Andrew Cuomo is Mr. Anonymous (no, not that one)

Ed Koch and Mario Cuomo before a mayoral debate 

New York City, 1977.

With Reggie Jackson calling shots, the race for mayor was on between Cuomo and Koch.

Mario Cuomo had decided that he wanted to be the mayor, before becoming three-time governor of the state. The race against Ed Koch got so close that Cuomo's 19-year-old son Andrew (Andy) got involved.  

Andy was bold, Andy was brash. He wore his hair high, and his collars even higher. One could never have too much starch, after all.  

Andrew Cuomo, circa 1977

But starch was no match for the wrath of Koch, who pummeled Cuomo by nine points, commencing his first of three terms as New York City mayor.

It seems young Andy didn't go down without a fight, however. In the midst of his father losing the Democratic nomination, Andy sunk lower than a rat on the F train by attacking Koch's sex life.

Back then, Koch was in the closet (along with many other 50-something single guys). He certainly didn't need some douchebag outing him in the middle of Queens Boulevard. But that's exactly what Andy Cuomo did, when one Saturday night he and his goons plastered this anonymously written flyer up and down the Boulevard of Death: 

Did Andy do it out of desperation for his father's dying candidacy? 

Probably.

But that doesn't explain, nor extinguish, the raging homophobia inside of young Andy. Fear can win elections, but not before leading to desperate doings.

It was this type of fear that Andy (now Governor Andrew Cuomo) exploited some 30 years later in a desperate attempt to turn the public against New York State teachers. 

Yes, teachers.

Let me explain.  

Cuomo, forgetting that he was a Democrat, tried to "break" the teachers union, who opposed non-unionized charter schools, something Cuomo's wealthy donors could not abide. Teachers were also against someone like Andy Cuomo deciding how they would be evaluated, a draconian, impractical system that is sadly still in place today. 

On New Year's Eve 2014, with teachers protesting outside of his Albany mansion and Mario on his deathbed back home, Cuomo declared:    

I understand the union’s issue; they don’t want anyone fired. But we have teachers that have been found guilty of sexually abusing students who we can’t get out of the classroom. We have a process where literally it takes years and years to get a bad teacher out of the classroom.

The last time this blog checked, New York does not have an epidemic of perverted teachers in classrooms. Sure, there are some, but there are also some perverted priests, doctors, and yes, politicians (see Weiner, Anthony). And if Governor "I used to be the attorney general" Cuomo was aware of "guilty" sex abusers working with children, why didn't he have them arrested, or at the very least, remove their teaching licenses?  

Further, in case you're not convinced that Cuomo wrote the infamous Koch flyer, his words about teachers in 2014 sound remarkably similar to those which polluted Queens Boulevard back in 1977.  

As a public service, The Pen is Mightier the Person was able to magnify the Koch flyer to a degree where its author's identity is obvious:

In case your reading glasses just failed you, here is the above text, which makes some eerie and familiar references to teachers:  

There are much worst things in store for New York State if Koch ever became governor. If Koch ever became governor he would force schools, both private and public, all over the state to hire homosexual child-molesters as teachers. He has already shown, at the very least, that he has no objection to homosexual child-molesting in the public schools. Recently some New York City public school teachers went on record publicly identifying themselves and coming out in favor of the "right" of male teachers to commit sodomy on underage boys. The only reservation these teachers have is that sodomy should not take place in the school itself and it should not occur between a teacher and his own students.

It seems Andy was just as concerned about perverted teachers in 1977 as he was in 2014. But don't think for a second that Cuomo's concern sprang from some gallant desire to protect children from abuse. No, Cuomo's concern was all about getting and keeping power - for his father in 1977, and for himself in 2014.

Like any cynical politician, Andy Cuomo tries to use fear to enrage and activate the electorate. Fear of gays, fear of predatory teachers - these are fair to inflame when the governor's mansion is at stake.     

Cuomo recently fired up this fear once again in his Democratic primary race against Cynthia Nixon. This time, Cuomo had his goons in the New York Democratic Party mail an anonymous flyer to Queens Boulevard, and many parts beyond:

Conceived by Cuomo, paid for by the New York Democratic Committee 

     
In the spirit of the Jewish New Year, Cuomo thought manipulating legitimate fears of anti-Semitism was a good way to win a third term as governor. The problem with this, among many other problems, is that Cynthia Nixon is so anti-Semitic that she's raising her kids as Jews. 

Since 1977, Andy Cuomo has used slime to ensnare voters and elevate his ego. Sadly, New Yorkers only have themselves to blame, as voter turnout has been pathetically low.

