Here is a portion of a Guardian piece comparing Mike Bloomberg to Donald Trump on education.
Nominating Michael Bloomberg would be a disaster for public schools – and for the Democrats’ chances at beating Donald Trump in 2020. Because when it comes to education policy, it is virtually impossible to tell the two billionaire politicians apart.
Like Trump and his inept secretary of education, Betsy Devos, Bloomberg is a fervent backer of privatizing and dismantling public schools across the country. Education, in their view, should be run like a business.
While other establishment Democrats have begun changing their tune in response to the “Red for Ed” movement, Bloomberg’s campaign spokesman has made it clear that privatization will be a core message of his 2020 presidential run: “Mike has always supported charter schools, he opened a record number of charter schools as mayor of New York City, and he will champion the issue as president.”
Indeed, Bloomberg succeeded in massively expanding privately run but publicly funded charter schools during his term as mayor, increasing their number from 18 to 183. His controversial push to “increase school choice” closed over 100 schools in low-income communities and entrenched New York City’s education system as the most racially segregated in the country.
Further down:
If anything, the main difference between Bloomberg and Trump is that the former has spent far more of his immense personal fortune to boost corporate “education reform” and local candidates driving this agenda. The New York Times reported last week that Bloomberg has spent millions to promote charters in the state of Louisiana alone. And this is just the tip of the iceberg: Bloomberg’s foundation in 2018 announced its plan to spend $375m to promote charters, merit pay and the sacking of “failing” teachers, among other reforms.
Later in the Guardian piece, the authors Dr. Heather Gautney and Eric Blanc explain education reformers thinking on the problems in the schools:
According to corporate education reformers, our country’s education crisis is produced not by systematic underfunding and social inequality, but rather by the inherent inefficiencies of the public sector, intransigent unions and bad teachers. Bloomberg has often been shockingly direct in expressing his contempt for teachers. In 2011, during a speech at MIT, he suggested that if he could have it his way, he’d “weed out all the bad” New York City educators by cutting “the number of teachers in half”. He insisted that coupling these cuts with doubling class sizes would be “a good deal for the students”.
Bloomberg may actually be worse than Trump on education if we follow where they put their money and how much they care about the issue.
I am a Bernie supporter (speaking for me and not ICEUFT here), although when I heard Bernie's newest surrogate Bill de Blasio speak for him the other day, I almost became ill as Mayor de Blasio has done very little to turn around Bloomberg's policies on public education which were a total disaster for the public schools. I can acknowledge that there is universal pre-K under de Blasio and the current mayor doesn't promote charter schools like his predecessor did (there are 263 now in NYC, up from when Bloomberg left and 31 more scheduled to open soon).
However, the basic tenets of how Bloomberg ran the schools in an anti-teacher way with hundreds of gotcha lawyers making life miserable for teachers have not changed with de Blasio as mayor. The public is still ignored under a mayoral dictatorship; class sizes have not been reduced and don't forget the academic fraud. I guess I can say that Sanders is widening the tent with a pay-to-play pol like de Blasio who The Daily Beast dubbed "Bullshit Bill" on board so maybe this could be construed as a positive development and I shouldn't despair. It's a step up compared to Bloomberg and Trump.
I digress. If Bloomberg does buy the nomination of the Democratic Party, I will not vote for him no matter what. I will vote third party or leave the ballot for President blank.
40 comments:
De Blasio has many, many shortcomings, but he tried to do the right thing for the public schools when he first came into office, by trying to reign in Moskowitz's expropriation of public school facilities.
What happened? He got his ass handed to him by Eva and Cuomo, while Michael Mulgrew, the UFT and passive/ignorant/complacent NYC teachers stood aside and watched.
De Blasio tried to stand up, and was stabbed in the back: why should he do anything for the UFT or teachers?
Where’s all that righteous outrage about the catastrophe in Syria from the usual gang of fake humanitarians,
@aoc
@Ilhan
@RashidaTlaib
@lsarsour
?!
