"Rupert Murdoch is not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company"

Wonder if sympathy cards have gone out yet from Joel Klein, Peter Gorman, and the rest of Murdoch edu-whores.  From the Report by the House of Commons (their bold):

"On the basis of the facts and evidence before the Committee, we conclude that, if at all relevant times Rupert Murdoch did not take steps to become fully informed about phone-hacking, he turned a blind eye and exhibited wilful blindness to what was going on in his companies and publications. This culture, we consider, permeated from the top throughout the organization and speaks volumes about the lack of effective corporate governance at News Corporation and News International. We conclude, therefore, that Rupert Murdoch is not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company" (p. 70).

Aaron Krager begins Petitioning Progressive Sites to Stop Promoting Michelle Rhee

After I signed the petition, other petitions popped up for me to consider as a member of Change.Org.  One of them was from nation's leading teacher foe, the venomous Michelle Rhee, under the name of her corporate reform schooler astroturf group called Students First. — Dr. James Horn


Schools Matter was the first place I read about the vile and venomous Michelle Rhee and her plutocratic backers scamboozling unsuspecting activists into unwittingly signing petitions supporting reactionary causes dear to the furthest right-wing think-thanks in existence.

Rhee is a favorite among teabaggers and other disciples of Ayn Rand. Rhee collaborates with, and has even worked on the transition teams of the most reactionary right-wing Governors from Florida, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio. All of the ideas Rhee champions have come straight out of the most vile right wing think tanks including Hoover Institution, Hudson Institute, The Cato Institute, The American Enterprise Institute, The Heritage Foundation, The Heartland Institute, Manhattan Institute, and other John Birch Society derivatives.

I'd be curious as to why anyone outside of the deplorable reactionaries mentioned above would support Rhee in any fashion. After all, supporting her is tantamount to supporting the fringe right, whose end goal is not only the destruction of the public commons, but the privatization of our entire education system. So I found the idea that tricking people leaning left of center a little more than nefarious.

Yesterday I received an email from a person who decided to set up petitions on those very same sites, petitioning them to stop supporting Rhee and her astroturf union busting organization. I reproduce it here with the author's permission. Please follow the last two links in his email to sign the petitions against Rhee's deceptive tactics.

Hi,

As an avid user of petition sites such as Change.org and Care2.com I was shocked to see Michelle Rhee's Students First organization utilizing this platform. These sites promote progressive values and push for progressive change. Rhee's organization is anything but progressive. Students First advocates against collective bargaining, teacher unions and contrary to its name, does not put students first. 

I unknowingly signed a petition on Change.org's site from Students First... as a result of this deception I am asking both Change.org and Care2.com to stop promoting Rhee's pro-corporate agenda. Below are the links to my post announcing the actions as well as the links to the petitions themselves.

• Hold Progressive Change Agents Accountable
• Stop tricking progressives into signing Michelle Rhee’s union busting petitions (care2.com petition)
• Stop tricking progressives into signing Michelle Rhee’s union busting petitions (moveon.org petition)

Feel free to contact me at this email if you have any questions.

--
Peace
Aaron Krager

Bloomberg, The Little Oligarch Who Could

For those who suffer from the debilitating illusion that there is some scrap of public accountablility for mayors appointed dictators of urban school systems, Prince Bloomberg provides the proper and bitter antidote.  Years of fraudulent achievement data provided the edge to get Bloomberg re-elected with no repercussions.  So now the Prince's disdain for democratic process has become so complete that Meryl Tisch, or even Klein himself, didn't know that Bloomberg was anointing another Upper East Side pal with no background in education to run the New York City Public Schools, the nation's largest ostensibly-public school system.  Give that rich runt an "A" for audacious! 

The Times has a few juicy details, a couple of which are provided here:

. . . . Even Mr. Klein, who had spent eight years running the nation’s largest school system, did not know whom his successor would be until Monday. And not until 30 minutes before the news conference — or just a little before reporters were told, vaguely, of an important announcement — did Mr. Klein inform his leadership team, apologizing for the secrecy of a process over which he said, with resignation, he had no say.

Inexplicable as it may have seemed to outsiders, the secrecy around the search for someone to run the schools crystallized two tenets of the Bloomberg era: the mayor’s faith in the ability of business leaders to fix the ills of government, and his keen dislike of drawn-out public debates that might derail his agenda.

And, in what has become a Bloomberg hallmark, the mayor relied on someone he knew through business and social networks, someone squarely in his comfort zone of wealthy and socially prominent Upper East Side residents, someone with whom he has shared many friends and colleagues, dinners and drinks.. . . .


. . . .Exactly when Mr. Bloomberg began courting Ms. Black for the job is not clear. Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, said that when he arrived at a diner for breakfast with the mayor on Oct. 19, he ran into Ms. Black, who appeared to have just met with Mr. Bloomberg. The mayor introduced her to the union chief but made no mention of her having interest in or connection to the schools.

Mr. Bloomberg and Ms. Black, along with Mr. Klein and Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of News Corporation, are regular attendees of the New York investment bank Allen & Company’s annual conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, the exclusive gathering each July of the country’s publishing elite. 

Mr. Murdoch, who provided Mr. Klein with a job as a new executive vice president of News Corporation, was also apparently unaware of the mayor’s choice of Ms. Black until the day of the announcement, according to two people who spoke anonymously so as not to jeopardize access to Mr. Murdoch. These two people said Mr. Murdoch, who has grown more interested in education, had for months been discussing a possible job with Mr. Klein, over meals and at industry events. Mr. Klein said the two met on Sunday to hammer out the details.. . . .

Could we see a merger between Bloomberg and Murdoch, or would such a move simply be too obvious?