Month: September 2013

Who died and made her Pope?

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

I was deeply disappointed with the media coverage of the Marriage Matters Arizona press conferences. There were several religious leaders of several religious faiths who spoke eloquently about the fundamental right of the freedom to marry at these press conferences. But somehow, their presence and their eloquent words did not make it into any press reports.

JesusFacepalm2No, the media villagers all turned to Cathi Herrod from the Center for Arizona Policy (CAP), which professes to support Christian values — if by "Christian" you mean supporting ignorance, fear and hatred for others. I am confident Jesus does not approve.

Who died and made her Pope? (BTW, Pope Francis is more enlightened; he has said he doesn't have any problem with the inclination to homosexuality
itself: "Who am I to judge them if they're seeking the Lord in good
faith?")

UPDATE: Pope decries focus on ‘small-minded’ rules: Pope Francis also says it’s “not necessary” to always condemn abortion, homosexuality and contraception.

Note to the media villagers: Cathi Herrod does not speak for the faith community. She is a lobbyist for a right-wing political organization that opposes women having the right to make their own health care decisions over their own bodies, opposes birth control, opposes sex education beyond abstinence only programs, opposes equal rights under the law for gays and lesbians, etc. Her far-right positions are not the majority view of most Americans, and not even the majority view of most people of faith.

Nor is Cathi Herrod's regressive political agenda shared by most religious faiths. So stop turning to her as if she is the official spokesperson for all religious faiths in the faith community, because she most definitely is not! Try picking up the phone and calling some actual religious leaders for a change.

The GOP is on Cruz-control to a government shutdown

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The TanMan, Weeper of the House John Boehner, just lost control of the GOP caucus he ostensibly leads in the House to an interloper from the Senate, Texas demagogue Sen. Ted "Calgary" Cruz, who has mesmerized the Tea Party faction of the GOP caucus with his hair-brained scheme to defund "ObamaCare" by a threat to shut down the government. Ted Cruz Is Making Life Miserable For House Republicans:

Screenshot-9For the last few weeks, House Speaker John Boehner has been trying to find a way to convince his caucus to vote for a bill that keeps the
government open after Sept. 30 without picking a fight over Obamacare. But a minority of his caucus has been insisting on defunding Obamacare, egged on by outside conservative groups and a handful of far-right Republican Senators, most importantly Ted Cruz (Texas).

On Wednesday, the TanMan gave in to demands from the radical Tea Party members of his GOP caucus, and agreed to proceed with the hair-brained scheme of "Calgary" Cruz to shut down the federal government. The tail is wagging the dog. Shutdown looms as House targets health-care law:

House Republican leaders announced Wednesday morning that they would
take a risky double-barreled attack on President Obama’s health-care
law, making it the cornerstone fight over government funding due to
expire Sept. 30 and the effort to lift the Treasury’s borrowing
authority.

Speaker John A. Boehner, flanked by his leadership
team, told reporters that the stopgap government funding bill that they
will advance Friday would yield to conservative demands of including a
rider to block funding for the law commonly known as Obamacare.

In addition, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor laid out his
party’s legislative grab bag of requests that will be attached to a bill
that would lift the debt ceiling, including a delay of the health law,
an overhaul of the tax code and approval of an energy pipeline running
from Canada to the gulf coast.

Obama immediately rejected that
strategy and, in a meeting with the nation’s top executives, said he
would oppose any effort to defund the health-care law or negotiate over
the debt limit.

BASIS Charters’ educational trade secrets

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by David Safier

BASIS redactsIt looks like one of those heavily redacted CIA documents with page after page of "I could tell you but then I'd have to kill you" information blacked out. But it's not a CIA document. It's the BASIS application to open a charter school in San Antonio, Texas. The document is 400 pages long, and 72 of those pages are completely blacked out. At the bottom of each page are the words, "Shaded material denotes Confidential/Proprietary Information and/or
Confidential/Financial Information." Apparently, a whole lot of what
BASIS does is confidential and proprietary.

The three pages of the BASIS reponse to the topic, "Discuss the educational innovations that will distinguish this school from other schools," are redacted. Other blacked-out topics: Measurable student goals (2 pages); Educational program (9 pages);
Extracurricular activities (1 page); Professional development
opportunities for teachers (2 pages); Startup budget and budget for the
first year of operations (8 pages).

When the application gets down to the business end of things, the BASIS folks really get serious about redacting information. The 4 pages where they were required to
"Describe the extent to which any private entity, including any
management company, other nonprofit group, other governmental agency
and/or any other educational organization will be involved in the
operation of the charter school" are blacked out. The 12 pages of bylaws of the
sponsoring entity, BTX Schools, Inc. (BTX is short for BASIS Texas), are
blacked out as well. So are 26 pages describing the "negotiated service
agreement(s) with any organization(s) and/or individual(s) that will
provide financial accounting, payroll, and/or tax accounting services
for the proposed charter school."

Not all charter school operators find it necessary to black out major portions of their Texas applications. Two other Arizona-based charters filed applications to open schools in San Antonio: Carpe Diem and Great Hearts. The only blacked-out parts of their applications are about half a dozen names and email addresses of people who aren't directly related to the schools. Unlike BASIS, their applications put their educational approaches, operations and finances into the public record.

A dark cloud in online K12 Inc.’s future?

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by David Safier K12 Inc., the for profit, publicly traded online charter school corporation and parent company of Arizona Virtual Academy, has seen its stock price rise over the past year as profits have increased. But one hedge fund thinks there are dark clouds on the horizon and is shorting the stock. "This is a … Read more

The Common Core by any other name . . .

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by David Safier All those crazy conservatives who hate the Common Core are driving Huppenthal nuts. But he has a solution. Change the name. [Huppenthal] will ask the State Board of Education to approve a name change, replacing Common Core with “Arizona College and Career Ready Standards.” He also wants the state to withdraw from … Read more