Spitzer, Madam He Hired Hookers From, Running For Same City Comptroller Office

This is fabulous:

In a bombshell announcement, former Gov. Eliot Spitzer says he is running for city controller this year.

Spitzer told the Daily News this evening that he plans to jump into the race. He joins Anthony Weiner, who is running for mayor, as the latest disgraced politician looking to re-enter the political arena.

...


In an odd twist, the madam linked to his scandal, Kristin Davis, is running for city controller on the libertarian line.

"That's going to an an incredible debate," said one political insider.

Yeah, it sure will.

First question to Ms. Davis:

You blacklisted Mr. Spitzer from hiring prostitutes from your service because you said he acted "violently" towards them.  Can you please illuminate us on just what you meant by "acted 'violently' towards them"?

Yeah, that's going to be a fab-o debate to watch.

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Spitzer To Run For City Comptroller

Another weiner returns to politics:

Eliot Spitzer, who resigned as governor of New York five years ago amid a prostitution scandal, is re-entering political life, with a run for the citywide office of comptroller and a hope that voters are ready to look past his previous misconduct. 

Mr. Spitzer, a Democrat, said he was eager to plunge back into politics and believed he could revolutionize the often-overlooked city office into a new model for government accountability and shareholder activism. 

“I’m hopeful there will be forgiveness, I am asking for it,” he said in a telephone interview on Sunday night. 

His re-entry comes in an era when politicians — like Representative Mark Sanford of South Carolina and the New York mayoral contender Anthony D. Weiner — have shown that public disapproval, especially over sexual misconduct, can be fleeting, and voters seem open to those who seek forgiveness and redemption. 

Mr. Spitzer, an aggressive watchdog over Wall Street when he served as attorney general of New York, said he wanted to transform the comptroller’s office into a robust agency that would not merely monitor and account for city spending, as it does now, but conduct regular inquiries into the effectiveness of government policies, in areas like education. 

Such a reading of the office, which would significantly expand its scope, could put Mr. Spitzer into conflict with the city’s next mayor, much as his reign as attorney general put him at odds with federal regulators of Wall Street.

He has to get all his signatures collected by Thursday to make the ballot.

I guess there is no disgrace that can keep a politician from re-entering politics these days.

Good thing Nixon and Agnew are dead, eh?

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Post Attacks Quinn

The NY Posties wrote an editorial today in which they attacked Christine Quinn as "the worst of both worlds: the full Bloomberg nanny without any of his principled stands for common sense."

Leaving aside the nonsense about Bloomberg having "common sense," I want to point out how interesting it is that Rupert Murdoch's paper is attacking Christine Quinn on the editorial page.

She seems to have lost Rupert Murdoch and his merry hacksters at the Post.

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Bringing My Danielson Rubric With Me...

...so that I can go out and have a "highly effective" afternoon in my quantified interactions with human beings I meet upon the way.

Have I assessed them often enough?

Have the assessments been "high quality"?

Am I using the "data" from the "high quality assessments" to plan my future interactions with human beings?

Geez, how did I ever live before Charlotte Danielson, the economist, quantified every human interaction for me?

As Danielson has shown through her high quality research and professional development, any human interaction can be quantified and improved upon using her rubric.

You'd better bring your Danielson rubric with you too.

After all, why trust your own knowledge, experience, and inner spirit for living when you can trust Charlotte Danielson instead?

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NYCDOE Continues To Poison Students, Staff With PCB's In City Schools

Once again, it becomes apparent that the Children First. Always people care nothing about children:

Despite vowing to speed up the process of replacing light fixtures containing dangerous chemicals in city schools, the Education Department does not follow its own protocols to alert parents and quickly remove toxic PCBs, according to emails obtained by the Daily News.

The exchanges between staffers from the DOE and Environmental Protection Agency show that defective light fixtures are still leaking in city schools — and replacement of the faulty fixtures at some were not handled properly.

...

  

At Public School 253 in Brighton Beach, several fixtures did not work in the auditorium this year. School staff discovered one of the lights had leaked toxic liquid in the auditorium in August.

