Ogre-oids, May 26, 2010

Editor's note: Ogre-oids are compiled primarily from New York Times and Courier-Journal reports. If you follow this blog at all, you should at least read the Times daily.

On-going political and environmental crises in the Gulf. Today's Times reports that there were red flags that were ignored in the hours leading up to the 9:49pm explosion of the Deepwater Horizon on April 20, 2010. Among them were readings of building pressure and calculations from tests that showed something was wrong. The result has been oil gushing into the Gulf that has reached the coast and created a fishery disaster. A C-J report today adds to the mounting accounts of Obama administration coddling of big oil: regulators from the Mineral Management Agency received expensive gifts and pricey dinners courtesy of the very big oil companies they were supposed to be overseeing. Add this account to: allowing drilling to occur without permits; violating scientific protocol to assess environmental impact of drilling projects; admitting helplessness since the government did not support scientific investigation of the technologies and processes involved these operations, leaving the culprit, BP, as the only ones who can possibly do anything to stop oil from gushing--which for over a month now they have not. Oh well, at least they're not teachers!

Speaking of, Obama and the rest of America continue to scapegoat teachers and sabatoge education. Today's Times reports a Rhode Island panel voted 5 to 1 to reinstate an entire faculty of high school teachers in a poverty-ridden community. In February, Obama praised their firings, citing them as an example of accountability. Teaching in a poor high school is already a noble act and incredibly difficult. No one, including teachers, should be held responsible for things out of their control, like student apathy, variation in aptitude, and test performance. Certainly this is true for teachers in poor areas, where students typically have to work shit jobs in the afternoon and evenings, come from broken homes, and do not have the resources to succeed scholastically, despite the Disney one-in-a-million success stories the corporate media always make sure we hear about. In any case, when teachers screw up, it does not cost the tax payers $700 billion or wipe out an entire way of life for people who live and work on the Gulf Coast. If our country and government would support teachers and education instead of starving it for funds, there wouldn't have been an economic collapse or an oil spill in the first place, since an educated society behaves with some degree of wisdom, fairness, and awareness, you know, human virtues. Money-grubbing Americans should know: you get what you pay for. While Obama spends a fortune on wars, bank bailouts, and coddles big oil environmental recking crews, he starves education with his "Race to the Top" program that turns education into some kind of American Idol contest between the fifty states that inevitably will leave most states short-changed no matter what proposals they make or how their teachers try to do their jobs. Obama ignores science and education as a President, coddles people who destroy the environment and cost tax payers billions, then tells teachers they must be held accountable for things out of their control with a smidgeon of the resources available to big oil and the banks, who are never held accountable and even rewarded for collassal failures. With all that oil gushing, at least Obama can lube up America's teachers before he fucks them up the ass, to the cheering masses of America.

In the spirit of undermining education, the Kentucky House of Representatives approved $100,000 in its latest budget for a Christian school in Breathitt Co., despite a ruling last month from the state's Supreme Court that public funding for religious schools violates the state's constitution. Then again, poorly educated Americans are ignorant of the 1st Amendment--you know, that separation of church and state thing. Whatever.

Up in New York State, General Bloomberg and the NY state government continue to push for expanding chater schools, which are publically funded but privately run despite recent reports and investigations that show obvious corruption in how these "schools" spend money. One of many examples is the Oracle Chater School in Buffalo that will pay more than $5 million to a real estate partnership called KBSD to purchase a building appraised at $875,000 in value, then two years after the deal hired a partner of KBSD to serve on its board. That's known as Bullshit 101, for those of you who tested out of that course.

At least 30 dead in Kingston, Jamaica as soldiers go to war with a ghetto near the south coast to seize drug kingpin Christopher Coke wanted by the U.S. on extradition charges. A war on drugs . . . hmmm, finally a new approach to American governance.

The next time you bitch at your friends about how messy their apartment is, think about Thelma and Jesse Gaston, both in their 70s, who were found buried alive under their own home's trash. Thelma had injuries that looked like rat bites. Nothing like keeping neighborhood and family life in tact to ensure the well-being of the community.