Suburban Guerrilla

How did this happen? Why was Arne Duncan serving on a panel with Michelle Rhee, who’s under investigation by his department?

Richard L. Hyde is one who believes that Mr. Duncan should keep his distance. Last year, Mr. Hyde directed 60 state agents in a nine-month investigation of cheating in the Atlanta public schools. They identified 178 teachers and principals in nearly half of the city’s schools who cheated — 82 of whom confessed. The case they built is so strong that criminal indictments are expected.

Mr. Hyde said that to get witnesses to cooperate in such investigations, they must believe that the political leadership is committed. “I’m shocked that the secretary of education would be fraternizing with someone who could potentially be the target of the investigation,” he said. “The appearance of a conflict of interest is troubling because it can cause the public to lose faith in the investigation.”

In Atlanta, the governor at the time, Sonny Perdue, provided extensive resources for the inquiry and then stayed away. “I purposely kept a very low profile and let investigators do their work,” Mr. Perdue said in an interview.

Gee. You don’t suppose the secretary of education is less than committed to nailing Rhee, do you?

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How did we sink to where less than 12 percent of workers are represented by unions? To where the corporate media allows perversely false phrases such as “right to work” to enter the language? More here.

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Phil Ochs has been dead for decades, but he has Barack Obama's number

How much longer are Robert Reich and other commentators going to pretend to be stunned by this spineless purveyor of false hope and empty promises? Right up till the election, no doubt. More here.

[I posted this one again because I didn't link it correctly the first time. Sorry about that.]

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We can’t really acknowledge anything that contradicts the corporate-driven conventional wisdom about privatizing schools, though:

One day before Chicago School Board members vote on whether to “turn around” a record number of flagging schools, a new study emerged Tuesday that dumped on the results of the city’s major turnaround vendor.

About 33 neighborhood schools with at least 95 percent low-income students not only outscored equally poor schools cleared out of all staff and “turned around’’ by the Academy for Urban School Leadership, but even beat the city test score average, the study by Designs for Change indicated.

And the neighborhood schools did so without the average $7 million per school in funds and facility improvements over five years given the typical AUSL school — and with far less teacher turnover, the study said.

Don Moore, executive director of Designs for Change, said CPS should try to duplicate the formula of success at its own high-scoring, high-poverty neighborhood schools before it pays AUSL to turn around more schools.

“If you look down this list of [33 high-poverty neighborhood schools], most people have never heard of them but the turnaround people get all the publicity and they have not done as well,’’ Moore said.

Often, the study found, neighborhood schools outperformed equally-poor AUSL turnaround schools located only a few miles away. For example, in the South Shore neighborhood, Powell came in No. 14, while AUSL’s Bradwell was No. 194.

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Barring some act of God, or social upheaval that results in something akin to revolution, the numbers indicate that the 99 percent are screwed. More here.

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Of course, if we admitted that the U.S. is refusing to stop speculators from driving up the cost of food, it might make people angry and we can’t have that:

Aid agency Save the Children has launched a report and survey examining what the world’s hungriest children are eating and the tough choices parents are making amid rising food prices.

“The issue with stunting is that if it happens in the first two years of your life, it’s very, very difficult to repair and reverse that. It tends to be irreparable in most of these situations. If we can focus efforts on that 1,000-day window from conception until the second birthday, we will have a transformational impact.”

- Brendan Cox, the director of policy and advocacy for Save the Children

The report entitled A life free from hunger says 300 children are dying of malnutrition each hour, totaling 2.6 million every year.

It also looks at the lost potential of 170 million children who are physically and mentally stunted and therefore set to earn 20 per cent less than their healthier counterparts.

A year of record food prices has forced millions of parents in the developing world to cut back on food for their children, says the agency.

The survey was conducted with families in India, Bangladesh, Peru, Pakistan and Nigeria.

One-in-six parents said their children were abandoning school to help out by working for food.

