Charter Schools: Discriminatory, Racist, Greedy, Corrupt, Thieving, Selfish, and Unneccessary.

P***ed off yet, Gentle Reader? Wait a few, we’ve not yet begun to cite. Charter Schools, each and every one of them, are exemplars of one or more of these despicable human traits. And anyone who supports them, runs them, or sends their kids to them, is likewise possessed of such revolting Teapublican faults. Proof? Here ya go:

Discriminatory? Proven. The GAO nailed charters to a tree in their 2012 report:

Racist? Proven. North Carolina is one example of many showing how racists are using charters to re-segregate:

The charts also show how racial makeups have shifted over time. By 2014, a fifth of charter schools were overwhelmingly — more than 90 percent — white. In 1998, less than 10 percent of charters were that way.

Corrupt and thieving? Yep, Proven. Thieves and con artists have flocked to charters, because they are barely regulated and rarely accountable:

No sector — not local governments, school districts, court systems, public universities or hospitals — misspends tax dollars like charter schools in Ohio.

A Beacon Journal review of 4,263 audits released last year by State Auditor Dave Yost’s office indicates charter schools misspend public money nearly four times more often than any other type of taxpayer-funded agency.

Selfish? You guessed ‘er, Chester, Proven. Charters take resources away from public schools, leading to public schools doing even more with even less, while the charters waste more money and do very little for students. Those who use them are screwing their communities, selfishly

Charters are a scam, engineered by greedy Teabaggers, mountebanks, and charlatans. The reason so many public schools suck is simple: not enough people want to pay for them. You CAN’T get more than what you pay for. But lots of Americans have bought into the idiotic Post-Reagan Voodoo Economics notion that says “Money magically appears if you take it away”. So when they cut school funding and public schools got crappier as a result, they said “let’s take MORE money away and give it to these unaccountable, unqualified, crooked scumbuckets”. And the underfunded public schools got crappier still, and the cycle repeats itself ad infinitum. A self-fulfilling prophecy, created by con artists for their own malevolent purposes.

Want better schools? Pay for them. Hold EVERYONE INVOLVED accountable. Hold OURSELVES accountable. Hold POLITICIANS accountable. EVERYBODY needs to step up, not just the teachers who barely make a decent hourly wage, working in crumbling schools with no supplies; or the students trying to learn in the same underfunded environments.

And yes, hold the profiteering motherf***ers (public and private) who run charters accountable, too.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

PS: We haven’t even talked about the illegality of using taxpayer funds to fund religious schools. That in itself is illegal, but it happens all over the nation.

Scott Walker and the 1.5 Million-Dollar Menard’s Bribe

https://www.yahoo.com/politics/wisconsin-gov-scott-walker-photo-charlie-114429739886.html Bless the mainstream “News” media for their circumspection, but let’s call spades “spades” here, shall we, Gentle Reader? These are not “contributions”, they are BRIBES. BRIBES.The right-wingnut Teavangelical typhoon Johnnie Menard funneled at least a million and a half bribing bucks, in secret, to Scott Walker’s political operation. And he got what he paid for, too:

So a little more than three years ago, when Menard wanted to back Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker — and help advance his pro-business agenda — he found the perfect way to do so without attracting any attention: He wrote more than $1.5 million in checks to a pro-Walker political advocacy group that pledged to keep its donors secret, three sources directly familiar with the transactions told Yahoo News.

Menard’s previously unreported six-figure contributions to the Wisconsin Club for Growth — a group that spent heavily to defend Walker during a bitter 2012 recall election — seem to have paid off for the businessman and his company. In the past two years, Menard’s company has been awarded up to $1.8 million in special tax credits from a state economic development corporation that Walker chairs, according to state records.

And in his five years in office, Walker’s appointees have sharply scaled back enforcement actions by the state Department of Natural Resources — a top Menard priority. The agency had repeatedly clashed with Menard and his company under previous governors over citations for violating state environmental laws and had levied a $1.7 million fine against Menard personally, as well as his company, for illegally dumping hazardous wastes.

This is why the Roberts Court is wrong about campaign funds and speech. It is why the “Republican” party has become a criminal enterprise. When secret money buys elections, it buys our government. One more time, loudly:

When secret money buys elections, it buys our government: it buys our executive, legislative, and judicial branches.