“The custodian did not follow procedures for reporting it or cleaning it,” EPA employee John Gorman wrote in March to his colleagues. “They are removing all of the fixtures in the auditorium tonight and will collect a wipe sample from the floor.”

At P.S. 186 in Bensonhurst, there were five smoking ballasts recorded from March to May, Gorman noted to his colleagues in another email.

In a letter sent to Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott in February regarding more toxins at P.S. 50 in Staten Island, EPA regional administrator Judith Enck called out the DOE for taking 10 days to alert families of smoke emanating from fixtures.

“The students were not immediately removed from the classroom,” Enck wrote. “I am concerned about the DOE’s response to the situation.”

And what was the DOE's response?

 

Why, a jive-ass p.r. statement from Marge Feinberg, of course!

 

“The DOE continues to work with EPA on improving protocols and developing a citywide PCB management plan,” said spokeswoman Margie Feinberg. “As the lighting replacement project progresses, DOE is keeping EPA abreast of ongoing work.”

They don't care about the children in the public school system at all.

Seriously, not at all.

If they did, they would have sped up the removal of the PCB's from the light fixtures in all of the schools instead of fighting the case brought against them and trying to delay the removal as long as possible.

And if money was such a problem, then they could have dumped a few Common Core consultants or testing contracts and put that money to the PCB removal.

But Bloomberg would never do that because he doesn't care about these children (or the staff) at all.

 

Remember, they did this with mold testing and removal after Sandy too.

 

Bloomberg and his Tweedies love spending money on all kinds of testing except for environmental testing of schools to ensure their safety.

Isn't it time that we call him and his Tweedies on their Children First. Always jive once and for all?

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Let Me Know When The Education Reformers Address This

Here's some informational text for you.

The Grapes of Wrath, 21st Century Edition.

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John Liu Says Public Polls Undercount His Support

Politicker had a pretty positive piece about John Liu yesterday.

The WSJ has one today.

As in the Politicker article, the Journal article focuses on Liu's long campaign days and work ethic but notes that despite these, Liu remains an underdog for mayor.

Still, the article says

Mr. Liu said the polls undercount his immigrant supporters. He points to his previous campaigns, for a Flushing City Council seat in 2001 and comptroller in 2009, in which he says pundits discounted his chances. Mr. Liu became the first Asian-American elected to both offices.

"Four years ago, the so-called experts said I didn't have any chance to win a citywide office," Mr. Liu told a crowd on Sunday, a well-worn stump speech. "Well in 2009 our community came out together, we came out in force, and we won that election in 2009. And this year is no different."

It's true that Liu outperformed in both those previous races, but it's hard to see how he outperforms in this one.

As the Journal article says:

Mr. Liu faces steep obstacles in his bid for City Hall. A fundraiser and a campaign aide were convicted of campaign-finance fraud, and the Manhattan U.S. attorney's office declined on Friday to say whether the probe was continuing. Mr. Liu hasn't been accused of any wrongdoing. The fundraising charges could cause the city's Campaign Finance Board to deny him public matching funds.

A recent survey found that the percentage of Democrats who view him unfavorably is higher than that of all his rivals save former U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner, who resigned from Congress after sending lewd pictures to women on the Internet and lying about it.

A key part of Mr. Liu's biography—that as a child he worked in what he called a "sweatshop," an experience some immigrants identify with—has been challenged by the Daily News.

...


Mr. Liu is the most stridently anti-Mayor Michael Bloomberg candidate in the Democratic field. He wants to abolish the police practice of stop and frisk, not change it like his opponents. He wants to raise taxes on people making more than $500,000 a year and on commercial real estate to fund infrastructure and social programs.

They are positions that have caused many of the city's elite to dismiss him. While some real-estate and business executives have contributed to three of Mr. Liu's rivals, few have donated to his campaign. At the Inner Circle Show, an annual dinner featuring humorous song-and-dance routines by reporters and the mayor, the line "if John Liu wins, that would be pretty scary" in an otherwise optimistic song about New York's future drew laughs from a crowd heavy on business executives, lobbyists, politicians and journalists.