Ah yes, Jews aren’t involved, so it’s no big deal...
Been over this, who is president eont change student behavior, interest, respect or motivation
Thanks James, I read your blog everyday an enjoy the liberal nonsense of mostly everyone who leaves a comment. Vote Republican and keep enjoying the peace and prosperity created by the current President. Only a few more days off until we are back teaching the so called victims of white supremacy. Those kids deserve so much better than the crap they are being brainwashed with from the radical progressives. more vino for my waiting for support friend
Michael, It was a half baked effort at best by de Blasio to reign in Eva. Blaming in part the misled teachers for that is a mistake in my opinion. The political situation in 2014 was very different compared to today. John King was in charge at State Ed and Merryl Tisch leading the Board of Regents.
De blasio and his Chancellor Carmen Farina's solutions to our education problems in NYC were renewal schools with no mandate to lower class size and endless professional development for teachers.
De Blasio had an opportunity in his first few months to show he was different from Bloomberg on schools. For example, we were in our last year as phasing out Jamaica High School. Assemblyman David Weprin, other local pols, community activist Jackie Forrestal,and I were involved in a Committee to Save Jamaica HS. The local Community Board passed a resolution to save the school as a small school within the building.
Borough President Melinda Katz and her assistant Leroy Comrie took up our cause. Katz called Principal Enric Kendall and we were encouraged to come up with a plan to keep the school alive which we all worked on.
In the end de Blasio gave us the same public be damned cold shoulder that we got from Bloomberg. At the last minute our Community Board friend, not the school, was told we were being closed and what we did was for nothing. This was all in early 2014.
Seeing de Blasio criticize Bloomberg now when he basically kept his education policies is enraging. It is not enough for me to abandon Bernie but seeing Bullshit Bill as a Bernie surrogate has tempered my enthusiasm.
By the way, de Blasio did not end Stop and Frisk. A judge did it in 2013 when Bloomberg was mayor. Who was the first Police Commissioner under Bill? That would be Rudy Giuliani's Bill Bratton. De Blasio supported the Amazon sweetheart deal to locate in LIC and get billions of dollars in tax incentives. From the debate in 2019: "During a state legislature hearing today, New York City mayor Bill de Blasio said it is 'mission critical' that Amazon build HQ2 in Long Island City." Source, TC
De Blasio is a triangulating Tony Blair, Bill Clinton type leader. Blair's new Labour accepted most of Thatcherism and Clinton accepted the basics of Reaganism. De Blasio embraced a lighter version of Bloombergism. He is no transformational mayor.
Peace and prosperity, I don't think so on the peace. From NY Times:
President Trump has repeatedly promised to end what he calls America’s “endless wars,” fulfilling a promise he made during the campaign.
No wars have ended, though, and more troops have deployed to the Middle East in recent months than have come home. Mr. Trump is not so much ending wars, as he is moving troops from one conflict to another.
Tens of thousands of American troops remain deployed all over the world, some in war zones such as Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq and — even still — Syria.
The liberals for most part are wrong on nearly everything:
1. media (clearly a biased and in cahoots with dems) have been the real divider of the country, if there coverage was 40% neagtive the brainwashing to hate trump and his supporters would be minimal
- Great job with 3 years of russia bullshit
- avenatti should be president
- Michael Cohen we trust him haha
- Kavanaugh- tried to ruin someones life on lies
etc etc etc etc
2. colleges- liberals run these so called universities and college with only free speech from the left, on the right you get bullied or the guest speakers are yelled off campus by a mob
3. nyc schools- bloomberg, diblasio, cuomo, carranza
- great job discipline and suspensions
-amazing laws for people to literally rob banks and get out on bail
- no common sense policies
I will say Betsy Devos was a terrible pick by Trump and when he gets reelected I do hope he will remove her. Bernie couldn't even discipline Clinton on her emails, the marshamallow was too soft meanwhile Clinton and the DNC cheated him out of his best chance in 2016.