And when skeevy crooks like Menard buy the government, we the people LOSE our government. We have already lost it in Ohio, Wisconsin, and much of the rest of the nation.  We can take it back; by voting.  And by  being engaged, enraged citizens.

Or we can continue doing nothing, and lose it all. It’s our choice.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

“Republicans”: Don’t Fix the Problem, Make it a Secret Instead.

It’s a reflex, really: anytime Teapubbies want to do a thing and some pesky thing like “legality” or “optics” interferes, they do the thing anyway, and hide it. Look in your dictionary under “Teapot Dome” or “Watergate” for some classic examples. But it didn’t stop there, Cranksters: here are three examples from recent American history, showing that the GOPee is all about them thar secret thangs:

Number A: Recently, a lot of drug companies (ya know, they exist to make money by saving lives) have refused to sell Ohio drugs if they’ll be used to end lives instead of saving them. This puts a crimp in the execution-via-lethal-injection process that is so beloved by “conservatives”. In short, it’s getting hard for the Gummint to kill people quickly and cheaply.

So, there’s the thing Teapubs want to do: kill convicts. Do they come up with a new way of doing this, or an alternative punishment? Nope. In Ohio, they are trying to pass a law that would hide death drug information instead:

State lawmakers are preparing to introduce legislation to address legal concerns about Ohio’s administration of the death penalty, likely including language to keep secret the names of sources of execution drugs. Batchelder said the legislation has been drafted, and he anticipated its introduction in coming days. He declined to offer specifics about what would be included in the bill, though he said it would address issues that have arisen from court decisions related to the death penalty. “We have a problem in the sense that some of the federal judges have held that our existing system does not provide due process safeguards for those who have been convicted of homicide,” he said.

Got that? The problem is that Ohio (like some other states) is unconstitutionally executing convicts. Do the Repubs seek a constitutional way to execute said offenders? Of course not, don’t be silly. ‘Tis far easier to hide their actions than to solve the problem at hand.

Letter Two: also in newly-Red-ified Ohio (motto: “As red as Ohio State’s Scarlet, as Confederate as Ohio State’s Gray”), Guv Kasich wanted to hand his Kronies a lot of Kash. Alas, that’s illegal. So, he set up a secret money-laundering scam called JobsOhio, and then added more secrecy when the public objected to having their collective pockets picked by a load of millionare motherf***rs. The link provides a good summary of the matter, sans cranky snark and lingua franca.

Thirdly: since it’s illegal for Parties to coordinate with “outside groups”, Repubs had a problem in the recent election cycle: how to, well, break that law and get away with it. The solution? A secret Twitter account, of course. Click the link there, it’s pretty f***ing outrageous s***.

Nor are these the only examples. ‘Twould take a hundred bloggers a hundred hours to document a hundredth of these crimes. They are sufficient to illustrate the situtation: the scumball “Republicans” that Americans have stupidly put in charge of 2/3 of our government are a load of uber-liars and thieves who are not only adept at hiding their crimes: they instinctively hide them. Trust them not a bit, Gentle Reader. Not a single bit.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

Uh, You DO Know that Obama’s Not on the Ballot, Right?

Just checking, because lots and LOTS of people are yammering on about him during this year’s campaign. Which is pretty f***ing stupid, because OBAMA CAN’T BE F***ING RE-ELECTED. The pundits and “news” types are all ratchet-jawing about the man, but in truth he matters not one bit for next Tuesday’s contests.

The Senatorial candidates matter. The Gubernatorial candidates matter. The House candidates matter. So too do the other state and local ballot options. They matter, and they matter a LOT. (For example, McConnell, Boehner, and a host of other politicos are up for re-election or de-election.)

By your actions you can help turn this country into a Red Hell or a Purple Patchwork (It’ll take a Helluva lot more than one election to turn America Blue). You can take away our rights, or give them back to us. You can enable us to: feed the kids or starve them; fight or cower; fix or ignore; pay or go broke; function or fall apart; all of these vitally important matters are in the hands of voters on November 4th, 2014.