And though Nixon's chances of beating Cuomo are about as good as hitting three home runs in a World Series game, if enough people vote for the Homo and not the Cuomo, civility will win the day once again.

Lillis, Pallotta, to Challenge Magee for NYSUT President

The political winds aren't brisk enough so let's throw a NYSUT election into the mix.

Come April 8, current NYSUT president Karen Magee will either be out of a job or preparing to run the union into the ground for another three years.

Magee's two challengers are in it for the wrong and right reasons, respectively. 

First for the wrong. Although he teamed up with her on the sham successful Revive NYSUT slate in 2014, current NYSUT Executive Vice President and semi-regular reader of this blog Andrew "Andy" Pallotta is now trying to throw Magee under the same bus that ran over her predecessor, Dick Iannuzzi.

The problem is that Pallotta has been driving the bus both times. 

Evidently, Pallotta is finally serious about reviving NYSUT, and thinks he's got what it takes to lead public education to the promised land. His eight-year record as a NYSUT officer, however, belies any serious hope that Pallotta can help pull schools back from the brink.

As NYSUT Executive Vice President, Pallotta's main charge has been to lobby legislators on behalf of working teachers, and at least earn a legitimate victory every once and a while.    

Since 2009, however, New York teachers have faced loss after loss, with Governor Andy Cuomo and the state legislator callously attacking teacher pensions and due process rights while spewing Common Core tests across the state. Thanks to Cuomo's Education Transformation Act, for example, trumped-up charges are now all it takes to fire tenured teachers and hand their schools off to voucher school villains. Meanwhile, suburban and rural districts are pinned-down by an insolvency-inducing tax cap, while urban schools are flush with rats instead of cash. 

But it's not like Pallotta hasn't tried. In fact, just last year he spent $109,600 (the maximum amount) of voluntary member donations (VOTE-COPE) on Republicans in the New York Senate, whose leader - John Flanagan - recently pledged allegiance to Betsy DeVos, President Trump's toxic secretary of education. It's safe to say that whatever campaign cash Flanagan and his flunkies received from NYSUT was spent on obliterating any compassion they had left for public education - the platform of American democracy.    

Speaking of President Trump, Pallotta is a former member of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), which recently took the absurd action of striking any references to Trump from a union resolution, opting to refer to Trump only as "the presidential election." Pallotta's pals in the UFT were apparently too afraid to offend public school teachers who voted for Trump, otherwise known as Those Who Should Know Better. 

And it's this kind of kowtowing that's placed teachers and their unions exactly where they are today - begging for scraps at the laps of people whose names they won't even whisper.

This is America, and our freedoms should include permission to criticize our leaders. Any educator who delays speaking truth to power is only running toward the inevitable cries of "Would've, could've, should've!" as their careers careen into flames.

Magee's second challenger, on the other hand, is not afraid to say Donald Trump's name. A high School physics teacher and current President of the Lakeland Federation of Teachers (LFT), Mike Lillis has experience which Andy Pallotta severely lacks - running a classroom while running a union in the dark age of school deform. Lillis also has a good-old fashioned obsession with facts and data, which he has used to help unravel and reveal the fleecing of public education.

The attacks on schools can be boiled down to one number - 1630 - which equals the average score New York State expects students to achieve on the SAT. Only 34% of students who take the SAT, however, achieve this score, and your third-grader will not be one of them unless she scores a 3 on tests Cuomo himself once called "meaningless." Subpar students naturally means subpar teachers, whose subpar schools will soon be transformed into subpar websites.     

In a world of alternative facts, 1630 is an indisputable digit which represents all that is wrong with school deform.

Sadly, when Lillis brought this bogus benchmark before the New York State Education Department (NYSED) and Commissioner MaryEllen Elia, crickets filled the room. After all, everyone had always assumed that "college and career ready" meant whatever Bill Gates wanted it to mean, and did not originate from say, some arbitrary test score. NYSED promised to "get back to" Lillis with an explanation, and he's still waiting. Lillis did get the Commissioner to admit that the teacher evaluation system was "random", however, a both hilarious and horrifying admission from the state's top education official.

Joining Lillis on the ST slate of candidates are Bianca Tanis, who's running for Pallotta's old position, Megan DeLaRosa (1st Vice President), and Nate Hathaway (Secretary/Treasurer). Like Lillis, all of them are full-time teachers and unionists, and all of them care deeply about their profession, on personal and professional levels.

