Out of Excuses

Well, Carl Paladino is the big winner in last night’s Buffalo School Board election. The two candidates he was backing won, and Barbara Nevergold was re-elected. I tend largely to stay out of Buffalo School issues because (a) I’m not invested in the district in any meaningful way; and (b) my own kids’ school district has its own problems relating to tea party politics, so I concentrate on that.

So, with a newfound, slim anti-Pamela Brown majority on the board, Carl Paladino is all out of excuses. By this time next year, one would expect there to be some measurable, positive changes to the district. They’ll fire Brown, bring in someone else, and own whatever happens.

The question is: what’s going to happen? When WBEN’s morning program interviewed Paladino the other day, he made much of “neighborhood schools”, the evils of busing, and expanding charters. Forty years after the federal court imposed busing on Buffalo, the city and schools remain as segregated as ever. Given Paladino’s clumsy and intolerant relationships with people who don’t resemble him, it’ll be interesting to see how his ideas shake out.

I suspect that one of Paladino’s big ideas will be de facto privatization of the public schools. When you examine his motivation for all of this – he says it’s because he cares, but this seems like an incomplete rationale, at best – it could have to do with the resulting demand that charter and new voucher-supported private schools will have for real estate.

In Clarence, we’ve got a school board candidate running who is billing himself to his friends at the Chapel at Crosspoint as the “Christian values” candidate. Richard Worling was feted Saturday morning by the local tea party anti-tax group and their mobile home park owner-benefactor. His kids go to a Christian academy in Amherst, so although he’s financially invested in the schools, he has no investment in the schools’ life, academics, faculty, or administration. The problem is that, if he’s elected, then the board will have three members who were backed by the anti-tax forces, and God help the district. These are the same people who concern-trolled the ELA curriculum just a few short weeks ago.

So, nowhere is immune from right-wing meddling and experimentation with public education. In Buffalo, failure is linked directly to poverty. In Clarence, success is under attack in the name of God and taxes.

We live in a society now where pulling money from schools is in vogue because public education is under assault from the right. It’s why congressional Republicans want to voucherize Medicare, eliminate Medicaid, privatize Social Security, and otherwise roll back the social safety net. I don’t know why people are buying into that, but it threatens to reduce the country to second-world status, if we aren’t there already. We’ll spend wildly on defense, but we reject investment in the next generation of Americans.

The time has come for Paladino to exchange divisive outraged demagoguery for leadership.

It’s a brave new world out there.

68 comments

  • “I dont know why people are buying into that”…..because they are stupid…….plain & simple…..

    • I disagree. I think people are starting to understand that you get more of whatever you incentivize.

      • The majority of all elections in the US are decided by “independents”….defined as people who dont have a clue who or what they are voting for….and that is a FACT!!

        • Colleges are nothing but socialist re-education camps for your kids and your paying for it. Wake up!

          • Well, golly gee…how do you explain all the Friedmanites running around in the economics part of the campus? Or does that not enter into your worldview?

          • More John Maynard Keynes.

          • And every one of those people you mentioned weren’t who you say they are.

            Just one more thing: Since we’re going to play the “How Many Posts Have You Made” game, how about we mention the 3K you’ve’ made, O No? How many aliases you created to get around getting banned at the News’ comment forums? As you might have guessed, I don’t deal with trolls very well. ESPECIALLY ones who go all over the map with your comments, even AAA couldn’t get me back on track.

  • I think you have it backwards. Pamela Brown is out of excuses.

    • Then you’ll agree that Paladino and his majority should have exactly the same time to turn everything around that Ms. Brown has enjoyed.

      • The deplorable state of public education in Buffalo, and most cities, is a systemic and cultural problem exacerbated by government policies and programs. While Brown has proven to be incompetent, the solution is beyond the scope of any one person or persons on the school board.

        • Lamont Cranston

          So Brown sucks, but nobody else deserves any blame even if they don’t make anything better. What a surprise.

          • The voters are to blame.

          • As in the Democrat voters. That’s why Buffalo, WNY and NY state is a laughing stock. Killary Clinton the Butcher of Benghazi promised 5 million new jobs when she was a NY state senator. We lost jobs and population. As secretary of state Killary did nothing but get a free world tour. America is a laughing stock and more people hate us now than ever before. So much for Obama apologizing to the entire world. How’s that Arab Spring going and that hope an change?

          • Check his posting history.

            He’s serious.

