? Conservative "substance" is about as substantial as cotton candy, innit? So, yeah, OK, we're down here in comments building castles out of cotton candy and graham crackers (for structural support), using melted Turkish taffy as glue (for obvious reasons. I mean, I loved that stuff but, face it, it was basically edible epoxy) because we need something to do, and, you know, this ain't, like, our job or anything, not like it is yours. I mean, we're just here for the....yeah, OK.
And then when the blog closes for the night, we eat them. So the mice don't get 'em.
You've seen that video on youtube, with two cats on a window seat, right? When they see a strange cat walk through the yard outside, one of 'em turns and attacks the other, because the strange cat was beyond the window, out of reach. "Transference of aggression", or something, I think it's called. Bush the Younger and Stupider needed to attack someone, but his buddies the Saudis were "outside the window", so to speak. Also, the cat next to him on the window seat once hissed at him, so he had it coming. So BTYaS went and lifted his owner's MasterCard and, instead of buying $3000 worth of cat toys, like most cats would, he spent a little over a trillion on bombs and dead soldiers, and destroyed that cat's home planet. Taught him a fucking lesson, he did.
ReplyDeleteAnd now we read that he's all tearful over the Vets. Yeah, cry me a river, Georgie...
Yep--the magic of the market just doesn't work right unless those bold and fearless capitalists are relieved of the burden of rent, property tax, building maintenance, and paying parity wages. THEN they're able to compete.
ReplyDeleteI hate the whole concept of charter schools. And what I am reading here is not changing my mind.
ReplyDeleteCount me among those who think Sam has a decent chance at a very early pick. Gonna love the reaction on the Right if he's, say, 2nd pick in the first round...
ReplyDeleteHow do you lose this many students, short of driving a couple school buses off a cliff?
ReplyDelete*gasp!* You don't think...
Hey, there's no such thing as a free lunch, you know! They work hard for their grift.
ReplyDeleteNo, I figured you were just paraphrasing directly. I never thought it was a joke.
ReplyDeleteYeah. Ralph Reed dates the politicization of the Christian right to the decision during the Carter Administration that the church schools the wingers set up to evade integration had to comply with federal law if they were to receive federal funds and dispensations. The wingers were particularly indignant that a southern Baptist Sunday school teacher would lead an administration that dared to so displease them.
ReplyDelete^^^THAT^^^ is style.
ReplyDeleteFunny how the Post sort of forgets that Bush the Elder invaded Panama and killed several thousand Panamanians in the attempt to assassinate Noriega from the air. And, contrary to comparisons with the current situation, our Panamanian bases were quite secure, and 59% of the Panamanian population was not American. "But, but, Noriega was going to ignore the election!" You mean, like the neo-Nazis have done with Ukraine's election of Yanukovych?
ReplyDeleteI guess standing athwart history means that, yes, we can give arms to al-Qaeda in Syria, and, yes, we can install Nazis in the Ukraine, just so long as it gives John Fund one more non sequitur to work with.
Not likely. He didn't do very well at the combine.
ReplyDeleteWell, shit, something has to go to make room for profit, eh?
ReplyDeleteMoreover, guess what? With the existing arrangement, the state has the obligation of collecting the money for the charter school and enforcing its payment. The charter school just opens its pockets. No pesky parents saying, "I won't pay," no billing, no having to hire collection agencies, etc. And, apparently, no annoying audits of the use of public funds. Best of both worlds, youbetcha.
It was very strange, one can only hope it was a Poe.
ReplyDeleteThey can't feel righteous unless they're threatened, and righteous is what all the frenzied yammering is all about.
ReplyDeleteBoy, that's some semi-pro whining, that is. But, the funny bit is the "Despite 60 years of modern conservatism, the USA has changed." Sort of like saying, "despite all we've done for you (pointless wars based on lies, humongous military budgets that have strangled the economy and tattered the safety net, tax cuts for the obscenely rich, a pattern of fraud and deceit in high finance that then blew up that economy, leaders that wrote (and signed) legislation in crayon, and braying morons accusing half of the country of being moochers), you're still just a bunch of ungrateful sluts, Americans."
ReplyDeleteIf America has changed (and I'm not sure it has), it would be because of sixty years of conservatism, rather than despite it.
On the subject of style, I recently ran across this excellent article from last October about the editorial abilities of Stalin. From the intro:
ReplyDeleteLenin admired Djugashvili's editing; Djugashvili admired Lenin, and rejected 47 articles he submitted to Pravda. Djugashvili (later Stalin) was a ruthless person, and a serious editor.
https://chronicle.com/article/Stalins-Blue-Pencil/142109/
Will Astroglide work? AFAF.
ReplyDeleteJohn Fund: Rule 34 with back hair.
ReplyDeleteWell, fuck. It was a nice fantasy while it lasted...
ReplyDeleteThat word, "Compete". IDNTIMWYTIM...
ReplyDeleteWow. I know it's just a movie, but this whole thing is eerily similar to the charter school audit scene from Death Wish 2.
ReplyDeleteHe claims elementary-school kids wouldn’t be safe in a building with high-school students. His excuse is ... absurd
ReplyDeleteHIGH SCHOOL students aren't safe .... with High School Students.
It was really Fox news, sLimebag and a repug congress who wrecked ACORN. O'Keefe's videos were so bad, so stupid, they'd never have convinced anyone.
ReplyDeleteIt's the grift that keeps on giving.
