Edited~"Keeping Them Honest"

CNN  Talking TeeVee Pundit Head Anderson Cooper has segment on AC-360 entitled "Keeping Them Honest" .  "Keeping Them Honest" exposes possible issues of government corruption, failed promises, and other anomalies from various sectors.  I'm no Anderson Cooper, but stay with me as I attempt to keep some people honest with some fact checking, starting with Huntsville City Schools Board of Education member, and city council candidate,   Dr. Jeannie Robinson.

Members of the J.O. Johnson Alumni Association were  guest on WEUP Talk with host David Person yesterday (5/6/2014).  Person begin the segment by describing the lengthy discussion he had with HCS BOE member Dr. Jeannie Robinson following  the Prayer Vigil conducted by the GHIMF (Greater Huntsville Interdenominational Ministerial Fellowship), to pray for peace and equity in Huntsville's Schools.  Person revealed Robinson said she thought the prayer vigil was divisive, and, she also questioned why there were no complaints from the black community about equity and low test scores when  Dr.  Ann Roy Moore was the Superintendent.

I'm going to begin by debunking the allegation there were no complaints from the black community about equity and low test scores when Dr. Ann Roy Moore was the superintendent.   First of all, Dr. Moore did not propose a sweeping zoning proposal that would re-segregate the public school system.  Secondly, Dr. Robinson was one of Dr. Moores' biggest fans before she became a detractor. Robinson was part of the 4-1 majority that voted to hire Dr. Moore.  Dr. James I Dawson, who championed justice and equality, was the lone vote against hiring Moore, and frequently challenged her recommendations.  Robinson also served on the board during Moore's entire tenure, giving her near perfect evaluations until she decided to cut the puppet strings.

WAFF 48 News looked at Dr. Moore's past three evaluations, which show what the board of education believe Dr. Moore is doing right and what she is doing wrong in her job.

She was evaluated on seven tasks, ranging from her performance as an education leader, to overseeing the districts thousand of employees.

Dr. Moore was given high marks from four of the five board members.

The only low scores came from Dr. Jeannie Robinson, especially when it came to Moore's involvement in community planning and problem solving.

When the scores were added and averaged, though, the Superintendent passed the test.

The average of the seven areas reviewed combined were 4.4 out of 5 in 2007.

Now let's move on to the allegation the prayer vigil was "divisive".   Talking a position can be divisive, especially when everyone doesn't agree. The position taken by the GHIMF is based on justice and equality for ALL Huntsvillians, black and white.  People who have no concept of what justice is, and others who do, but take a different position for political reasons ,would most certainly find the prayer vigil "divisive".

 Thank you Dr. Robinson for speaking to the obvious.


 

All spin all the time, unfair and unbalanced, distorting what we decide, this is the media we have, instead of the media we wish we had

I sure do miss the good old days when the mainstream media used the public airways to inform the public with just the facts so we could make informed decisions.  Of course that was back in the day when the media was a voice for the people and not a corporation answerable to shareholders. Now it's all about controlling the message and  the outcome.  It's also why so many people  vote against their economic self interest, but I digress.

Huntsville School Board President David Blair's   media  enabled attempt to discredit Commissioner Bob Harrison crashed and burned when it was revealed on WEUP Talk with David Person the 2006  letter to former Superintendent Ann Roy Moore wasn't about demanding to close J.O.Johnson High School in exchange for his vote,  but an attempt  to leverage his position  as the swing vote for a proposed sales tax increase.  

Harrison said the Blair's accusations take the 2006 dialogue with Moore out of context. The discussion with the former superintendent was about bringing an International Baccalaureate school to North Huntsville and combining two high schools, he said, not closing Johnson.
The issue now is about unitary status and getting away from racially segregated schools, which is totally separate from the discussion about helping North Huntsville eight years ago, he said.
The statements by Blair, Harrison added, are coming from a political candidate seeking attention. Blair is seeking the Republican nomination for the District 7 state senate seat held by Sen. Paul Sanford, R-Huntsville.
"He's trying to get all the attention he can get at this time. So he's engaging in the process of prevarication," he said.