But Obama is NOT on the ballot. We kinda need to ignore him when we hit the voting booth, because the people for whom we DO cast ballots can actually make our lives better or worse.At the very least, we need to focus on the people and issues that are on the table this coming Tuesday.

The media moguls and bribe artists would love nothing better than to have us focus on a lame-duck President: that enables them to play their sleazy shell games via distraction and misdirection, f***ing us over royally in the process. We The People need to see past the sleight of hand and focus on the task at hand.

Like Obama or loathe him, as you choose: but you can’t vote for him this year. Concentrate on the people you CAN vote for instead.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

The Forty-Year Hissy Fit (Why “Republicanism” is doomed)

When your Cranky Correspondent was a wee lad, there were Republicans (without quotes) with a sane, sensible platform that mentioned equality, living wages, economic sanity, and lots of reasonable ideals like that. And had the Republican Party remained sane, this writer might still be one (he was raised to be, after all). But then came Kent State and Watergate, and the GOP got spanked. Hard. So the Elephants got angry. Really angry.

That anger is the core of the modern “Republican” party, and once you understand that, everything about their behavior makes sense:

“Why do Repubs seem irrational?” Angry people aren’t rational.

“Why are so many Repubs trying to steal elections?” Because in their irrational anger, they see themselves as victims who are trying to take back what they think is rightfully theirs, never mind the law.

“Why do so many Repubs steal?”
See previous answer.

“Why do Repubs hate minorities, gays, foreigners, and other non-Repubs?” Because they see themselves as a uniquely and horribly wronged people, and if you aren’t one of them, you are the enemy.

“Why do Repubs want to destroy the Constitution as we know it?” Because that Constitution is what Nixon and the Republicans tried to subvert, and it was what was used to thwart their crime spree. Show me a crook who likes the rule of law. Good luck finding one: crooks hate laws.

The problem is, anger by itself is pretty limiting. Repubs have no agenda, only a raging, vindictive, spiteful urge to lash out at the rest of the nation (note: that “rest of” is in fact the majority). And no matter how much damage they inflict, how much wealth they amass, how much power they grasp, it will never be enough. Because all they have is anger. All they can do with that anger is attack.

And eventually, that pathological hatred and rage will be turned upon themselves (indeed, that has already started), eventually destroying the party and perhaps the country as a whole.

It’s too bad that Ford ruled out further spankings of Nixon and his cronies: perhaps that punishment would have taught the Repubs a lesson, but that ship has long since sailed. No, we are stuck with a petulant, spoiled, perpetually angry party that hates us all and is bent on punishing US in return for the slap on the wrist it got.

A forty- year Hissy Fit. A four-decade temper tantrum. And it doesn’t look like ending soon.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

Wingnut Suggests an Obama Assassination is Needed to Reform Secret Service.

Holy f***ing s***, this casual talk of Presidential assassination has gotten so prevalent, an article on how the Secret Service sucks ended like this:

Agents tell me it’s a miracle an assassination has not already occurred. Sadly, given Obama’s colossal lack of management judgment, that calamity may be the only catalyst that will reform the Secret Service.

Christ on a Glock, people. Blaming Obama in advance for his possible death? In what universe is that sort of seditious horses*** remotely acceptable?

Politico has always been a den of Raging Righties in their Tightie Whities who hate them some Black President. But this is way beyond the ordinary wingnuttery one finds amongst “Republicans” in this New American Century: it is a back-handed endorsement of violent, treasonous activity.

And the jackass who wrote it is OK with it, his bosses are OK with it, and indeed much of America’s infotainment industry is OK with it. Organizational change via murder. Really? No, seriously, really?