Fearsome Foursome (clockwise from top left): Lillis, Tanis, Hathaway, DeLaRosa

All of them are also leaders of the opt-out movement, an unprecedented act of civil disobedience which has pushed back against the privatization of public education. As a founder of New York State Allies for Public Education (NYSAPE), Bianca Tanis has traveled the state and appeared on national television to educate teachers and parents on the standardized threats their schools face. This dedication alone has given working teachers more hope than Andy Pallotta could ever hope to give.      

Even amid the lunacy of a Trump presidency, the existential threats faced by NYSUT and teachers in general cannot be minimized. This election should at least help expose those threats to a public flogging of logic and the altruism of educators. 

Lillis and ST recognize these threats, and want schools to persevere and prosper. They know, for instance, that the eager students sitting in their classrooms today are a lot less likely to become teachers tomorrow because of the losses of the past decade, losses which the likes of Pallotta have done little to stop.  

With all three branches of government ready to turn America into a Right to Work nation, it's finally time for NYSUT to get serious and give grassroots teachers a chance to lead. Besides, there's little to stop NYSUT from sliding off the cliff once dues becomes optional, and your leader will be the guy who brought you Tier VI and four-year tenure.

Mike Lillis and the ST slate will fight for fairness, for all teachers and students. They understand the importance of the Union movement and do not enjoy seeing it decimated by apathy and ignorance.

Whether it's ST, the UFT, or NYSUT, the Union must endure - it is the only barrier keeping us from the billionaire barbarians.

We must hold the line and move forward, together.  

A Constitutional Case for Boycotting the Inauguration

If Donald Trump thought Barack Obama was an illegitimate president, he needs to look in the mirror this Friday afternoon.

Trump's infamous fixation on Obama's birth certificate was fueled by an alleged allegiance to the Constitution, which simply requires that all presidents be U.S. citizens and at least 35-years-old. Trump appealed to the authority of the Constitution to justify his asinine claim of presidential illegitimacy and stoke the worst instincts of his loyal base.  

Obama eventually added credibility to Trump's conspiracy theory and released his birth certificate, needlessly proving he was indeed preserving and protecting his end of the Constitution.

Meanwhile, as Trump takes the Oath of Office, he will be dragging the country into a Constitutional crisis a lot more serious than the origins of Obama.

As of Friday, Donald Trump will be an illegitimate president, but not because he was born in Kenya or has the attention span of a five-year-old. No, it's a lot worse. Since Trump still refuses to sell his businesses, he will be in clear violation of Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution, otherwise known as the Emoluments Clause, which states:

"No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State."

Look past the capital letters and mumbo jumbo punctuation for the essence of the Founders' statement: America is not for sale, and no asshole should be allowed to enrich himself at the expense of its sanctity and safety. Trump's business entanglements circle the globe, and it's not only what he owns buy who he owes. His debts to foreign governments are unknown and shall remain unknown until he releases his tax returns, documents which Trump claims no one cares about. If no one cares about the tax returns, then why not just release them? Why not stop the blackmail suspicion from growing?      

It would have been nice if the piles of stuffed file folders at Trump's recent press conference contained his tax returns and not pamphlets from Trump University. The grim irony here is that unlike Obama, who went above and beyond to release his document and placate the birthers, as long as Trump owns and owes places and people, he will need to release his tax returns should he ever want to be considered a legitimate president by millions of Americans.                                                                     

And so the inauguration of Unpresident Trump is no inauguration at all. Illegitimacy breeds illegitimacy, and if Trump is illegitimate, so is his inauguration.

While Congressman John Lewis and others are boycotting the inauguration because of a foreign power's influence on the election, proving the power of Russian propaganda is a far more difficult task than proving that yet another politician is profiting from his position. On the other hand, if Trump was a compromised candidate - which his tax returns might also show - the election does lose legitimacy, as voters were sold a bill of goods by a compromised, foreign agent.    

If our country has any dignity left, the demands to see Trump's tax returns must far surpass the demands to see Obama's birth certificate. For while both are linked to the Constitution, one has legs and legitimacy while the other festers in a puddle of bigotry and illegitimacy. It should surprise no one that accusations about Obama's legitimacy originated from an illegitimate president who as of Friday will preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution to the very least of his ability...  

Donald Trump's Conflicts with the Constitution

The looming inauguration of Donald J. Trump Dump has American stupidity scraping the abyss. Look no further for evidence of this than our future leader's command of the English language and his own attention span. Indeed, these deficits alone may be all people need to fear the next four years. 

But another reason to dread Dump has as much to do with ignorance as it does good old-fashioned greed and hubris. 

The U.S. Constitution, a document which binds the Republic together, is about to be violated in more ways than a pedophile in prison. Dump's presidency, in particular, is poised to wreak havoc on both the First Amendment and the Emoluments Clause. For those still trying to pronounce it, the Emoluments Clause shields federal officials from the financial influence of foreign powers, while the First Amendment shields citizens from the dictates of demagogues like Dump.