The elites hate him and wanted him destroyed.

They got their US attorney for hire to do just that.

The neo-liberals at the DN hate him and attack him on the sweat shop thing all the time.

The campaign finance fraud case and the tabloid attacks have driven up his negatives and hurt his fundraising.

I am glad to see a couple of articles that have some positives about him.

I really do like him.

I would love to endorse him and volunteer for his campaign.

Alas, given the negatives he has weighted around his neck, I don't think I can do either.

I just don't see a road to victory for him.

So I am deciding between de Blasio or (holding my nose) Thompson.

I want to wait one more polling cycle before I make a decision.

How about you out there?

Have you made up your mind already?

Or are you, too, waiting?

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Odds On The NYC Mayoral Race

I'm not much of a gambler but it is interesting to see the odds one site has for the 2013 NYC mayoral contest:

Christine Quinn	6/4
Anthony Weiner	3/1
William Thompson	6/1
Bill De Blasio	8/1
Joseph Lhota	10/1
John Liu	16/1
John Catsimatidis	16/1
George McDonald	20/1
Adolfo Carrion	20/1
Sal Albanese	25/1
Eliot Spitzer	33/1
Jack Dorsey	33/1
Kelsey Grammer	100/1

Quinn still the favorite, at least as this site goes, with Weiner close behind.

Thompson and de Blasio are definitely second tier.

 Lhota not fare behind them while Liu and Catsimatidis are longshots.

What do you think?

Is this an apt measurement of where the race stands as of July 6?

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I Really Like John Liu

Liu campaigning today.

They destroyed him with the campaign finance fraud investigation even as Michael Bloomberg, who handed over millions in bribes to the Independence Party for three straight election cycles, remains free and unsullied.

Liu's a labor-friendly guy and he wasn't cowed by Bloomberg.

It wasn't a mistake they destroyed him.

They can work with any of the other candidates in the race.

They weren't so sure about Liu.

So they stuck a shiv in him.

I ask again, how did Bloomberg get away with the bribery that put him on the Independence Party ballot for three straight cycles while Liu has been destroyed over the penny ante charges brought against his campaign people?

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Scotland Yard Seek Tape Of Murdoch Admitting News Corporation Employees Bribed Officials

From The Guardian:

Scotland Yard detectives were on Friday attempting to track down a secret recording of Rupert Murdoch admitting to Sun journalists that payments to public officials were part of "the culture of Fleet Street".

A police officer connected to the Operation Elveden investigation into illicit payments from journalists has made a formal request to Exaro News, the investigations website that broke the story, to hand over the undercover tape.

DCI Laurence Smith told Exaro News that the police would seek a production order compelling it to disclose the recording if it did not do so voluntarily. It is understand the police have also approached Channel 4, which aired a small part of the recordings.

The development is the clearest indication yet that police in London are ready to examine Murdoch's private disclosures since the tapes emerged on Wednesday night. Murdoch is recorded saying the culture of paying police officers for stories "existed at every newspaper in Fleet Street. Long since forgotten. But absolutely."

Mark Watts, the editor-in-chief of Exaro News, said he had not handed any material to Scotland Yard and the force had not made clear "what they want, or why exactly they want it".

He said: "We are making public everything that we have, and I cannot see how else we can help. Like everyone else, they just need to keep logging on to Exaro. One thing is for certain, unlike News International, we will not – under any circumstances – betray confidential sources."

Although the 82-year-old media mogul did not admit knowing that any of his employees specifically paid public officials, he was recorded on two separate occasions describing the practice as part of the culture of Fleet Street.

On one clip published by Exaro News, an unidentified Sun journalist asks him: "I'm pretty confident that the working practices that I've seen here are ones that I've inherited, rather than instigated. Would you recognise that all this predates many of our involvement here?"

Murdoch replies: "We're talking about payments for news tips from cops. That's been going on a hundred years, absolutely. You didn't instigate it." Earlier in the tape, Murdoch tells the Sun journalists: "I don't know of anybody, or anything, that did anything that wasn't being done across Fleet Street and wasn't the culture."