The prosperity from huge mostly corporate tax cuts and the Fed pumping money into the banking system cannot last forever. Trump is practicing liberal Keynsian economics. It is increasing deficits and the national debt. The bubble will burst sooner or later.
We have said over and over how a Sanders NLRB would be a game changer for labor management relations. I hope I get to test that theory next year.
The prosperity as we in NY lost our state and local tax deduction is a joke and with the shitty raises we get.
I am still confused as to how the person in charge of the NYC DOE and public schools can also pro charter. Doesn't this blatantly indicate that Bloomberg's goal was to discredit and eliminate the non-charter public schools?
As the leader of the public schools, Bloomberg could have instituted successful policies, chosen better administrators, lead the public schools to success; instead he made them worse. So, Bloomberg was the boss, but he told people that his product was highly flawed to go elsewhere but he was the one creating and managing the flaws in the first place. I don't get it.
Would a parent purposefully be a bad parent so their children would go be raised somewhere else? It makes no sense to me.
In a business sense, Bloomberg's ownership of the DOE would be equivalent to a Toyota dealership purposefully being mismanaged and producing substandard cars, and the managers promoting Hondas. No one, in their right mind, would not find this suspicious, or at least questionable.
I am so baffled as to why anyone would consider Bloomberg for President.
Let's get it straight 2323, corporate Democrats are as bad for working people as Republicans. The differences on economic issues between corporate Dems and Republicans are minimal at best.
Again, please tell me how my teaching life would change with sanders.
From the article by Ryan Cooper in The Week on Bloomberg: “He locked up thousands of protesters during the 2004 Republican National Convention (where he gave a speech warmly endorsing George W. Bush, and thanked him for starting the war in Iraq), and a judge held the city in contempt for violating due process law.”
That was me, bro. I lived it. 48 hours in the joint. I sued that prick and won $25 large.
Read the Sanders workplace democracy plan 10:38.
1033, irrelevant. Will not change student behavior, willingness, respect, motivation, preparedness. Wint take cell phones away. Also, csa is a union too. You think I will feel better everyday? Nope
Bullshit Bill. Sounds about right.
10:51, If Bernie wins, we can test my theory when he puts into effect his workplace democracy plan. I think it will make a difference for every working person.
A just cause standard to fire workers will improve so many lives and hopefully give people the ability to stand up for themselves on the job.
But we already have the uft contract...
Contract is not enforced. With a just cause standard for dismissal, nontenured people would have actual rights. There will be a change. I hope we see it.
I was in a renewal school. The first endeavor should have been to cap class size at 25 at least for Regents classes and Freshman Classes. Instead they killed us with pds and brainless consultants that had no effect and the consultants got chauffeured rides to and from school. Don't also forget all the money Di Blassio keeps wasting on the ATR. I think this is the biggest reason he didn't close schools last year and probably won't close any this year.
I can not even imagine that teachers will vote for Bloomberg.Period.
Right, contract is not enforced. And who do you blame? Me, for not paying when they are not providing.
All of us for not demanding it be enforced.
Democrats are waking up.
I’ve heard from multiple primary voters who did the research on @MikeBloomberg and they will no longer be supporting him in the primary.
Keep speaking out. This is how democracy works. We don’t have to succumb to fear and settle for terrible candidates.
@1010: so youre worried about the national budget deficit/debt and support Old Major's (Bernie's) plan for untold trillions more (even B supporters admit over 100)? Ahh, but Old Major's runaway deficits would benefit working folk cuz the bad billionaires would pay for it? I got the math right?
My 22 year olds cant add and neither can leftists it seems.
As I once sold democrat, I'm so sad to what has happened to my exparty. They just went nuts and seem to all hate the country they want to represent.
warren-put 50 billion into black colleges. how is that not discrimination?
and...pay black and brown teachers more. huh? so if im white and a teacher im no good?
free stuff for everybody, especially people who dont bother to work
Im confused. If they keep saying how teachers are underpaid, why does uft keep talking about the strong raises they got us?
