Issues

It’s amazing that the WASL has been the #1 education issue in political campaigns for both the Seattle School Board and the State Superintendent of Public Instruction for nearly a decade now. In fact, it’s frequently just about the only issue discussed by candidates and the media alike.

I’m 100% against the WASL. I think it should be boycotted by teachers and parents for two reasons:

1. A boycott would be much cleaner and simpler than dealing with it in the legislature.

2. Eliminating the WASL would allow the clueless morons at the Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer to move on to other and even more important issues, like Strippergate. (Just joking!)

The Big Picture

In fact, there are so many important issues facing public education that it’s difficult to even understand them without getting a grasp of the big picture, which is quite simple:

1. Public education has effectively been privatized. In other words, corporations are running the show.

2. The public is no longer meaningfully involved in public education. Teachers have lost control of their own unions (National/Washington/Seattle Education Association here in Seattle), and most parents apparently don’t even care what schools are serving their children for lunch. (Hint: School meals have been privatized, too.)

Obviously, fighting both corporate America and public apathy is an almost impossible task, but we have to start somewhere. It’s useless talking about corporate corruption without naming names and introducing the bastards to accountability.

The best place to start is the Alliance for Education, which I maintain is a coalition of organizations dedicated to screwing children. Visit their website (www.alliance4ed.org) and see for yourself. Their Board of Directors is a virtual Who’s Who of Seattle’s sleaziest scum, from Jon Bridge to Mayor Greg Nickels to that wacko right-winger Don Nielsen. Collectively, they represent such corrupt corporations as Microsoft, Boeing, Wells Fargo and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

If my campaign merely motivates a relative handful of people to visit the Alliance 2 Screw Kids’ website and learn the truth about these bastards, then I will have accomplished something.

Specific Issues

There are many specific education issues that need to be addressed. Below are nearly twenty of them.

• Give corporations the boot. We can start by simply ripping their fliers, certificates and coupons off school walls and throwing them in the recycling bin. My goal is to make every public school in Seattle a Corporation-Free Zone.

• Independent Performance Audit! Next to the WASL, this has probably been the premier education campaign issue here in Seattle since at least 1999. A few years ago, the media described just such an audit. But there was a catch: The auditing team was selected by the Seattle School Board, and the results very vague, to say the least. In other words, it was a sham audit. We’ll never take a bite out of corruption until we get a handle on the Seattle School District’s famously creative fiscal policies. More than an audit, we need a full blown investigation, and the results need to be made public.

• No school closures! Does it make sense that we’re closing schools at the very time we’re jacking up the superintendent’s salary to a quarter of a million dollars??? I don’t know the real reason the Seattle Mafia is closing schools, but it isn’t hard to guess. There are a lot of corrupt attorneys and real estate developers who could make a fortune off school properties. Stay tuned.

• A new teachers union The Seattle Education Association is simply an abomination. It stabs its own dues-paying members in the back, lies to parents and screws children. Time to put it out of its misery.

• Accountability for Principals Why do we allow derelicts to run schools? Why do the worst principals get promoted into the central bureaucracy (e.g. Marella Griffin, Beatrice Cox, Pat Sander, etc.) or get paid huge sums to go into early retirement (e.g. Marta Cano-Hinz)?

• Cut the Bloated Administration The Seattle School District is famous for administrative bloat. There are too many administrators, many with useless to ridiculous job titles, and many of them are overpaid. (And why is our new superintendent earning almost a quarter million dollars a year?)

• Attack Racism, beginning with the Black Mafia White teachers who feel they’re being unfairly maligned as racist may not be imagining things. In fact, the biggest racists I encountered during my stint with Seattle Schools were black principals, from Dearborn Park Elementary School’s brainless Evelyn Fairchild to the train wreck who long tyrannized Martin Luther King Elementary School, Euhania Butler. And exactly how many schools are there with mostly Asian American students, mostly white teachers but entirely black administrations? And why are there so few Asian Americans in administration?

Before you call me racist, I should tell you that the people I’m bashing are effectively recruited by the corporations that are themselves largely led by racist whites. In other words, the so-called Black Mafia consists primarily of Uncle Toms. They shit on the black community even as they tyrannize Asian teachers and white parents. Screw’em.

• Get the media out of the sex blackmail industry. Racism isn’t the only weapon the establishment uses to intimidate teachers and parents. Remember Tom Hudson, the Garfield High School teacher who committed suicide in the wake of the horrible revelations about Principal Al Jones? I believe he was framed, primarily by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Yet the Seattle Times was later involved in a lawsuit that gave the media the authority to obtain information about teachers who have merely been accused of sexual improprieties. That’s right; if a black principal manufactures a story about an Asian parent volunteer having sex with children on the playground, the story is fair game for Crank Blethen’s Seattle Times and all the other media vultures. Tell Frank Blethen to stick to his specialties, protecting pedophiles (e.g. the late Judge Gary Little) and shooting dogs, and keep his big nose out of the sex blackmail industry.

• Stability One of my biggest complaints about education was the extraordinary lack of stability, with district employees often getting bounced from school to school each year and students being forced to commute outside their neighborhoods. I’m convinced that this is all by design. I believe it’s essentially a corporate conspiracy to dehumanize education and break down personal attachments and loyalties. After all, how can you expect parents to protest a bad principal if they don’t even feel any allegiance towards the school that principal is tyrannizing?

• Return to Neighborhood Schools. Why are we still busing students across Seattle?