News UK, formerly known as News International, has maintained that Murdoch "never knew of payments made by Sun staff to police before News Corporation disclosed that to UK authorities". Scotland Yard, meanwhile, said it would not give a "running commentary" on Operation Elveden.
The press law campaign group Hacked Off on Friday urged the Commons culture, media and sport select committee to recall Murdoch, and said he "may have committed contempt of parliament".

Evan Harris, the associate director of the group, wrote to the cross-party committee's chairman, John Whittingdale MP, saying: "There is a strong prima facie case that Mr Murdoch may have committed contempt of parliament by misleading your committee over his true response to the police investigations into phone hacking and bribery of public officials.

"As far as the victims of phone hacking are concerned, the appropriate course of action is for the committee to recall him at the earliest available opportunity to explain the discrepancies between the expressions of remorse he made to you and the defiant and unrepentant tone of his private remarks earlier this year."

Murdoch has squirmed out of trouble before and he may squirm out of trouble here.

We'll just have to see how far these inquiries go and what accountability Murdoch faces.

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De Blasio Attacks CUNY Over Petraeus Boondoggle

As we learned earlier in the week, CUNY hired war criminal, er, former general and CIA director David Petraeus to teach 3 hours a week for $150,000 a year.

Considering how CUNY keeps raising tuition and fees on students, the hiring of Petreaus to essentially do nothing (the "class" will be one of those graduate seminars) seemed to be another example of how the gravy train never ends for the members of the oligarchy and their functionaries.

Public Advocate and mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio found the hiring of Petraeus outrageous as well:

In a letter to CUNY’s Interim Chancellor Bill Kelly, Mr. de Blasio, whose mayoral bid has been endorsed by the CUNY faculty’s union, called for Mr. Petraeus’s contract to be replaced with one offering a more modest salary, comparable to other teachers.

“This is symptomatic of what’s gone wrong in higher education. The focus on grabbing headlines and ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ is sending education costs higher and higher, and putting college out of reach for working and middle class families,” Mr. de Blasio fumed in a statement. “CUNY is the gateway to the middle class. Its full resources—both public funding and its private fundraising—should focus on preserving that essential mission.”

Michael Arena, CUNY’s director for communications and marketing,  did not immediately return a request for comment, but in the past has pointed out that Mr. Petraeus’s salary is funded by private sources, not tax dollars.

Mr. de Blasio, however, was undeterred by this point.

“While I understand Gen. Petraeus’ salary comes from private fundraising and not taxpayers, the decision still raises serious questions about whether this represents the best use of these resources,” he writes in the letter. “Public universities should never put headlines ahead of affordable education.”

I love the excuse that there's nothing to see here because the Petraeus money is funded by "private sources."

Hey, if private sources want to give CUNY $150,000, that's great - but they don't have to spend it on the salary of one retired war criminal who's going to "teach" three hours a week.

I realize that of course this money is being given to CUNY just so that it can go to Petraeus.

God forbid "private sources" should give this money to CUNY to hire a full-time professor or two.

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More Education Deform Buzz Words I'm Sick Of

Readers added some fine examples of education deform jargon and buzz words that many people are just plain sick of to this post from last week.

Here are some:

High Performing Charter Schools (which often are high performing because they toss anybody who doesn't perform at that level out - see here)

Bold Reform.

Transformational Change.

The Best and Brightest.

Teachers as "Human Capital" and children as "Valuable Assets."

STEM

Data-Driven Instruction

Quality Review

Let me add a few more of my own:

Blended Learning

Adaptive Instruction

PARCC

Virtual Learning.

And let me add "Common Core Assessment" to the list once more because it is the buzz word of the year.

When did "Test" become a four letter word?

When the powers that be decided it was too scary to talk about "Common Core Testing" being added to every subject in every grade all the year through.

That's why we're going to have "Common Core Assessments" in every grade in every subject all the year through.

Don't worry - these aren't high stakes tests, they're common core assessments!