ReplyDeleteSweet Jesus! Benghazi has been lying on the floor for more days than I can recall. Flies have lain eggs in its gaping mouth. Do we really need a boundary-breaking football player to distract us from it?
ReplyDeleteUnbuttoning your shirt is pretty easy. You kind of just push the buttons aside with your fingertips. Sorry I can't turn you into Samantha Mathis, though.
ReplyDeleteI want to take this comment before the Supreme Court of the United States and argue that it is a person that should be granted a special kind of citizenship--it can vote and is eligible for Quantitative Easing, but it never has to pay taxes and can never be prosecuted for a crime.
ReplyDeleteI gave at the office.
ReplyDelete--J. Goldberg
Sadly, No (TM).
ReplyDeleteYour score on the Nepotism Test was a bit too low.
IOW, an updated variation on the "no one could have predicted" scam.
ReplyDeleteHard to say, since "Oh, look! It's Monica Lewinsky!" never really went away and is poised for a triumphant reunion tour.
ReplyDeleteJonah and Lucianne are ready for their closeups!
Very Python-esque. Other than the wars, the massive debts, selling off the public property, neglect of bridges and roads and ports, denying food to the poor, funneling money to the rich, the denial of voting rights to minorities, other than that, what have the Republicans done for us?
ReplyDeleteMust have disappointed the Wurzels.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sr30FEkfevo
"They've got to be protected,
ReplyDeleteAll their rights respected,
Till somebody we like can be elected!"
Tom Lehrer, prescient as usual.
Im finally reading " the paranoid style in american politics"--this is just grade aa hand made artisnal quality stuff.
ReplyDeleteI'd also hand out plenty of blame to spineless (what else is new) Dems who should have stood up for ACORN and didn't.
ReplyDeleteHow do you lose this many students, short of driving a couple school buses off a cliff?
ReplyDeleteYou drive a couple school buses full of underperforming students over to an actual public school.
"no one is allowed to extrapolate the obvious conclusions of
ReplyDeleteevolutionary biology that genetic cohorts (i.e., races) have differing
rates of intelligence."
Well, let's be fair to Rod. Although slavery was not unknown in Africa... after all, the ancient Egyptians knew a fair bit about it... it was, after all, the Dutch, the Brits, and finally the Future Confederates of Amurka who refined the practice and applied it to large scale monocrop plantation farming, and then used the Bible to justify it. That's pretty intelligent, right?
Benghazi has been lying on the floor for more days than I can recall. Flies have lain eggs in its gaping mouth.
ReplyDeleteYou, uh, seem disturbingly familiar with this process ... Oh, my God, I just realized how Encyclopedia Brown was able to "solve" all those cases! Bugs Meany really was innocent, and there are Arctic penguins! Wait'll I tweet the truth to
[NO CARRIER]
AH... you mean using the technique perfected by for-profit hospitals to deal with uninsured patients.
ReplyDelete"First, just TWO WEEKS AGO, they were kneeling at the altar of the butch
ReplyDeletedom Russian leader compared to our pansy assed black President."
Damn right... Obama should have slapped Putin around just like W. did when Putin dared to invade Georgia in 2008! Wait... what? he didn't? Nothing at all, huh? OK... never mind...
And then, of course, point to the lower scores at the public school as proof that your charter school is better. Who says that schools can't be run like a business?
ReplyDeleteIOKIYAR, Foreign Policy edition. (See also: embassy attacks, etc.) One of my Facebook acquaintances got peeved over how the administration just happened to have $1 billion in economic aid to Ukraine just laying around.
ReplyDeletethe church schools
ReplyDeletethe wingers set up to evade integration had to comply with federal law
if they were to receive federal funds and dispensations.
Ah yes, as I recall their whiny-ass bitching about Bob Jones University presaged its adoption as a general tactic of sharting about the First Amendment and "religious freedom" in order to flagrantly violate their side of the federal funding / tax exemption bargain.
Kind of amazing, in a sickening sort of way, how some of these people will keep fucking the chicken way past its sell-by date. I think that there's a sort of long tail of wingnuttery in which no hobby horse is ever put away, never to be ridden again, as we can see by the people who keep dredging up not only Clinton Administration scandals but poor old Jimmy Carter.
ReplyDeleteElementary and high school students in the same building. What could possibly go wrong?
ReplyDeleteJohn Fund was homeschooled and still received swirlies regularly.
Chappaquidick!
ReplyDeleteObama should at least borrow a cowboy hat like W, and go clear some brush, or something manly like that. But no, he puts on his mom jeans, goes out and plays pasture pool...
ReplyDeleteSame song, different video:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dak0rGzoyLU
Calvary Hill!
ReplyDeleteGet outta my mind...
ReplyDeleteIn that case, I wanna *be* that comment..
ReplyDeleteCain & Abel!
ReplyDeleteAlso too... whenever anyone brings up W., it's always: "There you Libs go again... blaming Bush for EVERYTHING. Can't we all just move on???"
ReplyDeleteMuch to the relief of many in NFL front offices, who were no doubt praying to Gay-Hatin'-Jeezus for a non-gay-related excuse to not draft him.
ReplyDeleteNeither did Jerry Rice, for that matter.
ReplyDeleteRice's 40 time wasn't great, but the knock on Sam was that his bench was terrible, and that usually sends scouts running away from D-linemen as fast as possible.
ReplyDelete