Local news media documents LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy in a lie then does nothing to confront Deasy about it

Thanks to Lenny Isenberg

PERDAILY.COM
 

The following is a crystal clear example of how a mainstream local news media is able to document LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy in an outright lie then do nothing to confront Deasy or anybody else at LAUSD with the lie(s). The first video below is of an interview that KNBC Conan Nolan did with Superintendent John Deasy on February 13, 2012, where Deasy justifies giving alleged teacher child molester Mark Berndt $56,000, because according to Deasy, Reporter Nolan, and a supposed 2009 L.A. Times survey, 50% of teachers get their jobs back at the Office of Administrative Hearings (OAH). Deasy didn't want to take the chance that Berndt would get his job back. 

The second video completely contradicts this and was done by Nolan's reporter colleague at KNBC Patrick Healy on March 13, 2012, which says that in 2011, LAUSD got rid of 853 teachers and not one got their job back and only two went to the OAH and both lost. Both statements cannot be true and yet neither Nolan or Healy or any other news media dares to report the truth about Deasy and LAUSD, even though, given their daily access to LAUSD, they undoubtedly know the truth.

It is clear that Deasy is lying on this and other assertions. Last week, he claimed that only the worst teachers were being incarcerated in teacher jails by LAUSD and that if teachers are cleared by the police, they get their jobs back immediately. I have many many teachers in my database who have sat in teacher jail for over 3 years many without any charges and long after they were cleared by LAPD. And yet no mainstream or public media reports this.

Listen carefully to Superintendent Deasy closely when he says, "We don't know the facts in the case," but then says "We are within our rights to make a judgment call of inappropriate behavior and initiate termination proceeding." Whatever happened to the presumption of innocence until proven guilty or due process of law? The hysterical witch hunt atmosphere that now prevails at LAUSD, which Deasy continues to exploit after Miramonte, has now destroyed the lives of hundreds of teachers without a shred of verified evidence given under penalty of perjury. There is not one case in my database that LAUSD has respected teachers civil rights and given them timely due process of law in a neutral forum as clearly required by law.

click on photo

Riverside Deputies Union Office Is Raided

Sheriff Deputies' Union Office Is Raided

In Riverside County, federal agents seek evidence while use of a trust fund is probed.

Originally published
 September 29, 2006 
LATimes

by Maeve Reston |

Armed federal agents in blue windbreakers and business suits raided the office of the Riverside Sheriffs' Assn. on Thursday, an action that comes as the FBI investigates the use of the association's legal trust fund (was Sayer's run for sheriff, and McNamara's  attempted illegal backdoor handout of $500,000 to Sayre a part of this?).

Officials at the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's office refused to discuss the investigation, but an agent involved in the raid at the Riverside office park was seen carrying a search warrant that included the last name of the sheriffs' association president, Pat McNamara.

This summer, federal prosecutors filed a confidential document in Superior Court stating that the FBI and U.S. Department of Labor were investigating whether money from the association's legal trust fund was embezzled, according to a report by the Press Enterprise in Riverside. The document was inadvertently posted on the court website and then removed, the newspaper reported.

The attorneys for the union and the legal trust fund released a brief statement after the raid: "The RSA and its Legal Defense Trust have fully cooperated with the Department of Labor inquiry from the very beginning, and will continue to cooperate with authorities. Both the RSA and the Legal Defense Trust believe that they have done nothing wrong or improper, and they look forward to being vindicated in this matter."

McNamara did not return calls for comment Thursday.

The Riverside Sheriffs' Assn. represents 2,700 deputies and other law enforcement and public safety personnel employed by Riverside County.

Thursday's raid comes in the midst of a nasty court battle between McNamara and a former employee who handled the union's legal defense fund.

McNamara is suing the former employee, Scott Teutscher, alleging defamation, and this month federal officials won a court order to the halt the discovery phase of that case, saying they needed to complete "certain criminal proceedings" involving McNamara and Teutscher.

The legal dispute between the two men, who oversaw the day-to-day operations of the association's legal trust fund, began in 2005 after several sheriff's offices in Riverside County received unsigned faxes bearing the heading "Corruption Within the Sheriffs' Association."

The memos alleged that money was embezzled from the union's legal trust fund under McNamara's direction to pay the attorney fees of a former Riverside County sheriff's deputy who was facing criminal charges, according to court documents

In the defamation lawsuit filed last year, McNamara accused Teutscher of sending the anonymous faxes and making other remarks accusing him of embezzlement to ruin McNamara's reputation.

More details of the case emerged this month when Teutscher filed a counter-lawsuit against the association, McNamara and other RSA employees.

Teutscher, who declined to comment, states in court documents that after he became the association's legal operations manager in 2002, he noticed that McNamara and other top officials were funneling trust fund money to Duane Winchell, who was described in the lawsuit as McNamara's "personal friend" and a former deputy who had been fired.

Court records show Winchell was charged with stalking and vandalism in 2002.

Teutscher alleges in his lawsuit that when he confronted McNamara and other top RSA officials about what he viewed as improper transactions, he was told to "shut up" and do his job.

The lawyer for the union, Manny Abascal, said the organization acted appropriately in providing benefits for the fired deputy.

"The union has a benefit plan that provides legal services for a deputy in need," said Abascal, noting that the union reviewed Winchell's case and determined that he was covered.

"We don't discuss the merit or circumstances of any individual cases," he said. "The decision was made to provide him benefits under the plan, and the union stands by it."

Teutscher said that about six months after the anonymous faxes went out accusing McNamara of wrongdoing -- which he denies sending -- he cooperated with officials from the district attorney's office who interviewed him about the possible misuse of funds.

A spokeswoman for the district attorney's office said the investigation was handed over to federal officials.

Around that time, Teutscher maintains, an employee in his office falsely accused him of throwing a file at her three months earlier. It was an accusation he said was used as a ruse to get him fired.

Before he was terminated Sept. 11, 2005, Teutscher says, he met with RSA Executive Director James Cunningham, who asked him to admit that he had been meeting with investigators and giving information about the internal affairs of the association.

Abascal said the association intended to vigorously contest Teutscher's lawsuit.

"We do not in any way agree with that characterization" that he was wrongfully terminated, Abascal said. Call me simple but when the hell did a union official  start toeing the line for that agency's HR or IA department? Let's Not Forget that it was McNamara who arranged the secret back door contribution with Harold "Rick" Sayre for over half a million dollars. Remeber it was the Deputies themselves who had to break up that love trist.

The more I read on Abscal the better Teutscher's statements sound.

"Students First" does not put students first. "Stand For Children" does not stand for children. "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB) leaves lots of children behind.

POLITICALLY MOTIVATED PROGRAMS LIKE: "Students First" does not put students first. "Stand For Children" does not stand for children. "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB) leaves lots of children behind.

from Schools Matter by skrashen

Sent to Yakima Herald-Republic (WA) for "Saturday Soapbox"
By Jane Watson
August 31, 2012

“Doublethink” is alive and well.