• New Teachers Contract The current contract was rammed down teachers’ throats by the Seattle Chamber of Commerce. It’s a sick joke and needs to be replaced by a real contract.

• Bring past criminals to justice. No more sweeping problems under the rug. You cannot fight crime without accountability, and there are many, many crooks I want to bring to justice, from the asshole who hired convicted kidnapper-murderer-rapist Clint Webb to the miscreants who never got around to dealing with contaminated drinking water in many Seattle schools.

• De-Privatize School Meals. Towards the end of my career with Seattle Schools, I was told that every school in the district would soon have meals prepared and delivered by a private company. I saw what those meals look like at Rainier View Elementary School, and I was appalled. Nor were the students thrilled with them; they lined up to throw their food in the garbage every day. Have Seattle liberals no shame? Why not forget about freeing Tibet for a couple days and help me shove some of that pig slop down Cheryl Chow’s throat?

• Replace Microsoft software with Apple/Mac and/or Linux. Microsoft is bad news in so many ways, and the best way to fight it is to simply get rid of it. Let’s tell Bill Gates and his train wreck of a father to shove their phony philanthropy up their asses, too.

• Real School News The education news you read about in the newspapers and watch on TV is crap, and if you don’t believe me, then please explain how the media can be corrupt nationwide except for Seattle. If elected to the Seattle School Board, I will recruit volunteers to help gather and disseminate real news. The public needs to hear the truth about the schools WE pay for.

• Community Database I will also recruit volunteers to help make a Seattle Schools database. Remember: Knowledge is power.

• Administrative Information Online I will also do everything I can to make Seattle Schools’ administration put key information on the Internet.

• School Info Online Similarly, every school should have a website with real information, not stale rhetoric.

• Maintain an Elected School Board! You may have read about plans to abolish school board elections. That would be simply brilliant. It’s true that voters have failed miserably at creating a decent school board, but allowing the Mayor’s office to control the school board will only make it easier for the Seattle Chamber of Commerce to appoint hand-picked operatives to that disgusting body.

(Inter)National Issues

I hate to sound like a hopeless cynic, but the presidential campaign is a lost cause. All the Democratic candidates are assholes, which isn’t surprising because all the candidates—Republican and Democrat alike—have been vetted by Corporate America. To illustrate what I’m talking about, just consider the last two presidential campaigns, which starred the magnificent Al Gore and John Kerry. Talk about losers.

In the meantime, the American public has its collective head stuck up its butt. Liberals are afraid to say anything other than “I support the troops!” and there are right-wingers who still support the worst president in American history.

Just as our victory in World War II began with a series of landings and toeholds far from Berlin and Tokyo, so does reforming our nation begin with grassroots activism. In other words, we’ll never take back the White House until we begin taking back our local school boards.

In this spirit, I use my campaigns to promote a variety of issues that may not be directly related to public education. On second thought, most of these issues are more closely related to education than you might think.

• George W. Bush As the 9/11 terrorist attacks slowly fade into history, liberals are finally finding enough courage to openly talk about impeaching the worst pResident in American history. But does anyone have the guts to suggest a suitable punishment for treason and war crimes? I’m the webmaster of Seattle’s premier anti-Bush website, Jail4Bush. The Seattle Weekly even mentioned it once, though the bozos predictably messed up the URL. (I guess www.jail4bush.org and jailbush.org are pretty similar, huh?)

• Bill Gates I think it was two or three campaigns ago that I became the first candidate for public office in the nation to use my campaign to attack Bill Gates and Microsoft—and I’m proud that I did it right in that SOB’s backyard. In fact, Bill Gates’ public image has taken a terrific pounding in recent years. I obviously can’t take all the credit, but the time is right to give William another blast of bad publicity.

• I do not support the troops. If you’re sick of wishy washy liberals who say they oppose the war in Iraq, but they support the troops who are fighting that war, then help me get my message out. I don’t support murder, rape, torture or the illegal invasion of sovereign nations for corporate gain, and I don’t buy all the stupid excuses: They’re only following orders; they’re just scared and confused; they only joined the military because they were poor, blah, blah, blah. I’ve been scared and confused, and I’ve been poor, but I’ve never murdered, raped or tortured. Fuck the troops; they’re a disgrace to our nation.

• The Economy We all know our economy is a train wreck, with no light at the end of the tunnel. Some conspiracy theorists have even speculated that certain forces deliberately destroyed our economy. This ties in nicely with my theory that corporations are deliberately destroying public education, depriving children of a decent education. In other words, SPI Terry Bergeson may support the WASL because she’s an agent of globalization.

• Spying on Citizens I think it stinks that the U.S. government is spying on our phone calls, e-mails and even on our trips to libraries and bookstores. When did we become Communist China? What few citizens realize is the awesome extent of spying in our public schools. Can you really trust your school librarian or the head teacher?

• The U.S. Postal Service Speaking of spying, the U.S. government is now able to monitor our letters, too. But what else is going on in one of our last great bastions of socialism? Did you know the Postmaster General is now a CEO? Having worked for the U.S. Postal Service for about a year, I can also testify to the sometimes abusive work conditions that flourish in Seattle’s mail mills, from sheer thuggery to sex predators masquerading as supervisors. I can also tell you how the post office screws “Christmas casuals,” people who hope to earn extra money by working for the post office over the holiday season; it’s quite a racket. in the meantime, I’ve made a deranged supervisor named Mark Kudlo (night shift, PD&C) my Post Office Poster Boy. Stay tuned for more details.

Thanks for visiting, and please check back as I continue adding information about these and still more issues.

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