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Cuomo Puts Five People On His Anti-Corruption Commission Who Broke Campaign Finance Laws

This would be funny if it wasn't so emblematic of what an ethically-challenged person Andrew Cuomo is:

If the new investigative commission Gov. Cuomo charged this week with rooting out Albany corruption wants to find examples of dysfunction in the state’s campaign finance system, it doesn’t need to look beyond its own members.

A Daily News review of the 25 commission members found that at least five of them didn’t follow state election law when filing their own campaign financial disclosure forms, records show.

The five are Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson, Nassau County DA Kathleen Rice, Onondaga County Executive Joanne Mahoney, Albany County DA David Soares, and Franklin County DA Derek Champagne.

Most broke only minor rules like improperly omitting addresses for donors or vendors or failing to itemize campaign spending. In some cases, reimbursements didn’t add up.

But one commissioner--Johnson--completely skipped out on filing three required disclosure statements during his 2007 reelection run.

When he ran in 2011, some of his donors were listed as “unknown” or not identified at all.

The findings had some in Albany grumbling that the watchers themselves need to be watched.

"Maybe the governor should appoint another Moreland Commission to investigate the members of this Moreland Commission,” one senior lawmaker cracked.

I say, if the governor wants to root out corruption in Albany, he should start with himself.

Who did Cuomo ally with and takes funds from via the Committee To Save New York?

 Why won't he disclose that information?

Just why didn't Cuomo bring even one charge against any Wall Street player who brought about the '08 collapse through their criminal activities?

How much money did Cuomo take from these criminal Wall Street players to do nothing?

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Independence Day (4th of July, Bloombergville)

First, the good news: In six months, New Yorkers will be officially independent from Nanny Bloomberg.

Now the bad news: In six months, New Yorkers may have to welcome in the reign of Nanny Quinn, Anthony Weiner or Joe Lhota.

Maybe NYC Educator is right.

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Chris Bryant, MP: Murdoch Should Be Charged With Corruption In U.S.

The Fourth of July fireworks continue for Rupert Murdoch:

A prominent Labour MP has said US authorities should press corporate corruption charges against Rupert Murdoch's global empire after he admitted in a secretly recorded meeting with staff on the Sun that payments to police were part of "the culture of Fleet Street".

Chris Bryant, who has been compensated for phone hacking by the defunct News of the World, said the latest revelations were "another reason" for the FBI to take action under the foreign corrupt practices act, which makes it an offence for American companies to pay public officials on foreign soil.

The MP for Rhondda said he had spoken to the Met police, and claimed the force had been in touch with the FBI. But he added that he believed the UK authorities were reluctant to consider bringing any corporate corruption charges in the UK because the force was "waiting for Operation Elveden [the investigation into unlawful payments made to public officials] to finish".

Meanwhile, Labour colleague Tom Watson, MP for West Bromwich East, has written to a leading US politician, Senator John D Rockefeller, asking him to ensure the US authorities' investigations into News Corporation "are not inhibited in going to the very top".

The latest scandal over alleged payments to police erupted after Sun journalists secretly taped a 45-minute meeting in March between Murdoch and at least 24 staff who had been arrested in relation to Scotland Yard's Elveden investigation.

Although Murdoch does not admit to knowing that any of his employees specifically paid officials, he is recorded as saying the culture of paying public officials for stories "existed at every newspaper in Fleet Street. Long since forgotten. But absolutely." Murdoch says he first knew about the Prevention of Corruption Act 1906, which until recently made it a crime to pay police and other public officials, a few weeks before his meeting with staff. The act has since been superseded by the Bribery Act 2010.

On the recording, one unidentified member of staff interjects: "So, completely oblivious to the fact that the long-term practice of this company to pay public officials was illegal, my job description meant that as a result of that, it came directly through my particular department. You can understand how we all feel that we are effectively being made scapegoats."

The News Corporation chief executive replies: "Yeah. And one of these high-priced lawyers would say it's our fault, but that situation existed at every newspaper in Fleet Street. Long since forgotten. But absolutely. It was the culture of Fleet Street."