In 1948, George Orwell wrote 1984. “Big Brother is Watching You” was born. So was “doublethink,” the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously and accepting both of them. TVs watch YOU. Language is paradoxical. Less is more. War is Peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

The organization Stand For Children endorses gubernatorial candidate Rob McKenna and Charter Schools. Who doesn’t want to Stand For Children? Who wants Children Left Behind? Who doesn’t want Students First?

The fallacies and failures of NCLB (No Child Left Behind – aka No CORPORATION Left Behind) are well documented. ‘Nuff said.

The CEO of Stand For Children is Geoffrey Canada, a well financed man who opened Harlem’s Children’s Zone, a school which was able to provide many benefits to students who otherwise would have been left to the resources of public schools. Canada was able to spend $14,000 per student to help mitigate the effects of poverty. [Wish public schools could do that!]

When students did not get acceptable test scores, Canada kicked an entire class out of school to maintain Harlem Children Zone’s high test scores. http://susanohanian.org/show_atrocities.php?id=9289. Presumably, these students went to public schools, which don’t turn away anybody – kind of like the Statue of Liberty.

Charter schools take money from public education. They do not do better than public schools. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/charter-schools/about-the-brill-story-on-chart.html
Most national research shows that on average public schools perform as well as charter schools or better.

Michelle Rhee heads Students First. She was chancellor of DC public schools, (2007 – 2010) which had low test scores. When she was chancellor, test scores rose. Ms. Rhee’s reputation rests on those test scores, which soared while she was chancellor. Last March, USA Today published the results (http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2011-03-28-1Aschooltesting28_CV_N.htm) of a yearlong investigation of the Washington schools that found a high rate of erasures on tests as well as suspiciously large gains at 41 schools — one-third of the elementary and middle schools in the district. Michelle Rhee is now under investigation for fixing test scores. Michelle Rhee taught third grade for one year, but couldn’t control her class, said the stress gave her hives, and taped children’s mouths to keep them quiet. Rhee’s first year test scores showed a precipitous drop in her class: Average math percentile dropped from 64% to 17%. Average reading percentile dropped from 37% to 21%

In straight talk, Students First does not put students first. Stand For Children does not stand for children. No Child Left Behind (NCLB) leaves children behind.

Where does one get the truth? Talk to teachers. They’re the ones on the front line. They know students are more than test scores. They know children are being robbed of music, art, and many other things by the narrowing of the curriculum as a result of excessive testing.

Go to Parents Across America website. http://parentsacrossamerica.org/ Sign up for their newsletter.

Go to the Save Our schools website. Help them keep the “public” in public ed. http://www.saveourschoolsmarch.org/ Attend their webinars and tweets with educational professionals. (499)


CITATIONS

Charter Schools
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/charter-schools/about-the-brill-story-on-chart.html

Charters vs. public schools: Behind the numbers
http://www.educationjustice.org/newsletters/nlej_iss21_art5_detail_CharterSchoolAchievement.htm

CHARTER SCHOOL ACHIEVEMENT: HYPE VS. EVIDENCE
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/27/education/duncan-and-rhee-on-panel-amid-dc-schools-inquiry.html?_r=1

Gerald Coles: KIPP Schools: Power Over Evidence
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2012/08/gerald_coles_kipp_schools_powe.html

Cost of Courage

Arne Duncan Dishes $21.5 Million to College Board and Calls It Helping the Poor

originally published in "School Matters"
Wednesday, August 01, 2012 

Duncan Dishes $21.5 Million to College Board and Calls It Helping the Poor
Arne Duncan has a No Excuses approach to education, and to prove it once more, he has just signed off on a plan to give every American child living in a car, motel room, or urban hovel a chance to take another test to show how hopelessly behind she is.  As a side benefit for the testing-industrial complex, the College Board collects the entire sum:

The U.S. Department of Education announced the award of more than $21.5 million in grants to 43 states to cover all or part of the fees charged to low-income students for taking Advanced Placement tests. . . .
"These funds will help eliminate financial roadblocks for more low-income students and allow them to fully benefit from the AP program,” Duncan said.

Yes, those nasty financial roadblocks for which there are no excuses.  Does one know whether to laugh or cry?

Clearly, it looks like the $750,000 that the College Board spent on lobbying last year is paying off big time. Here is a clip from PalyVoice, which had an informative spread in May 2012 (my bolds):

. . . As the records from the most recently released Form 990 indicate, the College Board has been breezing through the 2009-2010 fiscal year with profits enviable by comparable industries in the private sector.

Of the over $594 million in total expenses in the 2009-2010 fiscal year, $7.8 million was allocated for the compensation of current officers, directors, trustees and key employees, $111.1 million went towards other salaries and wages, $13.7 million was for traveling expenses and $2.9 million paid for advertising and promotions, among other items.

Among the total of 1370 employees hired by the College Board, 456 individuals received more than $100,000 in compensation.
The multitude of Senior Vice Presidents and Officers received even more in total compensation and nontaxable benefits; Chief Executive Officer and President Gaston Caperton, the highest paid employee, received $1.3 million of such compensation and benefits, while the second highest paid employee, Chief Operating Officer and Senior Vice President Herbert Elish, received nearly $600,000.

Even after all of these expenses, there is still a $65.6 million gap between the expenses and the total revenue. From the College Board’s Form 990, it is unclear as to what the nearing $70 million profit is going towards.
However, one expense in particular is salient: over $750,000 spent towards lobbying in the 2009-2010 year. While it is illegal for a nonprofit organization to participate in “direct or indirect political campaign activities,” it is still allowed to engage in lobbying activities.

The Form 990 indicated that the College Board has attempted “to influence foreign, national, state or local legislation, including any attempt to influence public opinion on a legislative matter or referendum, through the use of... paid staff or management [as well as] direct contact with legislators, their staffs, government officials or a legislative body.”

According to the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), a nonprofit, nonpartisan research group in Washington D.C., three separate lobbying firms and seven different lobbyists represent the College Board on Capitol Hill.
The organization has been lobbying the federal government on issues and bills pertaining to education since 1998, as well as matters regarding Federal Budget and Appropriations since 2002...

Proud to be a Teacher (Educator?) Ashamed to be CTA?

Proud to be a Teacher(Educator)?

Ashamed to be CTA?

Let me preface with the often used but true statement: I believe in unions, I have walked three picket lines before the age of 25 and CTA is functionally useless. As we stand on the parapet of the crumbling dreams of so many far sighted men and women. This our "Alamo," allegorically speaking,  and all we can hope for from CTA "leadership" is a half-hearted magazine column on issues they should have addressed four years ago. By the way, of course the magazine only goes out to educators. Let me remind President Vogal not all CTA members are teachers. Just the obvious majority.