Next up this headline/post:   Huntsville City Councilman Vows to stop "calling out" Supertindent,School Board,  accompanied by an interview with Councilman Richard Showers by Venton Blandin.  You can read/ watch/listen to the interview for yourself,  but I didn't hear Showers vow to stop "calling out" the super and the school board. I heard a lot of carefully edited sound bites and I read a lot of  editorializing.

Huntsville City Councilman Richard Showers is ready to drop his public fight against the Huntsville City School Board and its Superintendent.
Whatever you call it, bickering, grandstanding or advocacy, started earlier this month. Most black elected officials in Madison County were upset Huntsville school leaders were leaving out their voice on big decisions. Councilman Showers is now taking a step back.
Commissioner Harrison came out swinging. Councilman Showers was his back up.

Ventin Blandin doesn't get it.  We the people aren't stupid. We know better than to believe something just because it's on TeeVee.  As they say on one my favorite TeeVee Shows, let's go inside the headlines.

Showers vowed not to call out the superintendent or any school board member going forward. He says he’s now happy to give the money to the schools
“I am not going to deal with that anymore,” added Councilman Shower. WHNT News 19 asked, “But why say it?” Councilman Showers replied, “I said it because I wanted to get the attention.”
What did those words do?
“Before then, the superintendent would not meet with us. After that, I got a call and email asking, will you meet,” added Councilman Showers.

Psst Ventin! I didn't hear Showers say any of that and the meeting with the elected officials isn't going to happen because Wardynski doesn't want the meeting to be a media event, and,  he wants to make BOE member Laurie McCaulley the token, I mean, centerpiece.  You might want to call Commissioner Bob Harrison or WEUP Talk's David Person and get the real dealio.  According to Harrison, it doesn't look like that meeting is going to happen.

Speaking of WEUP Talk be sure and tune in to 1190 AM and 1700 AM, Monday, March 31, 2014 at 5:00 PM to hear long time Alabama media group education reporter/ state enterprise reporter Challen Stephens weighs in on the state of the Huntsville City Schools.

You see the problem with Huntsville City Schools is they don't realize there is no right (pun intended) way to do the wrong thing. If they weren't hell bent on maintaining a separate and unequal school system they wouldn't be in this mess. It's expensive to operate a dual educational system.

It's the media. They think we are stupid.

 ". . . whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that, whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them right." (as cited in Padover, 1939, p. 88)

The New Democratic Majority or, The New "Democratic" Party of Artur Davis? I Report. You Decide.

 

A Noteworthy Endorsement for Artur Davis

One of the things I like about cold, rainy weekends is I have the perfect excuse not to leave the house and I can sit at my computer all day without being distracted by my real life.  I had the perfect excuse for not working in the yard, cleaning the patio/ furniture and running errands this past weekend.  I put on a crock pot of Turkey and White Bean Chili and got the reading and begin to notice a disturbing pattern...The New Democratic Majority are most of the same people who supported Artur Davis for governor in 2010, and, they are saying some of the exact same things about Dr. Joe Reed and the ADC now that they said then.

Peggy Wallace Kennedy says she will support Artur Davis for governor according to David Persons' report for the Huntsville Times (emphasis mine):

U.S. Rep. Artur Davis, D-Birmingham, may have gotten his first celebrity endorsement for the gubernatorial campaign. Peggy Wallace Kennedy expressed unqualified support for him when I interviewed her on WEUP-AM earlier this week.

"I certainly think he has a good shot and I certainly will support him," Kennedy said. "Mark (her husband) and I both will. He is a fine man and smart. He could go down as one of the greatest governors we've had."

Regular readers know some of us tried to tell some of them Artur Davis was not the second coming of Obama, but it was never about Artur Davis, it was about replacing Joe Reed with someone who is more ahem acceptable, because there is the perception the democratic party caters to black voters at the expense of white voters.  Our rich southern heritage teaches us the greatest insults to some whites is to be seen as the party of black voters.  Ask former governor Don Siegelman and any democrat/ elected official(s) who dared defend the rights of black folks.