But then the media mogul appears to admit he knew it was common practice.
A Sun journalist asks him: "I'm pretty confident that the working practices that I've seen here are ones that I've inherited, rather than instigated. Would you recognise that all this predates many of our involvement here?"

Murdoch says: "We're talking about payments for news tips from cops. That's been going on a hundred years, absolutely. You didn't instigate it."

Bryant believes this is enough for the US authorities to act: "American law is much tougher than UK law: you don't have to prove that a director knew it. The mere fact that a company engaged in paying public officials is enough to bring a body corporate charge … the charge can be brought because the directors did not have a governance system in place to stop it."

He said he had been told by the Met that they had been in talks with the FBI.

Mark Lewis, the lawyer representing the Dowler family and other phone-hacking victims, said Murdoch's private remarks would be held up by lawyers in the US where a number of civil claims are being prepared over phone hacking under various US acts, including the stored communications act and the wiretap act.

He said: "No doubt the FBI will be very interested in comments that suggest a senior director of a company was fully aware of payments to foreign officials. As far as the US claims are concerned, this raises further evidence of knowledge at the highest levels of News Corp of unlawful activities."

The Obama administration will never go after Murdoch, of course.

They're too busy going after whistleblowers in the U.S. government to be bothered prosecuting Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

But as more and more becomes known about how Murdoch's newspapers operated and what he knew about those operations, it's clear the evidence is there to prosecute them under FCPA.

Even if the U.S. government doesn't prosecute Murdoch and News Corporation, you can be sure the Mark Lewis and Norman Siegel will use the latest revelations in the civil cases they're bringing against News Corporation for hacking on U.S. soil.

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How Many Members Of Bloomberg's Mayors Against Illegal Guns Group Have Arrest Records?

Check out the comments after this article that reports Bloomberg is holding a fundraiser for Cory Booker, one of the members of his Mayors Against Illegal Guns group, and see.

My personal favorite is the member of Bloomberg's Mayors Against Illegal Guns group who was arrested for illegally carrying a gun.

That's an amazing thing.

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Collusion Between Murdoch, Thatcher And The London Police: Strikerbreaker Edition

How did Rupert Murdoch and his merry hacksters at News International (the British edition of News Corporation) get so close with the London police?

It goes back to the strikebreaking war Murdoch waged with the help of Margaret Thatcher and the cops back in the eighties:

The investigation of News Corp is not, as Murdoch claims, about "paying cops for news tips": it is about systemic corruption. The deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan police at the time, Sue Akers, explained early last year: "The cases we are investigating are not ones involving the odd drink, or meal, to police officers or other public officials. Instead, these are cases in which arrests have been made involving the delivery of regular, frequent and sometimes significant sums of money to small numbers of public officials by journalists."

One of the decisive moments consolidating Murdoch's relationship to the Metropolitan police was the use of police as armed strikebreakers in the 86-87 Wapping dispute. Margaret Thatcher herself had assured Murdoch that the police would be at his disposal, and their collusion in breaking the strike required an operation costing £14m.

As the Guardian journalist Nick Davies pointed out, this was never simply a matter of criminality. It was always about power. The networks of collusion, bribery and complicity that began to be established in the Thatcher era are beginning to be unravelled.

Murdoch has been pretty skilled at avoiding accountability for helping to set up and support these networks of collusion, bribery, and complicity.

I'm under no illusion that he won't find a way to skate accountability now.

Somebody in the comments wrote the following:

Murdoch is the classic 19th century tycoon. No ethics, no sense of responsibility, no concern for anyone outside of his family and very small circle of personal friends.

His mission has always been to become the richest and most powerful SOB possible. Part of that goal is to bring the world back to the 19th century, when government encouraged that behavior, rather than trying to control it.

That is an excellent description of Murdoch and indeed, a pretty apt description of the world he has helped to usher in.

Think the collusion between FOX and the GOP.

Think the collusion between the NY Post/Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg and Klein.

For Rupert Murdoch, it is all about collusion and systematic corruption mean to enrich and empower himself and his coterie.