Excerpts from and opinions on the article

Proud to be a Teacher

By CTA President Dean E. Vogel

Sometimes the challenges we face on a daily basis in our classrooms are so great that it’s hard to remember the rewards of our profession and the reason why we chose to be educators. That’s why it’s been a delight to read thank-you notes from students that our members have shared with us over the past few months. Letters to the “Thank You, Teacher!” project can be read online at www.cta.org/thankyouteacher, and they give us all a moment to pause and remember why we are in it and why we stay.

This month, I received a note from one of my former students, and believe me, it both surprised and deeply touched me. Rachel was a student of mine in kindergarten, and her childhood memories of my class included me playing the guitar, singing during circle time, and enforcing a rule against children playing with their Velcro shoes.

Rachel wrote, “Thank you so much for all that you did. My inner child and outer adult ever appreciate it.”

She concluded her letter by letting me know she is now in her seventh year of teaching and “couldn’t imagine being anything else but an educator.”

I felt the same pride when I went to Washington, D.C., to see Rebecca Mieliwocki, a California middle school teacher and member of the Burbank Teachers Association, honored as National Teacher of the Year during a White House ceremony.

Rebecca related that she had been working in publishing when she realized something was missing. I was struck by her comment: “I took some time to make a list of things I needed and wanted in my ‘perfect’ job: creativity, decision-making control, fun, flexibility, stability, the potential to work with young people. It dawned on me that teaching was the obvious place.”

Rachel’s note and Rebecca’s achievement served as personal reminders to me of why we do it. They are also reminders of why I became involved with my union. It was to make things better for teachers and for our students.

These days it’s hard for a teacher to turn around without feeling like she’s under attack. Many of us would prefer to retreat to our classrooms, mind our own business and just teach our students. We may not be interested in the political drama. But as the Greek statesman Pericles once said, “Just because you don’t take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.”

Politics directly impacts almost everything we do in our schools and in our classrooms. And many politicians and corporate power brokers behave as if they know more about the dynamics of teaching and learning than we do. Yet no one knows better than we do what our students need to be successful.

We are facing some crucial issues coming up in the November election that will test that notion. As much as we’d like to shut the door of our classrooms and just teach, we won’t be able to do that without passing a funding initiative that will begin to provide the resources to adequately fund our schools. We won’t be able to do that if our voice is silenced and our ability to participate in politics is taken away. We won’t be able to do that if we don’t elect candidates who will advocate for public education.

In the coming weeks, I know many of us will be preoccupied with year-end activities (and the grim future with no Job, and) little time to do much else than help our students and each other tie things up and move forward. But as we head into summer, I hope you take some time for yourselves to recuperate and recharge. I also hope you take some time to become involved with this campaign season. Read through this issue of the Educator, go to our website, learn about the election issues we face, and step up. For the sake of our students, and for the sake of our profession, we all need to be involved in the election ahead. If not us, who? If not now, when?

Exactly dean when?

when WILL CTA DEVELOP A STRIKE AND DEFENSE FUND? WHEN WILL CTA SHOW SOME TRANSPARENCY WITH ITS INTERNAL OPERATIONS? WHEN WILL CTA STOP TAKING 70% OF OUR LOCAL DUES AND RETURN ALMOST NOTHING? WHEN WILL CTA LAWYERS START REPRESENTING EVERY MEMBER WITHOUT CONSIDERATION FOR THE "COMPROMISE BONUS" THEIR PAID? WHEN WILL CTA START TO EMBRACE DEMOCRATIC PRINCIPALS SO EACH MEMBER HAS A SAY, AT LEAST IN THE ELECTION OF STATE "MANAGERS?" WHEN DEAN, WILL CTA STOP HIDING FROM dissent AND START TO TRY AND UNDERSTAND WHERE IT COMES FROM AND IT'S INTRINSIC VALUE? WHEN WILL CTA START A POLICY OF HONESTY WITH THEIR MEMBERSHIP? WHEN WILL CTA STEP UP AND LEAD US IN THE GOOD FIGHT INSTEAD OF SOFT SELLING EXCUSES AFTER THE FACT? AS THE TIDE OF GREED AND DESPERATE POLITICS IS ALREADY CRESTING, CARRYING OUR BEST AND BRIGHTEST HOPES IN ITS FILTHY WATERS; wHEN DEAN DOES CTA BECOME A REAL UNION?
I, PRAETORIAN (EDUCATOR)

Educator of the Year!

Educator of the Year 2011!  
CTA's Educator of the Year is Often a Great Teacher, but always a non-political, without options, without opinions and whose real qualification for the benign appointment is their ability to talk the Burlingame rhetoric (SIMILAR IN SIGNIFICANCE TO... "DO'N THE HAND-JIVE") with robot like precision. While being undeniably good at their craft, they are in fact, the "person(S) most likely if there were a real vote, to be voted "Miss Congeniality"). Actually, I believe at one time David Sanchez was Miss Congeniality. Five years straight!


So we at Disenfranchised-Educators have taken it upon ourselves to announce our own Educator of the Year. The qualities we will always seek for this entitled position are: that person be not only a good highly qualified educator whether classified, certificated, or administrative; who works hard (not 70 hours a week) and works passionately for students, their parents and and their coworkers. "Educators count too!" And it is mandatory that they have some sense of political awareness. We unreservedly embrace that idea even if theirs is a political position contrary to ours here at Disenfranchised – Educators, we must honor and investigate descention for its true utility. And unwavering foundation in a true democracy.


This year myself, our entire editorial staff (currently rumored to be somewhere in a bar near Juarez, Mexico) and our one reader – Marion where ever he is, have unanimously elected Ms. Maura Larkins of San Diego. She herself works from a blog site for educators. Our editorial staff have, in consultation with reader Marion (who in turn Bankrolled the cause - Yesterday's lunch) take great pleasure in announcing the many payments, many accomplishments and legal victories of this months winner; Maura. Tenacity and unwavering passion for doing the right thing sets her apart. Thank you Maura. "You have more admirers than you'll ever know."


 I Praetorian


Along with the many note worthy legal poundings She has given to the Southern California School Districts' special are those givin to those ignorant enough or so poorly managed that they fell prey to the cheapest choice of legal seaguls; Friedman, Flouckman and Freud. Otherwise known as the  F-UP law partners law firm.


F, F and FU have a Walmart approach toward signing and defending school districts. READ - Spending YOUR TAX DOLLARS. (even better, more than 400 School Districts nearby depend on the  F-UP GROUP who prey on simple minded HR directors and administrators, teasing them in with 200 dollars a billable hour. However, with 400 districts REPRESENTED, they don't even know the names of most of their superintendents. They actually have yet to prove they have 400 employees at all. Including the custodial staffs in two states. Still worse I hear. They keep loosing attorneys ... 


to the prison system and FEW OF THOSE ARE CAREER MOVES.  SO, IAM TOLD.




Tune in next week for Maura's Bio and Opinions on Education in California.