“The emphasis in the developed world has been on too much food, going by the debates on the European Union’s common agricultural policy. Not so long ago we were worrying about wine lakes, cereal mountains and milk lakes, and they were just an artefact of a very distorted system.”

- Richard Tiffin, the director of the Centre for Food Security at the University of Reading

Perhaps the most disturbing part of the report is that there are numerous viable solutions to this crisis that are not being exercised because of failed public policy and chronic under-investment.

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I get so sick of liars like Charles Murray, a man who’s made a 30 year career of shoveling shit. I don’t mean to suggest he works on a farm: that’s actual work. No, Murray writes “scholarly books” he refuses to submit for peer review, because his data and conclusions are made of excrement.

This time, he’s slandering Philadelphia’s working class. So he’s our piggie of the week.

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Even Mitt’s millions might not be able to help him in the Michigan primary, where voters know he would have let the big auto companies go bankrupt. More here.

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It’s about class. Will the New York Times ever understand the difference? Right-wing experts, as usual, on tap!

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Decent, informed people everywhere (not only in Occupy Wall Street) should be shouting this question: When are you suckers going to wake up? More here.

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100K in the streets.

More about the troika’s demands on Greece, which include gutting of labor law and collective bargaining agreements – in other words, Scott Walker comes to Athens:

http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2012/2/12/8913/17655

Via email:

Greece has essentially been invaded and conquered by foreign powers who are looting the country while everyone else suffers. Except this time, instead of Nazi paratroopers landing in Athens, the same result has been achieved using the markets, the EU and the IMF, and collaborationist elements of the Greek political system.

And they’re coming for the rest of us next.

Marshall Auerback: Default is better than this deal.

Anonymous has taken down the government and police websites.

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If you watched MSNBC this week, you might have thought the government’s foreclosure settlement with the big banks was a victory for ordinary citizens. Oh, really? More here.

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Reagan’s legacy is the lie that the 99 percent, through hard work and dog-eat-dog selfishness, can become the one percent. More here.

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David Dayen, who will be my guest on Virtually Speaking Susie this week, points out that no one knows the terms of the mortgage agreement because no actual agreement has been filed. Hmm.

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Hey, progressives, don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good! Amirite?

The $25 billion settlement with banks over foreclosure abuses may result in a wave of home seizures, inflicting short-term pain on delinquent U.S. borrowers while making a long-term housing recovery more likely.

Lenders slowed the pace of foreclosures as they negotiated with attorneys general in all 50 states for more than a year over allegations of faulty and fraudulent paperwork used to repossess homes. With yesterday’s agreement, banks are likely to resume property seizures.

“The best thing about the settlement, frankly, is that it will be done,” said Stan Humphries, chief economist for Seattle-based Zillow Inc. (Z), a provider of home-sales data. “The shadow of the settlement hung over the market for a year now.”

The backlog of foreclosures has trapped homeowners in properties they can no longer afford, depressed neighborhood prices by increasing the number of abandoned homes and led banks to tighten mortgage credit standards because of uncertainty about the cost of their potential obligations. Foreclosure starts fell 46 percent in December from October 2010, when the investigation into the so-called robo-signing of mortgage documentation began, according to Irvine, California-based RealtyTrac Inc.

The agreement will direct $17 billion to writing down debt to buffer about 1 million homeowners from foreclosure through mortgage forgiveness, forbearance or loan modification programs, according to Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan. About 750,000 borrowers may get direct payments of as much as $2,000 to compensate them for servicing errors.

Principal reductions and other loan modifications will be accessible to a small universe of borrowers because the deal doesn’t include loans owned or guaranteed by Fannie Mae (FNMA), Freddie Mac or Ginnie Mae, which pools and sells Federal Housing Administration loans. The five banks included in the settlement control or own 7.3 percent of all outstanding single-family mortgages, according to Inside Mortgage Finance.

“The primary beneficiaries of any principal reductions, loan modifications or refinancings are really a universe that excludes 92 percent of mortgage borrowers,” said Guy Cecala, publisher of the newsletter.

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