Warren is single handedly turning the nomination process via the debates into a farce and handing the election to Trump. I like Kate McKinnon’s SNL parody much more than the real ‘Indian’ and she is less ridiculous. They teamed up on Bernie and Bloomy and made themselves look petty and mean. Butthead is rotten to the core. Not a word from any of them concerning education. They only hammered Bloomy on Stop and Frisk. The nominees seem ill informed or ignorant concerning the rest of Bloomy’s NYC crap. Amy won this one hands down and she has a zero chance of beating Trump. Trump must be peeing his pants with laughter.
From Bernie's campaign Manager
Every other candidate on tonight’s debate stage was either a billionaire, or has a super PAC spending big in Nevada to try to defeat us.
Then there is Bernie — there is US — running a campaign FOR the working people of this country, BY the working people of this country, raising money from a record number of contributions at $18 a pop.
But that wasn’t the only difference.
There was also one candidate on the stage tonight — Bernie Sanders — who you can TRUST to fight and to stand up to the drug companies, the insurance companies, and the fossil fuel industry whose greed and recklessness is killing Americans and destroying our planet, all for some short-term profits.
That is what this election is about.
Because now is not the time to think small. Now is not the time for half measures celebrated by much of the political establishment.
It is time to think big. And that approach is why so much big money is trying to beat us on Saturday in Nevada and in the states that follow.
So tonight — especially tonight — we have to ask for your help:
Can you make a $20 contribution to our campaign TONIGHT to help elect Bernie Sanders the next president of the United States? We need your help right now if we are going to win this race.
Tonight, everyone tried to come for Bernie, and he showed he is the candidate who has the mettle and the fight to beat Trump.
This is it. These are the days where the election will be won... or it will be lost. So let’s win. Because victory is in our grasp if we want it bad enough.
All my best,
Faiz Shakir
Campaign Manager
At times, the five youngest debaters on stage seem oblivious to the fact Bernie Sanders is on the verge of building an insurmountable delegate lead.
Joe Scarborough
Shouting aside, Bernie is easily the best political athlete on the stage. Unless Joe Biden rebounds dramatically, Sanders will be ahead comfortably in the delegate count in a few weeks.
David Shuester
Hey @howiewolf was your candidate @mikebloomberg this awful in debate prep? Whatever he paid you to prepare him for tonight, you should give the $ back. Seriously. #DemocraticDebate
Unless the DEMS cheat again noboddyyyyyy has a chance, Bernie has the best chance and I give him 20% at besr.
Love how mayor butthead pete was so willing to give his physical, hes 38! Everyone else is twice his age.
I will give Warren credit for slaying Bloomberg especially on his non disclosures, which would ruin any shot he has if we ever heard from them.
Anybody see the article, the middle school student stabbing people with a used needle, in school. That is a threat I should face as a teacher, right?
@10:41 True, that was beautiful. Imagine Bloomy as an ATR. We don’t have to, we saw it last night. Sweet justice. Skewer the mofo.
Warren should have got a non-disclosure from Ancestry.com. She is batshit crazy. I’d prefer Trump. Seriously and that’s what we will get.
There was a girl in the Daily News who was arrested after fighting outside Flushing High. She supposedly punched a safety officer in the face even though she claimed it was an accident. The girl said she was taken to a detention center and cuffed for 30 hours and that she never caused trouble before. I know someone who knows this girl and he says she is a notorious hall walker and has a dean's record a mile long. Funny how the press said nothing about that but made her look like the victim. Also, she should not have still been fighting after the security guards came, so she should take blame for hitting the safety agent.
@9:19am: Are you still PRETEND teaching? I KNOW the students give you hell...they are smart enough to smell your BS. Join me in consuming the vino.
And dont forget about the middle school, 13 and 14 year old students, who murdered a girl in the park.
Post a Comment