PLUS! Next week


"THE WORST EDUCATOR OF THE YEAR FOR 2011." You might be surprised... A first only at Disenfranchised-Educators. 

IS THIS THE EXCEPTION OR ... Castle Park Elementary's PTA President is Charged with Embezzeling $20,000 in Student Funds

Chula Vista: Castle Park Elementary's PTA President Kimberlee Simmons, who repeatedly levied personal attacks at the
school's principal, Ollie Matos in the local press; has herself been charged with embezeling $20,000 from student funds Simmons was in charge of.


Within a year of the Chula Vista Star-News' running a series of negative op/ed pieces based on attacks by Simmon's  and a few Castle Park staff members toward the Principal; authorities discovered that $20,000 was missing from the elementary school's PTA accounts.  Summarily, PTA President Kimberlee Simmons was arrested for the embezzlement.


The Chula Vista Star-News neglected to run the arrest story however. Even though it and other papers had published personal stories that attacked the principal. The Star-News didn't bother to print the purported $20,000 theft and embezlement story. Neither did the San Diego Union Tribune who also published similarly harsh opinionated reports on Matos' performance, Tribune Editor Don Sevrens neglected this aspect of the story as well.

PTA PRESIDENT Kim Simmons was elected in 2004, reportedly because School Site Council leader Felicia Starr wanted someone she could control in charge of the PTA.  Starr, a parent representative on the site council, made efforts to ensure that Latino parents did not get a vote. She is said to have engaged in hostilities with Latino parents who had innocently tried to nominate candidates for the position of president.   Starr and her teacher allies were so intent on having a PTA president who would rally with them against the principal, that loyalty to these "leaders" was the one and only criterion to be elected a candidate for PTA president.


As a result of the embezzlement (the second discovered at Castle Park Elementary within 6 years), there has been no PTA at the school from mid-2005 through mid-2009.  Parents just recently began to organize themselves through ACORN. The Star-News failed to inform their readers about the resulting secretive transfers of teachers Robin Donlan and Peg Myers, an the hundreds of thousands in school district money used to defend these teachers (and, as I previously stated often happens, a cover up for the district level administrators responsible.)


The Star-News publisher Linda Rosas Townson reportedly knew the truth, but chose to reveal only a select part of the story to the public and parents, possibly to protect some of the persons involved .

IS THIS THE EXCEPTION OR ... The PTO President of a Huntington Beach elementary school, is charged with One Felony Count of Grand Theft by Embezzlement

The PTO president of a Huntington Beach elementary school, Gail Diane Panella-Monestere, 52, of Huntington Beach, is charged with one felony count of grand theft by embezzlement, prosecutors said.

Originally Published Online in 
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

By ALEJANDRA MOLINA and SEAN EMERY  

Gail Diane Panella-Monestere, 52, of Huntington Beach, was charged with one felony count of grand theft by embezzlement, according to the Orange County District Attorney's Office. She is suspected of embezzling more than $22,000 from student fundraisers, authorities said if convicted, she faces a maximum sentence of three years in Orange County Jail.

The PTO is also known in other school districts as the PTA and the PTSA; a Parent-Teacher-Student- Organization. Panella-Monestere was responsible for tracking and maintaining fundraiser money for Sun View Elementary School between September 2010 and February 2011, the District Attorney's Office said.

Prosecutors said Panella-Monestere abused her position of trust and embezzled about $22,000 when she wrote unauthorized checks to herself from the PTO bank account in amounts ranging from $250 to $800. She cashed them for personal use, prosecutors added.

Panella-Monestere is accused of keeping cash raised from fundraising events intended to be deposited into the PTO bank account.

School administrators discovered fundraiser money was missing and reported the theft to the Huntington Beach Police Department, who investigated the case.

Panella-Monestere is scheduled to appear in court for an arraignment on June 29, court officials said.

IS THIS THE EXCEPTION OR ...

This story may sound unusual and appalling considering the accusations, however having worked as an ASB director for nearly 5 years and educator for 15, I can tell you that the kind of theft that is described in the article happens at almost every school - public or private. Without district direction, school level oversight and administrative accountability, these incidents happen with widespread regularity. State budget cuts have reduced the number of experienced administrators needed and the problem is multiplied.

BACKGROUND

Most of the time school fundraising, whether it's elementary, middle or high school, is done in cash. Checks and credit cards are seldom accepted. Checks – because of the large number that are return unpaid and credit cards because the schools themselves usually cannot afford the cost.

There are basically three entities that oversee various student fundraising; most are school clubs that fall under the auspices of the ASB (Associated School Body, or student government). Others are run completely by parents, and are independent of the school or district, these are called booster clubs. Neither the principal nor the school district maintains a functional oversight. The last is the PTSA, PTO or PTA, although it may be known under other names. This is the organization of parents who fundraise for the good of the school as a whole and who are governed-by a very strict code with district level and state level hierarchies. Still, the handling of the monies is left to the parent or parents in charge.

The PTSA or PTO works directly with the staff and principal in order to provide for or assist all the staff and students at that school. However the bookkeeping and handling of large amounts of cash is left up to the means of charter's officers, often parents without systematic direction and the temptation is too often that individuals undoing. Regardless of which three organizations, theft happens almost all the time somewhere at some school in your school district. Thefts from Booster Clubs, especially high school, often amount into the hundreds of thousands each year.

JUST ANOTHER LOCAL EXAMPLE?


At the Moreno Valley Unified School District middle school at which I was the ASB co-director, between 2008-2010, teachers and other staff including the principal and his relatives were responsible for stealing as much as $100,000 in cash from student funds.  This includes theft, illegal usage, deliberate misappropriation or laundering money into other bank accounts. Folks that's just one school in one medium sized school district! 

When this kind of mishandling becomes apparent, it is often impossible for concerned individuals to get district level administrators to respond to complaints or reports about stealing of student fundraising monies. Often, these administrators are afraid the situation will become public and the disappearance or mishandling of these monies will reflect poorly on them and their job performance. (In some instances it should.) So instead of fixing the problem, a labor intensive effort, many district administrators will take the easy way out and collaborate in a series of cover-ups hoping the problem can be quietly swpt away. But the problem just becomes systemic as has happened in Moreno Valley. 


Even when presented with evidence enough to warrant a formal investigation, the Riverside County Office of Education seems hard pressed to do anything about about uncooperative districts. In 2006 Moreno Valley Unified School District defied the Riverside County Grand Jury's direction to change its accounting practices. The then Assistant Superintendent of Fiscal Services lied in a letter to the Grand Jury regarding the matter and got away with it because his statements were not thoroughly investigated. The changes the grand jury directed have not been implemented to this day. And the relasted problems have grown much larger. In keeping with the ideology of cover-up is better, Moreno Valley Unified has also ignored the Federal Government Office of Civil Rights' list of demands for change after their investigation of the districts H.R. department practices in 2005.

