Update-The South Huntsville Civic (sic) Association has taken over the Huntsville City School System

Let's recap for those who haven't been following the continuing saga of the sad, sorry state of the Huntsville City School system. Public Education is under attack in Huntsville, Alabama led by well funded group known as the South Huntsville Civic Association.

The South Huntsville Civic Association hosted a town hall meeting for the recently appointed Huntsville City Schools Superintendent. I am sharing an email I received from someone who attended the meeting with their permission and updated links inserted for clarity.

I attended this Republican cheer leading event at Grissom last evening. It was sickening. I’ve never seen so many Republicans in my life. There were 7 elected Repugs on the stage. Could well have been the Republican convention. They used these “civic” meetings to win the election for Mo Brooks, and it is absolutely the bailiwick of school board member, president, head honcho, Jennie Robinson. I have asked the school attorney how they could use a public building for political meetings, and he said "anybody could use it if they paid for it".

There’s a subtle movement to privatize/corporatize school systems across the country. That’s why this incompetent board - not including Morrison & McCauley - even though they’ve gotten us into a 20 million hole of which they’re getting off scott free, insisted on a nation-wide search for a new superintendent (never mind Huntsville’s history of engineers & rocket scientists). They came up with a man from Colorado, Casey Wardynski who has never even been near school children. He was the chief financial officer in Aurora, Colorado for 10 months – which he left IN a $25M DEBT.

Wardynski is a retired army colonel said he got a Masters at Harvard, then got a “PhD” at Rand Institute (a PhD mill) where he was accepted into the Broad Superintendents’ Academy. Here’s where it gets interesting: Broad doesn’t want people with experience, loves army types , but wants to train them fresh to take over school systems and start from scratch, get rid of the old, bring in new. They trained not to like teachers, won’t accept tenure. He’s already bringing in from Colorado a finance chief, and looking at a friend of his from Mississippi as assistant superintendent. ( Robinson is from Pennsylvania and is of the same philosophy, bad mouthed AEA throughout her campaign, said AEA wanted to raid school finances to give themselves a raise. Big business, including Committee of 100, Home builders Association, Chamber of Commerce gave her over $60,000 for her campaign; her Democratic opponent had only $12,000 but because of my help and that of others, she won by only 101 votes out of 5600 cast. Democracy almost worked.)

He believes in constant testing, which means that little to no subjective teaching/thinking can occur. If a goof-off kid refuses to behave and learn, then the teacher is out the door. On 6-10-11, HTimes said that “Leadership Huntsville/Madison County, an executive training program released Sarah Savage to support Wardynesky during his first 90 days. They’re doing it for free.

Look for strange goings on in the Huntsville School System.

Stay tuned for some of those "strange goings on".

Redeye's Interesting Reads and Rants for Interesting Times

This is not the Effing Hope and Change I worked for, donated to and voted for. How many @#!% jobs did the Bush tax cut for the rich create? ZERO. ZILCH. NADA. So why the heck is Bush, I mean Obama extending them for two more years? Are we not supposed to notice the Bush tax cuts are extended for two years, but unemployment insurance is only extended for 13 months? Former President Bill Clinton tried to tell us the Obama story was a fairy tail..of course the media we have twisted it into him playing the @#$ race card taking the focus off of the substance of his remarks.

During a December taping with PBS's Charlie Rose, a frustrated Clinton called Obama "a roll of the dice," as aides tried to end the interview. Then, in New Hampshire, he argued angrily that the story of Obama's principled position on the Iraq War was a "fairy tale," a charge few reporters bought. Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina, the top-ranking African-American in Congress and officially neutral, found Clinton's tone insulting and said so publicly.

I don't feel sorry for President Obama, I feel sorry for the American people.

Only fools should feel sorry for Obama as he prepares for a Republican-led House and weakened Democratic control of the Senate. This is Obama’s “comfort zone,” where he can continue to woo Republicans to join his grand center-right coalition. The only people Obama has no tolerance for are liberalish Democrats, who will emerge relatively stronger in the new Congress thanks to the decimation of Obama’s Republican-Lite friends in conservative Democratic ranks. By freezing federal wages, Obama signals that he has no philosophical problems with the GOP’s general aims.

To say I am disappointed in President Obama for compromising with the gop gangsters is an understatement. Like his Harvard buddy Artur Davis, he has ripped his drawers with me.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama said over and over that he was running to "put an end to the Bush-McCain philosophy." Campaigning in Colorado just days before the election, Obama clearly stated his opposition to Bush-era economic policies and ridiculed the idea that "we should give more and more to millionaires and billionaires and hope that it trickles down on everybody else. It’s a philosophy that gives tax breaks to wealthy CEOs and to corporations that ship jobs overseas while hundreds of thousands of jobs are disappearing here at home."