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NYSED Commissioner John King: Success Through Suspension And Attrition

Chris Cerrone posts about NYSED Commissioner John King's experience running a charter school:

King is a big charter supporter and earned his limited experience in that realm of education.  Looking at the Roxbury Prep Charter School that King helped to found might show why he steers clear of charters for his own children.  Recent data shows Roxbury’s suspension rate of 56%,  ten times that of other schools in Massachusetts.  Going back in time closer to King’s reign at Roxbury, the suspension rate was an appalling 70%.

70% suspension rate.

Roxbury Prep claims the following on its website:

The mission of Roxbury Preparatory Charter School is to prepare its students to enter, succeed in, and graduate from college.

Hard to do that when you're suspending at a 70% rate, as the school did when NYSED Commissioner John King was running it, or at a 56% rate (ten times other schools in the state) as they do now.

While we're talking about suspension rates, maybe we ought to take a look at the attrition rates at Roxbury Prep Charter School as well.

Statewide the attrition rate for students at Massachusetts schools is 2.6%. 

For male students statewide, the attrition rate is 2.7%

At Roxbury Prep Charter School, the overall attrition rate is 8.5% and for male students it's 11.3%

Statewide the attrition rate for students with disabilities is 2.4%.

For students with disabilities at Roxbury Prep Charter School, the attrition rate is 16.7%. 

Higher suspension rates, higher attrition rates - clearly NYSED Commissioner John King and his successors at Roxbury Prep Charter School understand how you get a school to succeed.

You juke your stats by throwing students out or encouraging them to leave after they've been suspended multiple times.

Remember that the next time you read about how NYSED Commissioner John King founded and once ran a "high quality" charter school.

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Some Fourth Of July Fireworks For Rupert Murdoch

The hacking scandal appears to be a problem for Rupert Murdoch once again.

Not only is his "news" News Corporation having to deal with one and possibly more cases of hacking on U.S. soil that could cost hundreds of millions of dollars in court costs and fees, but now there's a tape out that suggests Rupert Murdoch called for internal management to begin covering up the scandal after they had started cooperating with police:

Labour MP Tom Watson has called on Rupert Murdoch to be questioned by police after a covert recording emerged of him appearing to regret the level of help News Corporation gave to the investigation into alleged wrongdoing at its newspapers.

The News Corporation boss describes payments to police and public officials as "the culture of Fleet Street" in a secret recording made during a meeting with staff from the Sun newspaper this March.

In a transcript of the recording, which was obtained by the investigative website ExaroNews and aired by Channel 4 news on Wednesday evening, he appears to regret the extent of News Corporation's internal management and standards committee's (MSC) co-operation with the police.

After a Sun journalist at the meeting appears in the recording to query the MSC handing over documents to the police, Murdoch is heard saying: "… it was a mistake, I think. But, in that atmosphere, at that time, we said, 'Look, we are an open book, we will show you everything'. And the lawyers just got rich going through millions of emails.

"All I can say is, for the last several months, we have told, the MSC has told, and [**** ****], who's a terrific lawyer, has told the police, has said, 'No, no, no – get a court order. Deal with that.'"

Journalists told Murdoch that they felt like scapegoats and he says: "We're talking about payments for news tips from cops: that's been going on a hundred years, absolutely. You didn't instigate it."

Watson told the Guardian: "I think we need to hear from [Metropolitan police comissioner] Bernard Hogan-Howe when the MSC stopped co-operating with the police inquiry."

In one particularly revealing part of the recording, Murdoch makes reference to those who might succeed him as the head of the media empire. A journalist asks what would happen if the 82-year-old Murdoch was no longer around to give them his support. "The decision would be – well, it will either be with my son, Lachlan, or with Robert Thomson [Murdoch's chief executive at News Corp]. And you don't have any worries about either of them," he tells the meeting.

During the tape, Murdoch accuses the Metropolitan police of incompetence and brands the criminal investigations into journalists as a "disgrace", saying: "The idea that the cops then started coming after you, kick you out of bed, and your families, at six in the morning, is unbelievable."