More on the First Amendment later. 

As of this blog post, Dump has shown zero signs of shedding his business entanglements at home and abroad. As a result, government officials from Saudi Arabia to Stormville will soon be inclined to fellate the most powerful man in the world, waving fees and expediting permits. Likewise, it will be in Dump's best interest to forge federal policies that boost his brand around the globe. Because of these conflicts, Dump's most precious commodity will be his businesses instead of the American people. It seems we've elected yet another politician who puts money before morals, power before principles.   

And what if World War III breaks out in Turkey, for instance? Will Dump send in ground troops to fight Russians, or to protect his skyscrapers? Unless this actually happens, we may never know for sure, since Dump dumped most members of the media after he was elected president.

         Trump has dumped around the world,
      and he's not even president yet.      

The closest Dump has come to a press conference in recent days was a brief and bizarre appearance at his Mar-a-Lago resort with boxing promoter and former murderer Don King. If and when Dump does give his next real press conference - one in which more than three questions are allowed - expect it to be filled with sentence fragments, superlatives, and abrupt non-sequiturs. Dump knows no other way, after all, and each press conference and speech he gives sounds a lot like the previous one played backwards.    
                               

Trump with Don "Only in the Idiocracy" King

Though we should not expect a 70-year-old man to suddenly discover lucidity, a free press is among the ways we ensure that the president is neither incompetent nor corrupt, something Dump has unfortunately yet to demonstrate to the majority of the country. His inane Tweets, if anything, have proven the opposite - stained by ignorance, greed, and hubris. Nevertheless, Dump's Tweets are preserved for posterity, and will make for a fine display in his presidential library, right next to an oil painting called Nuclear Winter is Coming. 

Hubris, as the Greeks remind us, is often the most destructive flaw of all. And if the Greeks know anything, Dump's unpresidential pride may soon wrap itself around the First Amendment, cracking its spine before consuming it.

For example, Dump prefers to tell us what to think rather than how to think, and filters his demands through his ego, otherwise known as his Twitter account:

"I will take my message directly to the American people and bypass the unethical press that wants to see their candidate elected."                                                           -Donald J. Trump    

Even if Dump's messages made sense, the leader of the free world cannot be held to a standard of 140 characters or less; never mind hurling barbs at Hollywood actors and Gold Star fathers, among the many others who pay his salary.    

Further, will Dump's rants on Twitter replace White House press briefings?

Or if he does keep his businesses, who will stop him from using all of that Commander-in-Chief ca$h to say, start his own disinformation news network?

Who will stop him from buying Twitter? Dump's critics should prepare to have their accounts suspended, at the very least, and bloggers should have their high-priced lawyers on standby.

A world which bullshit circles before the truth gets out of bed does not need someone like Dump as an arbiter of truth, or nuclear weapons, for that matter.

It will be up to the ignorant and informed to save this world before it swallows itself.     

Indomitable Drumpf

He attacked immigrants
         and won.

He attacked women
         and won.

He attacked the disabled 
         and won.

He attacked veterans
         and won.

He attacked the Truth
         and won.

Who's next?

Who's left?

Donald Trump Sics his Children on Public Education

Ivanka Trump with Eva "I'm not a Republican" Moskowitz

President Donald Trump's arrival on January 20 brings with it, among other toxins, an unprecedented threat to middle-class workers across the nation. For one, Trump supports a national right-to-work law, meant to strip unions of funding and give them less political clout than a Cub Scout. Even if an anti-worker bill somehow dies in a Republican-controlled congress, Trump's appointee to the Supreme Court will take care of those cases meant to crown corporatists and crush unions. They're coming for your pension and there's nothing you can do about it.    

Topping the target are public school teachers, whose union was an early and adamant endorser of Hillary Clinton. Like his Queens cousin Governor Andy Cuomo, Trump traces the ills of the inner cities to the infamous and elusive "education bureaucracy", otherwise known as the people who dedicate their lives to children (see public school teachers). While what Trump utters about education has about as much nuance as an orangutan's ass, Trump's trust fund children are primed for a pet project, and both Ivanka and Don Jr. have demonstrated a desire to drive our schools into a ditch.

Take Don Jr.'s recent ramblings at the Republican National Convention, for instance, where he compared schools to department stores that somehow only benefit adults:

Our schools used to be an elevator to the middle class. Now they are stalled on the ground floor. They're like Soviet-era department stores that are run for the benefit of the clerks and not the customers, for the teachers and the administrators and not the students.                                                                                                                    -Donald Trump Jr.