After months of breathless speculation 7th district Congress Critter elect Terri Sewell names Nichole Francis Reynolds as her Chief of Staff. I haven't been able to find out much information about Ms. Reynolds but I do know she is a native of Loraine Ohio, she is the former COS for OH-13 Congress Critter Betty Sutton and is a member of the populist caucus.

2008 Representative Sutton supported the interests of the Business-Industry Political Action Committee 10 percent in 2008.

2008 Representative Sutton supported the interests of the The Alliance for Worker Freedom 0 percent in 2008.

2008 Representative Sutton supported the interests of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce 61 percent in 2008.

2008 Representative Sutton supported the interests of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce - Lifetime 58 percent during their legislative career up until 2008.

2007-2008 Based on a point system, with points assigned for actions in support of or in opposition to American Forest and Paper Association's position, Representative Sutton received a rating of 33 percent.

2007-2008 Representative Sutton supported the interests of the Associated General Contractors of America 71 percent in 2007-2008.

2007-2008 Representative Sutton supported the interests of the International Warehouse Logistics Association 10 percent in 2007-2008.

2007-2008 Representative Sutton supported the interests of the National Association of Manufacturers 20 percent in 2007-2008.

2007-2008 In 2007-2008 National Federation of Independent Business gave Representative Sutton a rating of 56 in its 110th (2007-2008) Pre-Election Congressional Report.

2007-2008 Based on a point system, with points assigned for actions in support of or in opposition to National Restaurant Association's position, Representative Sutton received a rating of 40.

2007-2008 Based on a point system, with points assigned for actions in support of or in opposition to National Retail Federation's position, Representative Sutton received a rating of 20 percent.

2007-2008 Representative Sutton supported the interests of the National Small Business Association 69 percent in 2007-2008.

2007-2008 Representative Sutton supported the interests of the National Stone, Sand & Gravel Association 70 percent in 2007-2008.

2007-2008 Representative Sutton supported the interests of the Plumbing-Heating-Cooling Contractors-National Association 70 percent in 2007-2008.

2007 Representative Sutton supported the interests of the Business-Industry Political Action Committee 0 percent in 2007.

2007 Representative Sutton supported the interests of the Consumer Alliance for Energy Security 0 percent in 2007.

2007 Representative Sutton supported the interests of the The Alliance for Worker Freedom 0 percent in 2007.

2007 Representative Sutton supported the interests of the The National Lumber and Building Material Dealers Association 0 percent in 2007.

2007 Representative Sutton supported the interests of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce 55 percent in 2007.

1999-2000 Representative Sutton supported the interests of the Ohio National Federation of Independent Business 25 percent in 1999-2000.

1995-1996 Representative Sutton supported the interests of the Ohio Chamber of Commerce 43 percent in 1995-1996.

This coupled with the fact Reynolds was the District Director for former DINO Congress Critter Harold Ford, Jr. doesn't bode well for the voters in the 7th district. And couldn't Sewell have found a qualified individual from her district/state as her COS? Terri Sewell said she wasn't going to be a rubber stamp for President Obama, well here is her chance. She can vote HELL to the NO on the extension of the Bush tax cuts since he doesn't expect rubber stamp fealty in exchange for his endorsement.

Redeye Reads and Rants over and out.... to be continued when I can type without cussing.

The winners vs the losers, the new American Way

That's right (pun intended), America the Beautiful is no longer the land of the free and the home of the brave, with liberty and justice for all, It's America the Corporation, land of the haves and the have nots, with liberty and justice for the fortunate few, the rest are on their own. Where the rich get richer and the rest get the shaft. God Bless the New American Way!

According the people in control of our state and national government, the federal government is trying to "redistribute the wealth" by taking from the winners and giving to the losers. Asking the winners to pay their fair share of taxes means the federal government is punishing the winners for being successful. According to the powerful privileged, the winners are winners through hard work, and the losers are losers because they are lazy and want the government to take care of them. The losers don't deserve to have access to quality affordable health care if they get sick because they are well...losers. The losers should just go somewhere and STFD and STFU. And to think, this comes from the family values, compassionate, christian, conservative crowd. There is more than a whiff of hypocrisy.

So, how and when did this happen? When did the United States of America morph into the United States of the Rich vs Middle Class/Poor? How did the billionaires convince the have nots they were their friend?

In the next month, despite all their loud rhetoric about the "deficit crisis," the Republicans want to add $700 billion to the national debt over the next 10 years by extending Bush's tax breaks for the top 2 percent. Families who earn $1 million a year or more would receive, on average, a tax break of $100,000 a year. The Republicans also want to eliminate or significantly reduce the estate tax, which has existed since 1916. Its elimination would add, over 10 years, about $1 trillion to our national debt and all of the benefits would go to the top 0.3 percent. Over 99.7 percent of American families would not gain a nickel. The Walton family of WalMart would receive an estimated tax break of more than $30 billion by repealing the estate tax.