          • “Killary Clinton the Butcher of Benghazi promised 5 million new jobs when she was a NY state senator.”

            It has to be some sort of elaborate performance art.

          • Buffalo is a chocolate city.

          • Lamont Cranston

            Your mother is a methwhore.

        • Good post Mike. This stupid liberal city filled with white guilt morons deserves everything it gets. Socialized public schools are failures and so is the VA hospital system that has killed over 40 vets waiting for an appointment. Wait till the Obamacare numbers come out. Liberals and Obama can’t even tell us how many people have paid for Obamacare. Why do you suppose that is? Waiting for the books to get cooked on that number. I laugh every time I see the unemployment numbers come out. More people are out of work now since 1978. FACT!

    • The Church of Bill Hicks, LDS.

      My God, that is inane. Pamela Brown is out of excuses? Because with Paladino’s board in place, she’ll have nothing holding her back? Paladino has just given her the perfect excuse: he’s working against her and brought in reinforcements to do so. She now has an out for everything she’s done wrong.

      • Paladino did not bring in reinforcements, they were chosen by the people.

        • The Church of Bill Hicks, LDS.

          Uh, no, nice try, though. Both were endorsed by Paladino, and Larry Quinn was asked specifically to run by Carl, so I feel quite confident calling them reinforcements. Speaking of running, when are you going to explain how Brown is out of excuses now that they’ve been elected? Oh, that’s right, it’s something something nanny state, right?

      • No, she’s going to get sh*t canned. Great job Carl.

  • How we can we not be at least a little leery of the Partnership & co. effecting a takeover of the city’s schools?

    The one fair point of interest they can claim to have: They want a better-educated work force for the businesses that their friends own, the industries that the Partnership wants to attract. That seems like a defensible motive. But, for sure, their motives are not pure.

    p.s. The USA (USA! USA!) may already be in a second-world status? C’mon.

  • The Church of Bill Hicks, LDS.

    “When WBEN’s morning program interviewed Paladino the other day, he made much of “neighborhood schools”, the evils of busing, and expanding charters.” For me, this small statement is so indicative of the fundamental flaws of Carl Paladino and his lackeys. So, expanding charter schools will decrease segregation? Nope, not according to the current research:

    http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2014/02/01/kappan_rotberg.html

    Will charter schools insure that students get to stay in their own neighborhoods? Nope, not as long as they continue to be criteria-based

    http://www2.ed.gov/policy/elsec/guid/cspguidance03.pdf

    (In case you were wondering, while some area charter schools claim to be non-criteria based, they use criteria as how they can dump low performing students)

    Will charter schools line Carl’s pockets? Yep:

    http://www.buffalonews.com/city-region/buffalo-public-schools/carl-paladino-the-street-fighter-20140201

    Double Yep:

    http://www.buffalonews.com/feed/paladino-buys-former-holy-angels-academy-20130824

    • Teachers don’t care about the kids anymore. They care about tenure, their pay and benefits. Let’s have charter schools and let neighborhood kids got to the schools in their own neighborhoods and stop bringing their trash to our neighborhoods to destroy everything.

      • News flash: Charter schools are failing just as much. Of course, you’ll never hear about their failures.

        • Post your facts with your sources..Liberals have been known to post some BS without and basis in the truth.

          • As soon as you start walking back all your ad-hominem arguments, “Democrat” slurs, etc.

            I’m not someone you can push around.

          • Well, since you can’t post your source for your comment than I’m calling you a liberal liar. You’ve been pushed. lol Now go hug a tree and whine about global warming which is now climate change so that anything that happens, cold, heat, rain, snow and drought are caused by man-made climate change. There was a fool in the Buffalo News comments section saying construction cranes in the south near the oceans aren’t there because of climate change. Hey clueless liberal, it’s the poor economy. Less people in the work force. Lowest since 1978. Google it up and see. MSNBC sure isn’t going to tell you that.

          • Uh…if you haven’t guessed, there’s a lot more people than there were in 1978. So, by your own standards, you’re a liar as well-by omission. Not only that, you’re also a troll. And not a very good one at that. Sooner or later, you’re going to find yourself booted off of here as well….and you’ll proudly make your home at Twitchy, among many, many lovely sights.