Tortured metaphors aside, everyone knows that students must take the stairs in order to truly benefit from public education, as we get back only what we put in.  

On the other hand, Don Jr.'s been riding his daddy's gold-plated elevators since birth, which he believes justifies the sanctimony he spews at schools, and can claim the moral high ground only because he lives in a taller building than the rest of us. 

When she's not entertaining the Japanese prime minister, Don Jr.'s little sister Ivanka is visiting with the likes of Eva Moskowitz, the New York City charter school profiteer who'd like to go national. Though Moskowitz refused to become Trump's Secretary of Education because she's a Democrat, after all, Trump's plans to privatize education evidently have nothing to do with party affiliation so Eva's all-in. Nevermind that Moskowitz's schools would make a segregationist blush and treat teachers and kids like cogs in the college and career machine. It seems Ivanka saw into Eva's soul during their first meeting at Trump Tower and vowed to wield all the power of her gold throne to undermine public schools.

And it's precisely the prospect of Donald Trump's unelected offspring pulling the strings on issues like education while simultaneously building his business which threatens the Republic.

How long, for instance, before the grand opening of Trump Charter School, or the grand re-opening of Trump University, fully-funded by the feds? It's probably sooner than we think.  If anything, Eva Moskowitz will make a lot of money in the next few years.

Those voters hopeful that Trump would "get rid of Common Core" and "restore local control" should realize that Donald Trump knows as much about education as, yes, an orangutan's ass. What Trump does know however is that there's money to be made, and public education seems a safer bet than his casinos. Trump has therefore summoned his kids, northeastern neoliberal asstards in search of something bigger than themselves.

The oligarchs have landed and it won't be pretty, for public education or anything else. It will be up to the enlightened to push truth in a post-truth world, to denounce and destroy the graft and greed. The whole world is waiting and watching. 

Weingarten Threatens Nurses for Backing Bernie

Rhonda "Randi" Weingarten 

It was only a matter of time before Wikileaks uprooted more evidence of Democrats eating their own. 

The latest is an email from Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), sent to Hillary Clinton hatchet man John Podesta. The email reveals Weingarten's antipathy toward the National Nurses Union (NNU) in the months following their endorsement of Bernie Sanders for president:

From:rweingar@aft.org To: john.podesta@gmail.com  Date: 2016-01-30 19:18 Subject: Re: D Taylor

On Saturday, January 30, 2016, Randi Weingarten, Office of the President <rweingar@aft.org<mailto:rweingar@aft.org>> wrote: He is psst-but I don't believe it moves him to action. Congrats on the NYT And we will go after NNU and there high and mighty sanctimonious conduct...  R  Sent from my iPhone

Though it's unclear exactly how the AFT slapped the NNU for there their support of Sanders--the implication of the email is clear--an attack on Hillary is an attack on the AFT. And Weingarten's royal "we" sadly implicates all educators in her threat, even the Donald Trump supporters. Members of each union will have to battle it out while Weingarten and Clinton take as many pantsuit selfies as possible. Bernie can go back to Vermont and eat some ice cream. 

The questions surrounding Wikileaks ask themselves, and could easily fill three more debates (save for Trump's sniffling, of course). For example, will we soon find out exactly how pissed Clinton was about the NNU's "sanctimonious" support of Sanders? Pissed enough, apparently, to make Weingarten "go after" nurses? While there's no evidence that either Podesta or Clinton compelled Weingarten's threat, a union leader's loyalty must always default to the workers and not elite politicians. Congratulations to the nurses and their sanctimony for Sanders; Weingarten should realize that we are stronger together only when dissident voices are embraced and not assailed.  

Ultimately, as Sanders said, nobody cares about Hillary's damn emails. Not with Trump in the race. Unless Wikileaks releases an email with a video that shows Clinton chopping off a puppy's head, the boorish and bumbling Trump makes Hillary seem infallible. Trump has been the perfect foil to accentuate and elevate the first woman into the White House, regardless of her serious flaws and failings.    

However, democracy demands the vetting of leaders both during and especially before their terms. As fellow blogger Norm Scott recently wrote, "Let's not throw away democracy in the rush to trash everything Trump and excuse everything Clinton." Indeed, there's almost as much to excuse about Clinton as there is to trash about Trump.    

Weingarten's Wikileaks email is a glimpse of a game most will never get a ticket for. Unfortunately, in this case, the game is most dangerous for union members, since it's using them as prey for a political career.

Will President Hillary continue playing this game in the White House?

Maybe someone should ask her.