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

Labor Day Alert: Bosses are trying to erase U.S. Labor History

The Blair Mountain Battle was a pivotal event in our nation’s history: 10,000 abused miners were set upon by thousands of armed rent-a-cops and Brute Squad members. Lots of poor workers died, and the battlefield (seriously, it was that bloody) is on the National Register of Historic Places, as it damned well should be. From the article at Archaeology:

CHARLESTON, WEST VIRGINIA—Today marks the 93rd anniversary of the beginning of the battle between more than 10,000 union coal miners and thousands of local law enforcement officers and coal company guards along Blair Mountain Ridge—the largest armed confrontation in American labor history. Now, two mining companies want to strip-mine coal from areas near the Blair Mountain Battlefield, and from the battlefield itself, which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2008. According to a report in The Charleston Gazette, environmentalists, preservationists, and the United Mine Workers continue to work for stricter regulations to preserve the landscape. “Some historians recognize the Battle as a principal catalyst for passage of the National Labor Relations Act [in 1935], the federal statutory framework for worker organizing and the peaceful resolution of industrial disputes,” Laura P. Karr, a lawyer for the United Mine Workers, wrote to the Army Corps of Engineers last year. Charles B. Keeney III, chair of the Friends of Blair Mountain, adds that artifacts related to troop movements, buried weapons, shell casings, entrenchments, and possibly even human remains are likely to be at the site, and they would be lost by any potential mining activity.

Got it? Big Business and Bosses are trying to shove this shameful episode in their history down the memory hole, so they can more easily re-enslave us. They’ve done it before, of course. But this one was big – the slaughter of striking workers. Another article goes into greater detail:

…But in 1921, that sound was replaced by the rattle of machine guns and the pop-pop of squirrel rifles, when the valley was just one corner of a battlefield sprawling across 10 miles of ridgeline. In late summer of that year, a force of striking coal miners crept through this hollow, dodging fire from anti-union forces stationed above. The Battle of Blair Mountain, as it is called, involved more than 10,000 men and was the country’s largest civil conflict besides the Civil War. Though the battle is little known outside of union and historian circles, it was a key moment for the American labor movement.

…As the miners neared Chafin’s three-mile defensive line along Spruce Fork Ridge, open war broke out. Archaeologists estimate that a million rounds were fired over the battle’s five days…In early September, federal troops arrived to end the conflict. The state of West Virginia charged the leaders of the strike with treason, and though none were convicted, the trial exhausted the UWMA’s coffers and broke the union there until a dozen years later, when the National Industrial Recovery Act officially recognized the right to organize. After that, led by some of the same men from the march, the southern coalfields of West Virginia became a stronghold of union sentiment (at least until more strikebreaking in the 1980s). Union leaders from Appalachia also helped organize other industrial heartlands. “If you work for a living, if you get unemployment, if you have minimum wage or better, paid vacation, or health insurance, you owe it to those folks who stood their ground on Blair Mountain,” says Barbara Rasmussen, a historic preservationist and president of Friends of Blair Mountain.

The archaeology on the mountain, and the story it is beginning to tell, has helped bring together an unusual coalition—including the Sierra Club, the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and a number of local organizations—in what some are calling “The Second Battle of Blair Mountain.” It is certainly a fight over historic preservation, but for many involved, including local archaeologists and historians, the mountain is symbolic of much more—labor struggle, the social effects of resource extraction industries, and what they see as a century-long class conflict.

This post is a day late, because a goodly part of the Cranky family took the day off yesterday and spent the long weekend camping. This was possible because of unions, people. It was ONLY possible because of unions. They may be pooh-poohed today, but labor unions were and are responsible for much of what American workers take for granted today.

And the bosses know this, and fear the resurgence of unions. So they are busily working to erase the memory of unions’ struggles against the plutocrats. Today, say “thanks” to any union workers you meet, because we owe them a lot.

And remember those who died for you, on battlefields like this one. In spite of Corporate America’s efforts to the contrary, remember.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

Want to change things? Ferguson shows us the way: VOTE, God-F***ing-Dammit.

We won’t get change by rioting. Nor by shooting unarmed citizens. Those are both s***ty ideas. Instead let’s look at one of the first actions taken after the deplorable murder of Mr. Michael Brown: a voter-registration tent.

Yes, that is correct. The majority of Ferguson is black, but due to various disenfranchisement measures, only 12% of that community votes. On the other hand, lots and lots of white people vote, so guess who gets represented in city government? Yep, the people who vote.

That being the case, people are registering black voters (and anyone else too, of course) in order to use the ballot box to change how things are done in that town. If enough of the majority residents of Ferguson turn out and vote, they can get a government that actually represents, you know, the majority of the people. The way democracy is SUPPOSED to work.