 Regular readers know some of us tried to tell some of them Artur Davis was not the second coming of Obama, but it was never about Artur Davis, it was about replacing Joe Reed with someone who is more ahem acceptable, because there is the perception the democratic party caters to black voters at the expense of white voters.  Our rich southern heritage teaches us the greatest insults to some whites is to be seen as the party of black voters.  Ask former governor Don Siegelman and any democrat/ elected official(s) who dared defend the rights of black folks.

It took a long time for the basic pattern established in ’64 to be reflected up and down the ballot, but today white southerners are almost as loyal to the Republican Party as they once were to the Democrats. GOP presidential candidates customarily win more than 70 percent of the white vote in the South, success that in the past two decades has at last trickled down to the local and state legislative levels. This is particularly true in the Deep South, which encompasses South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. Exit polling was intermittent last November, but in Mississippi Mitt Romney gobbled up 89 percent of the white vote; with Barack Obama winning 96 percent of the black vote, this translated into a 55-44 percent Romney win in the state.
In this environment, Democratic success in the Deep South is mostly limited to district-level races in majority black areas. A number of African American Democrats represent the region in the U.S. House, with districts created and protected by the Voting Rights Act. But where white voters constitute majorities, affiliation with the Democratic Party is often the kiss of death for a candidate.

In a previous post, I asked who gets to decide is something is racism or someone is a racist, but I should have asked since when does the white, male, dominated mainstream media get to decide who/what/when/where racist racism occurs?  They are quick to tell African Americans to get past race, which is really code for STFU and let us decide when we are going to treat you fairly.

It's the story of modern day southern politics.

From the end of Reconstruction through the civil rights revolution, the South was an almost uniformly Democratic region. In 1936, for example, Franklin Roosevelt won more than 98 percent of the vote in South Carolina. Race wasn’t the only reason for the South’s shift toward the GOP, but it was the biggest single driver. In 1948, northern liberals inserted a civil rights plank into the national Democratic platform, prompting a walkout of southern delegations – which then coalesced around the third party Dixiecrat candidacy of Strom Thurmond. An uneasy truce between national and southern Democrats was reached after that election, but it was untenable. When LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the modern southern GOP was born. Nationally, LBJ crushed Barry Goldwater in the fall of ’64, racking up more than 60 percent of the popular vote. But Goldwater carried five southern states – winning 59 percent in South Carolina, 69 percent in Alabama and 87 percent in Mississippi.

We can pretend the split between the ADP and the ADM isn't racial, but deep down we know it's the truth. If it weren't there never would have been a split in the first place.

How can anyone go forward when the driver is stuck in "R" or reverse?~AF2010
 
How can Alabama Democrats go forward when the driver is stuck in "R" or reverse?~RedEye 2013

Change has come to some of the Alabama Airways!

I make a concerted effort to be in my car from 12-3 PM CST, Monday-Friday so I can listen to Keeping it Real with  Rev. Al Sharpton on XM 169 The Power.  Imagine my surprise when a the guest host identified a caller listening on WEUP AM radio in Huntsville, Alabama!!!  We don't have to listen to all Ru$h and Company, and all  Ru$h Wanna Bees  all the time anymore and I don't have to drive around to hear liberal talk!

Finally, conversation about social and political issues from the liberal prospective!  There is a saying, he/she who controls the message controls the outcome.   Why do republicans control the outcome?   Because they control the media.

Any media that dares report the truth is labeled liberal, like that's a bad thing.  In an effort not to appear liberal, the media adopted the false "fair and balanced" narrative.  It ought to be against the law to use the airways to misinform the public.  But it's not.  An informed electorate is an educated electorate.

It's not the Fairness Doctrine, but it's a start!  Liberals/progressives in Dothan, Alabama can listen to Keeping It Real on WAGF AM 1330, M-F, from 12-3 PM.   Keeping It Real is pending in Montgomery and Mobile. So stay tuned!  Tennessee Valley listeners can also listen online to conserve gas. :)

The number to the live line is 1-877-532-5797.  Get your  Liberal/Progressive Talk On!