This kind of system wide cover up also fosters acts of retaliation. District and site level administrators hoping to silence vocal staff or parents trying to do the right thing by way of the students and their schools. This is especially true if the issue has become endemic across the entire school district. For more than 15 years this has been the case in Moreno Valley.

Some of the irresponsibility and cover up allowing these problems occurs at the level of the district school board members. Often the issues are known and liabilities discussed in the board's "closed sessions." The personalities, backgrounds and voter perceptions of the board trustees influence their decisions. These factors make for a cauldron of personal vendettas, poor dicissions, illegal investigations – usually at the behest of one or more of the trustees, thousands of dollars in unnecessary legal fees, and/or blind adherence to the subjective recommendations by the above-mentioned district administrators whose very employment is determined by the whims of the board members they report to.


This problem is further complicated by the trustees need to show voters their school district is being well managed so these trustees will be reelected at the end of their terms. Conversely, a politician can not hope for election to a "higher office" if they are associated with some district scandal. For many trustees the school board is just a stepping stone towards a more powerful and well paying elected office.

For others being a board member is an extension of a narrcisstic facet of their personality. Where they can take the stage in front of neighbors and local individuals. For them, inspite of their retoric, students' and parents' educational needs are seldom their driving concerns.

THE RICH CONTINUE TO GET RICHER IN GOOD OR BAD ECONOMIC TIMES

By STEVEN RATTNER
New York Times
March 25, 2012

NEW statistics show an ever-more-startling divergence between the fortunes of the wealthy and everybody else — and the desperate need to address this wrenching problem. Even in a country that sometimes seems inured to income inequality, these takeaways are truly stunning.

Economic Scene: Inequality Undermines Democracy (March 21, 2012)

In 2010, as the nation continued to recover from the recession, a dizzying 93 percent of the additional income created in the country that year, compared to 2009 — $288 billion — went to the top 1 percent of taxpayers, those with at least $352,000 in income. That delivered an average single-year pay increase of 11.6 percent to each of these households.

Still more astonishing was the extent to which the super rich got rich faster than the merely rich. In 2010, 37 percent of these additional earnings went to just the top 0.01 percent, a teaspoon-size collection of about 15,000 households with average incomes of $23.8 million. These fortunate few saw their incomes rise by 21.5 percent.

The bottom 99 percent received a microscopic $80 increase in pay per person in 2010, after adjusting for inflation. The top 1 percent, whose average income is $1,019,089, had an 11.6 percent increase in income.

This new data, derived by the French economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez from American tax returns, also suggests that those at the top were more likely to earn than inherit their riches. That’s not completely surprising: the rapid growth of new American industries — from technology to financial services — has increased the need for highly educated and skilled workers. At the same time, old industries like manufacturing are employing fewer blue-collar workers.

The result? Pay for college graduates has risen by 15.7 percent over the past 32 years (after adjustment for inflation) while the income of a worker without a high school diploma has plummeted by 25.7 percent over the same period.

Government has also played a role, particularly the George W. Bush tax cuts, which, among other things, gave the wealthy a 15 percent tax on capital gains and dividends. That’s the provision that caused Warren E. Buffett’s secretary to have a higher tax rate than he does.

As a result, the top 1 percent has done progressively better in each economic recovery of the past two decades. In the Clinton era expansion, 45 percent of the total income gains went to the top 1 percent; in the Bush recovery, the figure was 65 percent; now it is 93 percent...

Posted by Maura Larkins at 2:42 PM 0 comments 

Labels: income inequality, rich and poor, taxes, welfare for the rich

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Rush Limbaugh Calls Sandra Fluke a Slut - Response Video

When the woman is using birth control, her husband or boyfriend is obviously also protected by it. What is Rush Limbaugh's name for the man involved?

Rush Limbaugh Calls Sandra Fluke a Slut - Response Video

A musical comedy duo fronted by Marie Cecile Anderson and Katy Frame has been lassoing hearts throughout the New York City comedy scene. Here's a song about Rush Limbaugh and birth control:

Being a Woman is not a pre-existing condition

Health insurance companies charge women up to 50 percent more than men for the same coverage. Beginning in 2014, the Affordable Care Act will close the insurance gender gap once and for all: It will be illegal for health insurers to discriminate against women.

Right now, being a woman is considered a "pre-existing condition." In fact, insurance companies are charging women up to 50 percent more than men for the same coverage.

How many times have you heard Republicans say this is outrageous? Zero.

And how many times have you heard them vow to repeal the Affordable Care Act? We've lost track.

The Affordable Care Act will close the insurance gender gap once and for all. Beginning in 2014, it will be illegal for health insurers to charge women more than men for the same coverage.

So, by threatening to repeal this law, Mitt Romney and the GOP would essentially give insurance companies license to continue discriminating against women.

Posted by Maura Larkins at 2:22 PM 0 comments 

Labels: . Limbaugh (Rush Limbaugh), birth control, healthcare insurance, sluts

Sunday, March 11, 2012

Does Propranolol Reduce Racism? Probably Yes, Subconsciously

by Christian Nordqvist
Academic Journal
11 Mar 2012

A small study found that people's subconscious racial bias is considerably reduced if they are taking propranolol, a heart disease drug, researchers from Oxford University wrote in the journal Psychopharmacology. The study was carried out by a team of psychologists, ethicists and psychiatrists.

Lead author, Sylvia Terbeck and team carried out an experiment on 36 individuals. 18 were given propranolol, while the other 18 took a placebo that looked just like the propranolol. They found that those on the heart medication scored considerably lower on the Implicit Attitude Test which gauged their subconscious racial bias. The test measures people's levels of subconscious racism.

The authors stressed that propranolol made no difference in people's explicit attitudes to races.
What is propranolol (INN)

Propranolol (INN), molecular formula C16H21NO2, is a sympatholytic non-selective beta blocker. Sympatholytics are medications that are used for the treatment of anxiety, panic and high blood pressure (hypertension).

Propranolol was the first ever effective beta blocker. It is available in both brand name forms, such as Inderal, Deralin, Dociton, Sumial, and generic form as propranolol hydrochloride. It is a banned substance in the Olympics, because of its use in controlling stage fright (social anxiety) and tremors.

Propranolol is also used in treatment for cluster headaches prophylaxis, essential tremor, glaucoma, migraine prophylaxis, primary exertional headache, shaky hands, and tension headache (off label use).

Propranolol blocks activation in the peripheral autonomic nervous system, as well as in the brain area that impacts on emotional responses and fear.
How does propranolol reduce racism?

The authors suggest that racial bias is based on automatic, non-conscious-fear responses, which propranolol reduces.

Sylvia Terbeck said:

"Our results offer new evidence about the processes in the brain that shape implicit racial bias. Implicit racial bias can occur even in people with a sincere belief in equality. Given the key role that such implicit attitudes appear to play in discrimination against other ethnic groups, and the widespread use of propranolol for medical purposes, our findings are also of considerable ethical interest.