Watson told Channel 4 News: "What he seems to be saying there is that they stopped co-operating with the police before the Sun staff started to rebel. And what I would like to know is what are they sitting on that they've not given the police. And I'm sure that this transcript and this audiotape should be in the hands of the police tomorrow because I hope that they're going to be interviewing Rupert Murdoch about what he did know about criminality in his organisation."

Roy Greenslade says the tape was leaked by someone on the Sun staff because they're pissed at Murdoch for throwing them under the bus in the scandal:

As for Murdoch, he could be under no illusion about the underlying hostility from staff who felt they were paying the price for doing what was expected of them.

One told me: "We did as we were bid. No-one thought they were doing wrong. There was no training of any kind. No office lawyer raised any question." That genuine feeling of being hung out to dry is shared by almost every one of the arrested journalists.

In the tape Murdoch admits that the culture of bribery the staff engaged in at The Sun and the News of the World had been around at the papers for a long time:

He talks of the News of the World in personal terms: "We got caught with dirty hands, I guess" before launching into a further attack on the police: "The cops are totally incompetent … It's just disgraceful what they're doing … It's the biggest inquiry ever, over next-to-nothing."

A crucial section follows when one of the journalists, who had been with The Sun for under 10 years, points out that the paper's "working practices… were ones that I've inherited, rather than instigated."

Murdoch replies in what will surely be seen as a crucial statement about The Sun's culture and his acceptance of it:

"We're talking about payments for news tips from cops: that's been going on a hundred years, absolutely. You didn't instigate it."

In my opinion, this offers the journalists a crucial plank of mitigation for their actions. It is also a reminder of the occasion in 2003 when the former Sun editor, Rebekah Brooks, told a Commons select committee that the paper had paid the police for information.
Murdoch continues: "I would have thought 100% … at least 90% of payments were made at the instigation of cops saying, 'I've got a good story here. It's worth 500 quid' or something. And you would say, 'No, it's not' … And they'd say, 'Well, we'll ring the Mirror…' It was the culture of Fleet Street."

In the end, this tape confirms that Rupert Murdoch, the man at the top, was responsible for the culture of bribery and corruption at his newspapers:

But the real significance of the tape is that it reveals the true, unexpurgated Rupert Murdoch. As I have said often since the hacking scandal first broke, as the man at the top I believe he has been responsible for the journalistic culture at Wapping. This tape appears to prove my point.

It is time to bring Rupert Murdoch down to the police station and interview him over the tape contents.

We'll see if they actually do that.

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A Warning Sign On Weiner

From Politicker:

When campaigns schedule voter meet-and-greets outside of subway stops, they typically entail candidates standing on sidewalks with handfuls of flyers, trying desperately to shake hands with frenzied commuters–often disinterested in being pestered on their way to or from work. But this wasn’t the usual candidate.

This was former Congressman Anthony Weiner, who held court this evening on the Upper West Side. For well over an hour, Mr. Weiner stood surrounded by a crowd of attentive voters, spectators and reporters, fielding one question after the next after the next.

“If I had a soap box I’d climb up on it,” mused Mr. Weiner early on in the conversation, which was reminiscent of the atmosphere at the famed Speaker’s Corner in London’s Hyde Park.

Aside from an early heckler, the reception was overwhelmingly positive, with various locals stopping to pose for photos, listen in and wish Mr. Weiner well. Others peppered him with questions on a host of topics, including education, bike lanes, the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk tactic, affordable housing and hospital closings.

If the other campaigns don't put him on the defensive soon, there will be more than just one poll showing him in the lead in the mayoral race.

The last couple of days some unions have been talking about attacking Weiner on two fronts: his ethics and his corporate-friendly retrogressive politics.

They need to be getting that message out there on the air waves soon.

I've gone from an Anybody But Quinn supporter to an Anybody But Weiner supporter.

Not that I want Quinn as mayor, but even she would not be as damaging to the city, to schools, to students, and to teachers as Anthony Weiner.

Somebody needs to expose this narcissistic corporate sell-out for what he is.

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