          • I’m sure a whiner like you has already whined to Artvoice. You liberals don’t give a damn about the first amendment. Shove this in your liberal pie hole.

            http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-01-10/people-not-labor-force-soar-record-918-million-participation-rate-plunges-1978-level

            Curious why despite the huge miss in payrolls the unemployment rate tumbled from 7.0% to 6.7%? The reason is because in December the civilian labor force did what it usually does in the New Normal: it dropped from 155.3 million to 154.9 million, which means the labor participation rate just dropped to a fresh 35 year low, hitting levels not seen since 1978, at 62.8% down from 63.0%.

          • I haven’t “already whined to Artvoice” yet.

            And the First Amendment only deals with the GOVERNMENT restricting one’s speech. Not a website’s commenting system; presumably, you read the TOS before signing up for an account, right?

          • And the piece de resistance: Americans not in the labor force exploded higher by 535,000 to a new all time high 91.8 million.

          • Even lil Kim punks out our dog eating, Koran reading, pot smoking, cocaine snorting feckless fool. North Korea’s state news agency has fired off racist insults against President Barack Obama that U.S. officials condemn as “disgusting.”

            North Korea ups rhetoric after Obama visits South Associated Press

            Obama: US, South Korea stand together on NKorea Associated Press

            South Korea, U.S. pledge firm response to North Korea Reuters

            Obama reminds North Korea of U.S. ‘military might’ Reuters

            Obama visit to South Korea tinged by mourningAssociated Press

            North Korea is notorious for inflammatory, warlike rhetoric against its rivals South Korea and the U.S. but had rarely used racial slurs in its verbal attacks. Pyongyang’s tone has grown angrier in recent weeks as it threatens to conduct a fourth nuclear test.

            In a lengthy May 2 dispatch released only in Korean, Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency published comments from a factory worker who said Obama has the “shape of a monkey” and made many other crude insults.

            “It would be better for him to live with other monkeys at a wild animal park in Africa … and licking bread crumbs thrown by onlookers,” worker Kang Hyok at Chollima Steel Complex was quoted as saying.

            Maybe John Kerry and gave them a RESET button like Hillary gave Russia?

          • You’re also full of BS and can’t post the prof of the trash you post. We all know that liberal lie.

          • I’m not here to do your homework for you.

          • You wouldn’t believe how many different aliases he’s had on the BN site. Strangely enough, he keeps getting the boot over there too.

            A very small and insignificant man who is just begging to be heard and trying so hard to be relevant. Failing miserably at both.

        • Not in the Buffalo News. And come to think of it Artvoice doesn’t seem interested in taking on the charter lobbyists these days either.

      • You sound like Benjamin Button, growing more immature with every post.

    • Paladino was right and the school superintendent and the two blacks who she gave jobs were NOT qualified for the job. Now they’re suing. Williams was a failure out of Ohio. You’d think they’d learn but instead they just got another unqualified black person for the job. Will this white guilt Democrat city ever learn?

  • Whenever I get too optimistic about the city’s turn around I remind myself the guy who likes horse porn and racist memes is running the biggest school district in the area.

  • “It’s why congressional Republicans want to voucherize Medicare, eliminate Medicaid, privatize Social Security, and otherwise roll back the social safety net. I don’t know why people are buying into that…”
    Pretty simple really. Schools, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security all have a commonality. They all represent piles of money that the money-grubbers as yet have inadequate access to make that money theirs. Any time there is a pile of money there are money-grubbers figuring out how to get at it.
    Simple as that.

    • Exactly Mr Macallum!!

      • Thanks Unc….but don’t forget that second (capitol) C in MacCallum.
        The Clan can get kinda touchy about that stuff.

        • Snoopy called. He wants his hat back. This guy and Rick have over 5,000 posts. Talk about OCD. Got a job? A a life? Any family or friends? All I see from the Buffalo News gang on idiots is the same old liberal garbage.

          • Actually young fella I worked my career in NYS Dept. Of Corrections. I’m not saying for sure but guessing you would not have lasted a full career there. Nobody inside the walls carries a gun and you kinda look like meat on the table without one to pose with.
            And look who’s talking. I see you have 2963 posts yourself. Pretty impressive for a guy still supposedly working for a living.
            If you actually read the comments you would see hoards of T-Party misfits and, like yourself, most are afraid to use their real names.
            As for my ski hat I can tell you were I got it if your a good little boy.

          • Ten years in the military where I was Firecontorman, a Duty Master at arms aka ships cop and a brig chaser. I’m sick and tired of the same old, moldy liberal BS. You, Rick and the rest of the liberal crew ruin the comments section in the news. Does making all those comments in one day really accomplish anything? Try using your precious time for volunteer work to help the needy. Talk is cheap.