Many people with medical conditions are probably already on drugs which affect subconscious bias and more research is needed into how drugs which affect our nervous system affect our moral attitudes and practices.


Co-author,, Prof. Julian Savulescu, wrote:

"Such research raises the tantalising possibility that our unconscious racial attitudes could be modulated using drugs, a possibility that requires careful ethical analysis.

Biological research aiming to make people morally better has a dark history. And propranolol is not a pill to cure racism. But given that many people are already using drugs like propranolol which have 'moral' side effects, we at least need to better understand what these effects are.

Posted by Maura Larkins at 6:00 PM 0 comments 

Labels: propranolol, Race

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Rick Santorum (or perhaps his lookalike?) sees Satan controlling mainline Protestant churches

Rick Santorum lookalike?
See the Fiscal Times photo gallery.

Santorum, under fire for Satan comments, recalls Reagan's 'courage'
By Mitchell Landsberg
February 22, 2012

...In 2008, speaking to students at a Catholic school, Ave Maria University in Naples, Fla., Santorum spoke of a satanic assault on the United States.

“The Father of Lies has his sights on what you would think the Father of Lies would have his sights on: a good, decent, powerful, influential country -- the United States of America,” he said, according to a tape of the remarks on the university website. “If you were Satan, who would you attack in this day and age? There is no one else to go after other than the United States.”

In the same speech, Santorum seemed to suggest that mainline Protestant churches have been influenced by Satan and are no longer Christian. He said the devil had exerted control over academia and then began attacking Christianity. “And of course,” he said, “we look at the shape of mainline Protestantism in this country and it is a shambles, it is gone from the world of Christianity as I see it.”...

Posted by Maura Larkins at 4:04 PM 0 comments 

Labels: . Santorum (Rick Santorum), Christianity, Republicans, Satan

Friday, February 17, 2012

A Clinician’s View of the Laptop-Shooting Dad

Tommy Jordan shows our willingness to excoriate teens for bad behavior while absolving ourselves of parental responsibility for it
By CHRISTOPHER J. FERGUSON
February 17, 2012

By shooting his daughter’s laptop and posting the event on YouTube, Tommy Jordan has become a minor celebrity. His actions give catharsis to perennial adult frustration with teenagers. But watching the video I was struck not only by his own words but also those of his daughter (read aloud by Jordan) which, to me, reflected not moral high ground by either party but a cycle of mutual anger, frustration and failure to communicate. Given that, to my knowledge, his daughter has been given no platform to explain her grievances toward her father, it’s easy to view things through Jordan’s lenses when we hear only one side of the story. I am sure he has legitimate grievances against her (and probably she against him). However, was destroying her property and humiliating her publicly the best way to resolve this conflict?

In my own work as a clinical psychologist, I have worked with many teens and their families. Although certainly some teens are fully responsible for their problems despite having model parents, and at other times the kids would be better off being raised by a pack of raccoons, in most cases both parties fueled rather than dealt responsibly with emerging problems. Rarely did I find either parents or teens who were entirely right, although each often thought they were. Teens ranting over chores and whatnot can often reflect deeper feelings of alienation or perceived uncaring on the part of parents. In many cases the bad behavior of teens, whether disrespect, apathy or conflict, often could be traced back to failures by parents to show respect or caring toward their children in earlier years. To be clear, this is not to absolve teens of responsibility for their actions, merely to point out that family conflicts are rarely so clear as to identify one party as good, the other bad.

A study by Brian Barber in the Journal of Marriage and Family found that both negative parenting and adolescent personality problems contributed to conflicts within the family. Similar research by Bruce Simons-Morton and colleagues in the Journal of School Violence and Soh-Leong Lim and colleagues in Marriage & Family Review suggest that parental warmth and decreased overbearingness are related to less conflict and more positive teen outcomes across cultures.

This is not to say that teens should never be disciplined, but that fostering bonding and trust between the parent and teen is a crucial element that shouldn’t be but often is neglected.

To put this in perspective, let us imagine that my wife and I were having difficulties in our marriage (we are not). One day I discover she has posted ranting complaints about my boorish behavior to her friends on Facebook, believing I will not see them. Do I have a right to feel hurt? Of course. Would shooting her laptop and releasing a publicly humiliating rant of my own against her on YouTube be likely to improve our marriage? No, I don’t think so. But perhaps Hannah Jordan will have a good sense of humor and take this all in stride.

I’m less disappointed in Tommy Jordan, though, than the widespread endorsement of his actions, which probably stems from the habit of disparaging teens, a perennial sport of older adults who enjoy the sanctimonious feel of being able to say, “When we were kids we behaved much better,” even when this is patently untrue. Modern youth, by almost any behavioral measure available, are the best behaved since the 1960s, far better behaved than their parents currently complaining about them. All the Internet backslapping and support for Jordan points to our general willingness to excoriate teens for their bad behavior while absolving ourselves of parental responsibility for it.

I have little doubt Jordan cares about his daughter; that much comes through in his video despite all else. But if this video is reflective of the general way he interacts with her, I see why she might be angry with him. Was her rant on Facebook immature? Sure, but she’s 15. What’s our excuse as parents?


Ferguson is associate professor of psychology and criminal justice at Texas A&M International University. The views expressed are solely his own.

Posted by Maura Larkins at 8:59 AM 0 comments 

Labels: disciplining kids, parent anger, parenting

Friday, February 10, 2012

Eric Cantor protects political intelligence consultants from STOCK Act. Eric Cantor under fire for STOCK Act tweaks

Cantor's version strips a provision requiring consultants to disclose their activities.

By SEUNG MIN KIM
2/8/12
Politico

A feel-good bill has suddenly turned nasty.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) has released his version of a congressional insider-trading ban, and it strips a provision that would require so-called political intelligence consultants to disclose their activities, like lobbyists already do. It also scraps a proposal that empowers federal prosecutors going after corruption by public officials.

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That’s stoked backlash from Democrats and even some Republicans, who are furious at Cantor and are accusing the Virginia Republican of watering down the popular legislation that easily passed Senate last week.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) slammed the House for deleting his amendment targeting the political intelligence industry, which tracks action on Capitol Hill and then sells the information to investors. Instead, the House bill requires just a study of the industry’s activities within 12 months.

“It’s astonishing and extremely disappointing that the House would fulfill Wall Street’s wishes by killing this provision,” Grassley said in a statement. “If Congress delays action, the political intelligence industry will stay in the shadows, just the way Wall Street likes it.”

Cantor spokeswoman Laena Fallon said the provision was deleted because it was “extremely broad” and added that the “unintended consequences on the provision could have affected the first amendment rights of everyone participating in local rotaries to national media conglomerates.”

Democrats weren’t comforted by that explanation.