The response to these voter registration efforts has been sadly predictable: racist Repubs hate it, and everybody else supports it. Repubs as a rule oppose increasing the voter pool, because they know it doesn’t work for them: higher turnout favors Dems.

We all need to do what people in Ferguson are doing: register to vote, and then vote. Use our power to get the government we want and deserve.

Register. Vote. Every election, every year.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

Paying for the bullets they use to kill you. (Michael Brown and others have done so.)

That sounds crazy, and it is. But it is how we roll in these United States, and have done since the country started. Minorities and malcontents pay taxes like everybody else, but unlike everybody else, their tax dollars pay for the tear gas, bullets, billy clubs, tasers and other tools that are employed against them. We pay the government to shoot us, gas us, and beat us. Pretty sick, innit?

Michael Brown is but one example. He and the rest of Ferguson’s black community pay taxes, lots of taxes to the almost completely white government. And what did these citizens get in return for their hard-earned?

Michael Brown was shot at least six times, including twice in the head, when he was killed by a Ferguson, Missouri, police officer, according to a preliminary autopsy.
The results, first obtained by The New York Times, showed that Brown was shot four times in the right arm. Dr. Michael Baden, the former chief medical examiner for the City of New York who conducted the autopsy, said the bullet that caused the fatal injury struck Brown near the top of his skull and suggested he was bent forward when it hit.

Mr. Brown and his family paid for that rogue cop and the six bullets said cop pumped into him. That is beyond adding insult to injury. And the rest of that St. Louis suburb? They too are paying to be abused-or at least, those on the poor side of town are paying:

Thousands of protesters took to the streets in Ferguson on Sunday night. The situation quickly spiraled out of control when police fired tear gas into the crowd well before the midnight curfew. It’s unclear what prompted the police action.
Capturing the dramatic events for the world was Mustafa Hussein, a student who works at a local all-volunteer music station, Argus Radio. The station is using video equipment it purchased to live-stream concerts to broadcast the protests in Ferguson.
Tonight, as tens of thousands of people around the world watched, Hussein was threatened by an officer wielding a weapon. “Get the fuck out of here! You get that light off or you’re getting shot with this!,” the man shouts. That portion of the live-stream was uploaded to YouTube:

It is absolutely clear that Mr. Brown was murdered by that stinking racist pig of a cop. No doubt. And it is clear that he and his parents, and indeed the community he lived in are being abused by the government that they pay to protect them. The white people in Ferguson, MO are getting their money’s worth for the taxes they have paid.

But the black community is paying in cash so that they can be gassed, beaten and shot by those who are supposed to protect and serve them.

That, Gentle Reader, is SO f***ed.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

Tom Perkins: an honest motherf***er.

Yes, vulture capitalist Thomas Perkins is a motherf***er of the highest degree, one who f***s his own mother, his wife’s mother, their respective mothers, and indeed, any mothers he can lay his scummy little mitts on. Adding to that is the sense of entitlement to the mothers of the world, an outraged response to anyone who suggests that he leave all those mothers alone, and a proposal that he and others like him have laws passed reserving all American mothers for themselves alone. An honest motherf***er is he.

Mr. Perkins made an analogous proposal recently: that only taxpayers be allowed to vote, and that the richer you are, the more votes you can cast. Said it straight up and did not try to pass it off as a joke. And he has not yet walked it back as he did (partly, anyway) his comparison of people like you and me to Nazis. This is what the rich motherf***er really thinks.

And he isn’t the only one: five Supreme Court “justices” said pretty much the same thing when they imposed the Citizens United ruling on the nation. That ruling made money into speech, meaning that those with more money have a right to more speech. This is the wealthy trying to take over our government, and having some success at it.

But unlike Tommy Boy, most of the other motherf***ers don’t admit to being f***ers of mothers. They talk about “freedom”, and “unfettered capitalism” and other such buzzword-laden tripe, and pretend that their vision is not at all Orwellian. But they want the same thing he wants, make no mistake about it: a plutocracy, wherein the rich rule the rest of us.

But honest or not, he wants to f*** our mothers. And the rest of us. So f*** him.

(Next time: motherf***ers crying about being “attacked”.)

Mr. Blunt and Cranky