          • Well, I don’t know about that. More than a few people on your side of the ledger get their letters published in the News on a regular basis, so I don’t see where all the whining comes from.

          • The ratio is 10:1 liberal vs. conservative. The news is a liberal rag.

          • Thanks for your service. Volunteer? Let’s see. I have been a 4H Livestock Club leader, coached youth baseball and soccer, town youth recreation committee, Orleans County Fisheries Advisory board, school board, 25 years as a State Employees Federated Appeal volunteer, current zoning board among many others.
            As to the liberal thing that is true…in some instances. On other instances blogging here I find I am labeled as some kind of ultra conservative. It all depends on the issue.
            Talk is cheap or so they say. It is also said that the pen is mightier than the sword. Civil discourse is a major component of a functioning democracy. You may want to rethink your attitude towards those you may disagree with. Disagreement is universal. Intolerance, hate and close-mindedness are detrimental.
            Being “sick of” other’s opinions is an attitude, not an argument.

          • Your buddy Rick now have 4,567 posts and counting. Talk about OCD. He’s AWOL as a parent and husband in his West Seneca shack. One more thing tingle up his leg boy Sissy Mathews (MSNBC) who an off with the women and went to the Peace Corps didn’t serve his country during Vietnam. Matthews wants to risk our lives to save some African girls. Why doesn’t Nigeria or any country is Africa do the job. I thought we weren’t the worlds policeman? Who did this? African black Muslims who also mutilate a females sex organs. It’s been said that Hillary Clinton didn’t want to call this group a terrorist organization. Just WTF did Hillary Clinton do as secretary of state besides make our country look like a laughing stock? Hillary stunk as a NY state senator promising 5 million new jobs. We lost jobs and population of Hillary Clinton’s watch.

          • Maybe you can put a propeller on your beanie and generate electricity to stop global warming. 🙂

            Tell atheist Ricky boy that it was Irish Archbishop James Ussher who said the world is 6,000 years old and not all Christina. The man is a moron and liar. Ussher’s work is sometimes associated with Young Earth Creationism, which holds that the universe was created, not billions of years ago, but thousands. But while calculating the date of the Creation is today considered a controversial activity, in Ussher’s time such a calculation was still regarded as an important task, one previously attempted by many Post-Reformation scholars, such as Joseph Justus Scaliger and physicist Isaac Newton.

            Ussher’s chronology represented a considerable feat of scholarship: it demanded great depth of learning in what was then known of ancient history, including the rise of the Persians, Greeks and Romans, as well as expertise in the Bible, biblical languages, astronomy, ancient calendars and chronology. Ussher’s account of historical events for which he had multiple sources other than the Bible is usually in close agreement with modern accounts – for example, he placed the death of Alexander in 323 BC and that of Julius Caesar in 44 BC.

            But Ussher’s last extra-biblical co-ordinate was the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar, and beyond this point he had to rely on other considerations. Faced with inconsistent texts of the Torah, each with a different number of years between Flood and Creation, Ussher chose the Masoretic version. Partly his reasons were sound scholarly ones [citation needed]— the Masoretic text claims an unbroken history of careful transcription stretching back centuries — but his choice was confirmed for him, because it placed Creation exactly four thousand years before 4 BC, the generally accepted date for the birth of Christ; moreover, he calculated, Solomon’s temple was completed in the year 3000 from creation, so that there were exactly 1000 years from the temple to Christ, who was the fulfillment of the Temple.

          • …and apparently, long before Hillary, we somewhere lost any semblance of grammar, punctuation, sentence structure and proper use of the paragraph…in some regions anyway.
            Never heard of this Mathews character but it seems he did serve his country…in the Peace Corps! I believe that worthy organization was started by a great president, John Kennedy. I thank him for his service as I thanked you for yours.

          • You know liberals have no argument when they pull the old grammar and spelling BS. No on here is being paid or graded for perfect punctuation or grammar. So you never heard of MSNBC’s Chris Matthews? Tingle running up his leg boy when Obama gives a speech.. Chris Matthews ran off to the Peace Corps with the women instead of fighting for his country in Vietnam.

            Why was JFK great? For getting his PT boat sunk by a slower Japanese ship, by lying about giving air support to the Bay of Pigs fighters, for his huge drug use, his rampant adultry, the putting up the Berlin wall during his presidency, for signing a do not invade Cuba paper and removing our Hercules missiles in Turkey?