“The thing we greatly feared has come upon us,” Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) told reporters on Wednesday. “It has been weakened, totally, as far as I’m concerned.”

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who co-authored with Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) an amendment to crack down on public corruption using a number of measures, said he was “deeply disappointed” his provision had disappeared from the House bill. Leahy noted that a similar measure cleared the House Judiciary Committee in December.

“If we are serious about restoring faith in government and addressing the kinds of egregious misconduct that we have witnessed in recent years in high-profile public corruption cases, Congress must act now to enact serious anti-corruption legislation,” Leahy said in a statement. “The House Republicans’ version of the STOCK Act misses that opportunity.”

For Cantor’s part, the House’s No. 2 Republican has added provisions that he says strengthens the STOCK Act, which explicitly bars lawmakers and their aides from using nonpublic information gained through their jobs to profit themselves.

The new version of the House’s STOCK Act ensures that the bill’s insider-trading ban and its disclosure requirements apply to the executive branch, and it also bans lawmakers convicted of a crime from collecting pensions.

In a shot at House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Republicans also added a so-called “Pelosi provision” that imposes stricter rules on public officials who participate in initial public offerings. The California Democrat was targeted in a “60 Minutes” probe that reported Pelosi and her husband participated in Visa’s IPO while a bill governing credit-card legislation was pending before Congress.

Pelosi has denied any conflict of interest or special access related to the Visa IPO.

Slaughter was peeved at the “Pelosi Provision” when asked about it on Wednesday.

“I think the fact that they put this in was strictly to cause grief to [Pelosi],” Slaughter said, “and I resent it.”

Cantor said in a statement late Tuesday that he consulted “dozens of members” as he reworked the bill. But neither Slaughter nor Rep. Tim Walz (D-Minn.), the primary sponsors of the STOCK Act, worked with Cantor on the new bill, the Democrats said.

Despite the partisan bickering, the legislation is expected to pass when it comes up for a vote Thursday.

Posted by Maura Larkins at 5:24 PM 0 comments 

Labels: . Cantor (Eric Cantor), political intelligence consultants, STOCK Act

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Strom Thurmond is gone but not forgotten; Juan Williams takes a step to the left

Juan Williams stands in for Obama at Fox debate
The GOP celebrates MLK day by booing the black pundit as Gingrich belittles him for asking tough questions on race
BY JOAN WALSH
Salon.com
JAN 17, 2012

The Fox News debate began auspiciously, with moderator Bret Baier noting that it was our national holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Then his actual question had nothing to do with Dr. King. But those of us who feared the debate would duck racial issues worried for naught. The night climaxed with the South Carolina crowd giving Newt Gingrich a standing ovation for smacking down Fox’s leading black contributor, Juan Williams, for his impertinent questions about race.

Williams asked for it, of course. What was he thinking making tough racial queries at a GOP debate in Myrtle Beach, S.C.? First, he asked Romney how he squared his harsh anti-immigrant rhetoric with his own family’s story of moving to and then from Mexico seeking religious freedom. He asked Rick Santorum, who purports to care about poverty, what he would do about high African-American poverty rates. He asked Ron Paul whether he thought the nation’s harsh drug laws were bad for black people. Then he made the mistake of asking Newt Gingrich about his comments that poor urban children came from communities that lacked a “work ethic,” and his calling Barack Obama “the food stamp president.”

Gingrich couldn’t believe his luck. With a gleam in his eye, he thrashed Williams, and Steve Kornacki believes he may have given his candidacy one last shot with his savvy thumping of Fox’s leading black commentator. It hurt to watch. If Newt gets the nomination – he won’t, but a Democrat can dream – he’ll have to thank Williams at the GOP convention in Tampa, Fla., even before he thanks Callista.

Sure, Santorum took his chance to demagogue on race, telling Williams that it only took three things to stay out of poverty in America: “Work, graduate from high school, and get married before you have children.” He didn’t allow that any residue of racism or discrimination might make it harder for African-Americans to work, graduate from high school or marry. Santorum also made unfounded allegations, again, about the Obama administration forbidding certain federal programs from talking about marriage. But at least he answered Williams with some personal respect.

Gingrich looked as happy about Williams’ questions as he looked deflated at the last New Hampshire debate. The former NPR analyst referenced Gingrich’s belittling comments about poor kids lacking role models with a work ethic, and the NAACP “demanding” food stamps not jobs, and asked, “Can’t you see that this is viewed at a minimum as insulting to all Americans, but particularly to African-Americans?”

“No,” Gingrich said petulantly, with a slight pause, “I don’t see that.” The crowd screamed with glee. Gingrich went on to bash unionized janitors in public schools, and I realized that his student-janitor comments represent a right-wing political trifecta, bashing anti-business regulations like child labor laws, public sector unions and lazy “urban” kids. Oh, and he also got to attack elites this time around, insisting his janitor plans drew liberal disapproval because “only the elites despise earning money.”

But Williams didn’t back away. “The suggestion you made was about a lack of work ethic,” he told Gingrich. “It sounds as if you are seeking to belittle people.” The crowd booed Williams lustily, and Gingrich got a special twinkle in his eye. He looked at Williams like he was a soon-to-be ex-wife.

“First of all, Juan” – and there was a slight cheer when the former speaker called the Pulitzer Prize winner “Juan” – “the fact is that more people have been put on food stamps by Barack Obama than any president in American history. I know among the politically correct you’re not supposed to use facts that are uncomfortable.

“Second, you’re the one who earlier raised a key point,” he continued. “The area that ought to be I-73 was called by Barack Obama a corridor of shame because of unemployment. Has it improved in three years? No — they haven’t built the road, they haven’t helped the people, they haven’t done anything. I’m going to continue to help poor people learn how to get a job, learn how to get a better job, and someday learn how to own the job.” The crowd jumped to its feet screaming “Newt! Newt! Newt!” Fox cut to a commercial.

Where to start? Of course Obama hasn’t “put” anyone on food stamps. The Bush economy nearly doubled the poverty rate...

The Story of Juan
Juan Williams was a sometimes-controversial star at NPR until an inflammatory comment about Muslims sent him further into the arms of Fox News. A look at his career through the eyes of several old and skeptical colleagues.
By David Margolick
Vanity Fair
Jan. 18, 2012

A graduate of Haverford College, Williams launched his journalistic career at The Washington Post, which he joined as an intern in 1976. He was clearly talented and ambitious, but many thought his life there additionally charmed because of his friendship with Donald Graham, son of the publisher, who, having once been a cop in D.C., took a liking to Williams. (Asked whether he’d ever paved Williams’s way or, later, gotten him out of scrapes, Graham replied, “The answer is no—N.O.”)