Bob Herbet says all we are good at is bulldozing money to the very wealthy

We’ve become a hapless, can’t-do society, and it’s, frankly, embarrassing. Public figures talk endlessly about “transformative changes” in public education, but the years go by and we see no such thing. Politicians across the spectrum insist that they are all about job creation while the employment situation in the real world remains beyond pathetic.

The winners are obsessed with so called deficit spending/reduction, constitution reform and ethics reform because it's a convenient weapon of mass distraction from the real issues, facing real people

In a recent poll, only 4% of Americans identified deficit reduction as the most important issue to be addressed in Congress right now. By comparison, 56% of Americans identified jobs and the economy as the most important issues. These polling results are one reason that it is important, as we explained previously, for the Democrats to avoid getting caught up in the current obsession in the D.C. media and political circles with the deficit.

How is it the winners have any creditability anyway?

What is it, exactly, that the Republican Party stands for? They have a PR rep for being strong on the military, strong on fiscal discipline and strong on traditional values. The problem is that over the last couple of years we have seen that, as a group, they really don’t have any credibility on any of these issues.

The idea that a part who is calling for 700 billion in tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires, money that will have to be borrowed, while at the same time braying about the size of the deficit is not one that can truly be credible on the issue of financing the government. The tax breaks they are ready to defend, at the cost of raising the taxes on the middle class in the middle of the worst economic climate in more than two generations. Not a single Republican would answer what they would cut to pay for this windfall for the ultra wealthy prior to the election or even now.

When are the real republicans going to take their party back from the winners?

Boehner weeps for his dad. Cantor mumbles. Palin communes with bears. One of the least diverse, least intellectually-equipped group of freshmen Congressmen invades Washington soon--to lead, create, fix? Nah, to attack and tear up.

I want my Democracy back. You know, the one where there are no red states and blue states, but the United States of America, with liberty and justice for ALL not for some. The United States of America where black, brown, red children have equal opportunities. I want my American Way back. The American way of helping people who need help. The American Way where everybody has the inalienable right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness, regardless of race, gender, circumstance or political party.

Redeye's Week in Review

Get the rope! Light the torches! The Obama/Holder InJustice Department is cleaning up that there democratic culture of corruption and cronyism down here in Sweet Home Alabama with a couple of token republicans, independents and lobbyist thrown in for good measure. Yep, republicans are breathlessly salivating over the Bingo indictments and having multiple orgasms over the prospect of Milton McGregor and company spending lots of time at Club Fed. The spin is in.

Meanwhile under the radar...a Watchdog Groups Calls on Criminal Investigations and an IRS Audit of U.S. Chamber of Commerce over allegations of Foreign Money.
Hundreds Of Thousands Collected By Chamber To Influence Elections

Washington, DC--StopTheChamber.com, a group of watchdog organizations dedicated to corporate accountability, today renewed its calls for a criminal investigation and complete audit of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in light of yesterday’s stunning revelation that the Chamber has been actively soliciting money from foreign companies to influence American elections. In a report released yesterday, the non partisan Center for American Progress Action Fund found that the Chamber has been blatantly violating campaign finance laws not only by accepting money from foreign companies but also soliciting that money and then using it to try to influence U.S. Elections.

Race Baiting Radio Boy aka Dale Jackson (r. voter suppression with the state seal of approval) must really be desperate for ratings if he's going on location to Democratic Party Headquarters. I would rather run through hell with a pair of gasoline drawers than show up at Democratic Party Headquarters, or listen to his hate radio show myself, but y'all have fun. I hope radio boy shows up at the correct address. Oh wait, this might be another one of his *ahem* parody's.

Hallelujah! About 100 people from Alabama are traveling to Washington D.C. on October 30, 2010 to have their sanity restored! Please let them come back ready to fight the right wing noise machine, support the democratic nominee(s) and stop pandering to the right at the expense of the left. Amen.

This week, Elon James White provides what I believe to be the most persuasive and urgent articulation of the extreme importance of getting your Donkey out there and voting in this year’s election. H/T Jill Tubman Warning video contains the F word and it's not just for black people.

It’s not just the President who is under attack y’all…and yeah, it hasn’t all been perfect. Some things have happened that shouldn’t have happened. But overall it’s been pretty good and the Prez is working hard to pull America from the brink and get us back on track. The vision the Republicans and their Tea Party appears to involve some weird fetish for the America of the Founders….many of whom were active slave owners. If y’all can’t grasp the underlying significance of that fetish and have our President’s back, then you know what to do. Despite the fact that Barack Obama has not turned out to be a bacon-flavored magical unicorn avatar who can solve all America’s problems by appointing Professor Dumbledore to his cabinet — you betta vote (to crib a little RuPaul). Enthusiasm gap? Get over it. And vote.

Vote like your life depends on it.