            Your buddy Ricky B. is up to 4,672 posts. Obviously the guy has no life at 35 Manhassett St. West Seneca, NY and at 25 Manhassett? Go to Zillow.com and look at his dump. Instead of talking his stupid, same old hate filled trash in the Buffalo News comments section the 58 year old fat man should paint his house and clean up his yard.

            Put a propeller on your doofy looking beanie and use the wind power for your computer to post your “man-made”global warming nonsense. For about 4.5 billion years the Earth has been warming and cooling. The magnetic poles even reverse time to time. All this global warming garbage is a ploy for another tax, a carbon tax that will hurt companies and then hurt us by rising costs in the products they produce. Do you think that anything we do here in the states will make a hill of beans when China build a new coal plant for electricity every week? Yes, we should do our best to keep our country clean. I do more things to clean up and recycle than most people. I know what I do won’t matter to what China, India and Brazil will do to pollute this planet. Hopefully new technologies will be created to help us with our never ending power needs. We don’t need to hear the stupid argument that we’re just 5% of the population but create 25% of the carbon footprint. I wonder if you liberals want people to die or have our economy turn into a 3rd world economy. BTW my cousin’s husband Mike C. was a CO and so is my former Marine buddy Joe T. who is an Erie County sheriff and CO. I laugh at the liberal excuse that the jails are overflowing because of casual drug users. That’s just total BS. Your buddy Sarah at the Buffalo News stinks as a moderator. A firing might be in the making. The crud you liberals post in the news day after day is revolting and disgusting. Rick is like David Letterman stuck on attacking conservatives every day in the news and M-F on CBS TV. 5 1/2 year old Bush jokes aren’t funny. They’re as old and moldy as .the adultering Letterman who was having sex with his interns and staff and who also didn’t serve in Vietnam. Letterman ran off to Ball state and Leno ran off to Emerson college even though he was a moron. A guy who was living out in the streets from his car getting arrested several times..

          • Flagged. Have fun getting banned from here, too! You just revealed personally identifiable information in a public forum, and that is against Disqus’ TOS-which you agreed to when you created an account with them. I DARE you to try these tactics at Raw Story. Trust me: You won’t last long there. The mods are a hell of a lot tougher there than at other sites.

          • Come on one more comment RH(Snoopy) and you make 2,000 even. Your stupid post blaming ‘fracking’ for potholes and bad roads show what an idiot you really are. Read the Sunday’s news and see that we have very little fracking while PA. is making a killing. We’re losing jobs while PA. is getting $70,000 a year jobs. Liberals are true fools. Yeah all of our Earthquakes are caused by fracking too. lol Only an ignorant liberal would post just laughable trash. For an old man you sure are stupid.

          • Sounds like you need a vacation. A long one, permanent perhaps. So much anger and nowhere to vent it except to strangers. No one will even touch your FaceBook posts with a ten foot pole. A miserable existence to be certain. Kinda tragic that you rant & rave about others not having lives, not being productive, et. al, but for a guy who has repeatedly been kicked from the BN site under *many* different aliases, you sure do seem like a bit of a hypocrite. Your pathetic posts have become little more than white noise, easy to shut out.

            You keep lamenting your failing health and you seem to have the realization that the ticker could stop any day now. Why carry so much anger when your last days could be right around the corner?

          • Actually, revealing personal information about posters is why you get banned. And I think that’s against Disqus’ TOS-which I presume you read. Look under Section VII of the Service Rules. IMO, you’ve violated it at least twice.

          • The funny part is that you have more posts THAN ANYBODY if you add up all the posts under your other lameass usernames.

    • Same old song and dance.

      • Ooga Booga and ArgleBargle

      • Did you read what the so-called president said about Putin?

        “I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straight forward and trustworthy and we had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul. He’s a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country and I appreciate very much the frank dialogue and that’s the beginning of a very constructive relationship,”

        Pathetic, isn’t it?

  • By this time next year, one would expect there to be some measurable, positive changes to the district.

    It depends on what’s considered measurable.

    For instance, if anybody is expecting measurable improvements in exam scores within one year, that might be unrealistic. Observable might be a better descriptor than measurable.

    Paladino already in one year as one vote on the board has provided leadership helping to make happen observably positive impacts in – for examples off the top of my head – his pushes for increased public transparency, and to remove senior administrators who don’t meet NY state qualifications for jobs to which Pamela Brown hired them, and rejecting of her push to add an extra public relations spokesperson at a six-figure salary.

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