Williams won praise for his willingness to cover rough parts of town and take on liberal black icons like Mayor Marion Barry long before scandals brought him down, thereby incurring charges of disloyalty from Barry and betrayal from the black mainstream. In 1980, he began writing for the Post editorial page. That December, at a convention for black conservatives in San Francisco, he met 32-year-old Clarence Thomas, then an assistant to Senator John Danforth of Missouri. An op-ed column Williams wrote praising Thomas—whose conservatism was, Williams wrote, “born of the same personal anger at racism that fired the militants of the 1960s”—called him to the attention of the Reagan administration, which led to his first presidential appointment, which effectively led to the Supreme Court. (In 1987, by which point Thomas headed the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Williams profiled him in The Atlantic. The notoriously wary, reclusive Thomas opened up to him: what resulted was by far the most probing and insightful piece about him ever written. Williams and Thomas have remained friends and still lunch together occasionally; Thomas attended Williams’s 50th-birthday party.)

Continuing his expedited march up, in the early 1980s Williams became the paper’s junior reporter at the Reagan White House. Colleagues recall he was eager to get into print—sometimes too eager, jumping to conclusions, seasoning stories with his own opinions, failing to make that crucial last phone call. “Juan had talent and drive,” said Lou Cannon, the Reagan biographer who was then the Post’s top man at the White House. “If he’d been more interested in journalism than in being in the limelight he could have been a great reporter. That’s more essential to understanding him than putting him on the liberal/conservative spectrum.”

Civil-rights groups often complained that their side of things went especially unrepresented or misrepresented in Williams’s stories. In September 1985, a dispute emerged when Ralph Neas, then head of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, accused Williams of distorting his words in a news story. Neas was promptly summoned to the Post, where he found a tribunal—consisting of Ben Bradlee, Robert Kaiser, and Boisfeuillet Jones Jr.—then the Post’s executive editor, assistant managing editor for national news, and general counsel, respectively—convened, it appeared to Neas to, find out more about Williams’s work. What emerged, Neas recalled, was a “gentlemen’s agreement”: Williams would stop writing about civil rights. (Bradlee did not return messages; Kaiser declined to comment; Jones says he does not recall such a meeting.)

Williams disputes Neas’s story, and says that his contemporaneous notes proved Neas’s charge unfounded. Nonetheless, within a year he was moved to the Post’s less illustrious magazine.

EYES ON THE PRIZE

Williams turned out plenty of high-profile pieces at the magazine. One story, about a family devastated when one of its members was murdered, was made into a prime-time special by Oprah Winfrey. He went to South Africa to interview Nelson Mandela. And he scored a rare interview with Justice Thurgood Marshall that would later grow into a biography. (Considering Williams untrustworthy, Marshall’s wife, Cecilia, urged her husband and their friends not to speak to Williams for the book. For years, the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense and Education Fund, which Marshall long led, denied Williams access to key Marshall papers.) Williams’s editors at the magazine recall that whatever appeared under his byline usually had to be re-written from the ground up. Fame, not craft, was key.

In 1986, the producer of Eyes on the Prize, Henry Hampton, asked Williams to write the companion volume to what would become the legendary series of civil-rights documentaries. Some of Hampton’s co-workers, noting Williams’s lack of sympathy or any discernable ties to the movement, vehemently opposed Hampton’s choice. But Hampton was in a hurry—the films were nearly complete—and Williams was a name brand from a prestigious paper. And, unlike others who’d begged off, he was ambitious and self-confident enough to think he could do the job quickly.

Here, too, according to people who worked with him, Williams’s work was slipshod, even though he was supplied with all of the research materials. It was also slanted—skeptical or hostile to the people being portrayed sympathetically on the screen—and skewed: inordinately focused, for instance, on the sexual peccadilloes of some participants. Many felt that the project’s editorial director, Robert Lavelle, should have gotten co-writer credit for the companion book. Instead, the byline originally read “Juan Williams with the Eyes on the Prize Production Team.” But in interviews Williams always takes sole credit for the writing; indeed, in later printings, any reference at all to his co-authors has mysteriously disappeared. Some press accounts have even cited the book as the basis of the documentary, rather than the other way around—a misimpression which, his former colleagues complain, infuriated Hampton (who died in 1998), and which Williams has done little or nothing to correct.

Williams calls charges that he has taken excessive credit for the book “ridiculous.” “There are a lot of people who are jealous in the world, and crazy,” he said. Here as elsewhere, even Williams’s critics marvel at his sheer brazenness. “The one thing people could learn from him is the ‘parlay,’” said Callie Crossley, one of the producers of the original batch of Eyes documentaries, who now hosts a public radio show on WGBH in Boston. “Honestly, he was doing branding and inventing himself long before people were talking about it.”

IN THE SPOTLIGHT

In 1991 Williams got attention of a different, less welcome variety, for making sexually suggestive comments to women. They were more jerky than menacing—Williams wasn’t their boss, nor did he press himself on anyone—and seemed designed to grab attention more than anything else. But they were chronic and tasteless, some extremely so. (“With your fingernails painted like that, they look like cherries, and I’d just like to eat them up,” he told one Post employee. On another occasion, he told her that he wanted to put his face where she’d just sat and inhale.)
Grumbling about Williams’s catcalls persisted for several years without ever percolating up to management. But a complaint had just reached Williams’s superiors when, during Clarence Thomas’s confirmation hearings in October 1991, Williams wrote a column defending Thomas and calling Anita Hill a mere tool of Democratic activists. Women at the Post grew outraged, demanding that the paper disclose Williams’s own predilections. The paper resisted, but when other news outlets reported on the dispute, the Post had to, too. The charges were “absolutely false,” Williams told Howard Kurtz, who covered the story for the paper, then went on to describe it in his book, Media Circus; the women had taken “a passing word” in the wrong way.

Williams was exiled from the Post newsroom for a couple of weeks, and the matter died down. But when he returned, and told other publications the Post had effectively apologized for treating him so harshly, things reignited. Post editor Leonard Downie then had to meet with 50 women in the paper’s cafeteria; later more than a hundred employees signed a letter complaining about Williams and the paper’s handling of him.

Downie concluded that the allegations were “serious”; Williams acknowledged he’d misbehaved and promised to “change [his] ways.” But his contrition quickly faded. What he told Kurtz shortly thereafter remains his position today: the imbroglio had everything to do with the Thomas-Hill dispute, and little to do with him. In fact, he sees himself as the real victim of the fracas.

The next year Williams went on leave to work on his Marshall book. He continued to work part-time for the Post’s Outlook section, where an editor routinely checked, and corrected, his facts. Williams was more trouble than he was worth, the Post’s top editors concluded; they longed for some politically palatable way to get rid of him. “We hoped for some Act of God that would solve the problem,” one said. “God” then came in two guises. The first was Roger Ailes, head of the then-fledgling Fox News, who in 1997 signed up Williams for part-time punditry. The second was NPR.

Posted by I, Praetorian at 10:38 AM 0 comments 

Labels: . Gingrich (Newt Gingrich), . Williams (Juan Williams), civil rights, poverty, Race, South Carolina