Blue Sunday

Gotta be a way to move forward, but it seems like somebody's always dragging us back.

Yes, West Virginia - There is A Santa Claus

Swedish Meatballs

By way of a piece by Charlie Pierce, here's a Reuters story pointing up one of the big problems with Privatized Schooling - something that everybody seems to understand -  except of course the boneheads making the decisions:

(Reuters) - When one of the biggest private education firms in Sweden went bankrupt earlier this year, it left 11,000 students in the lurch and made Stockholm rethink its pioneering market reform of the state schools system.
School shutdowns and deteriorating results have taken the shine off an education model admired and emulated around the world, in Britain in particular.

"I think we have had too much blind faith in that more private schools would guarantee greater educational quality," said Tomas Tobé, head of the parliament's education committee and spokesman on education for the ruling Moderate party.

In a country with the fastest growing economic inequality of any OECD nation, basic aspects of the deregulated school market are now being re-considered, raising questions over private sector involvement in other areas like health.

Two-decades into its free-market experiment, about a quarter of once staunchly Socialist Sweden's secondary school students now attend publically-funded but privately run schools, almost twice the global average.

--and here's Charlie's closing graph--

There is, of course, a lesson for the United States here, and very likely a lesson to which nobody will pay attention. If you allow a system in which public education is privatized so that some people can make a buck on it, then making a buck is going to become the primary raison d'etre of the system. (See also: health-care.) The more ungainly the scramble for profit, the less your educational system has to do with, you know, actually educating people.

If there are decent jobs in and around the school districts, then the neighborhoods improve.  Better neighborhoods make for better schools.  Better schools make for a better labor pool.  A better work force makes for a better economy, which makes for more jobs in local neighborhoods, and then... oooh, look - then it starts over; it's almost as if all those things are interconnected.

But wait - it's not like the "boneheads making the decisions" are really all that dumb.  They're very much aware of the probability for any given enterprise to fail, so then we're left to wonder - is this just a matter of blind corporate avarice driven by a narrow ideology, or are we looking at a concerted effort to beat people down?

All Lies In Jest

The Boxer (cover) --Shawn Colvin and Allison Krauss




Another'n from Ms Krauss - Can't Find My Way Home (Blind Faith cover):

So, That Sucks

Some not very flattering things about KIPP (a charter school franchising scheme) are coming out.

From Schools Matter:

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — A Manhattan mother says her 5-year-old son was locked in a padded room at school, leaving the kindergartner so traumatized he had to go to the hospital.

Taneka Hall said the “safe-calm room” at KIPP Star Elementary School in Washington Heights is used while children are placed in “time-out.” But as CBS 2′s John Slattery reported, she believes the discipline is abusive.On Dec. 3, Hall’s son, Xavier, who has had behavioral problems, was put in the room — which is padded with a window in the door. The charter school would not provide CBS 2 with a photo of the room.

Hall said Xavier was in the room alone and grew more agitated.“So they put him in the safe room, and there in the safe room, he then peed on himself and didn’t allow any teachers to come inside, so they decided to call 911,” she said.

Xavier was taken to NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital to be examined. The mother said the padded room, which he’d been in before, frightened him...

I don't know exactly what a really good teacher would or should do with a kid who's having a tough time getting a handle on certain of his internal impulses, but I think maybe locking him in a padded cell ain't it.

A 5-year-old.

In Solitary-Fucking-Confinement.

They say KIPP stands for Kids In Prison Program.  I guess now we know why they say that.

Music

Don't Get Around Much Anymore --The Ink Spots

Today's Pix

Replay

In the late 70s, when Carter and our beloved Critters in Congress decided to bail out Chrysler by guaranteeing over a billion dollars in loans, I was pretty sure we'd seen the last of that money and once again, we tax-payers; we producers; we the people would just have to eat it and move on.  I was wrong about that one.

When Obama said we needed to make the same kinda move with Detroit (specifically with GM) in 2009, prompting every "conservative" to fall on the floor writhing in apoplexy, my memories of being wrong about Chrysler helped me confirm for myself the simple fact that the GOP has lost its shit completely and that I was absolutely right to have left those blockheads in the dust.

The U.S. Treasury today announced that it has sold all of the remaining shares of General Motors (GM +1.82%) common stock, ending four-and-a-half years of government ownership.

Taxpayers recouped about $39 billion of the $50.1 billion pumped into GM in late 2008 and 2009 as the Bush and Obama administrations tried to save the car maker from collapse after years of mismanagement brought to a head by a crippling credit crisis and economic recession. The sale will put an end to restrictions on executive pay, which will help GM attract top talent, and could pave the way for new dividends or share repurchases, both of which would please investors.

Historians, economists and politicians will continue to debate whether the bailout was a good idea, but there was no disagreement Monday that it was good for this episode to be over.

“The President’s leadership in responding to the financial crisis helped stabilize the auto industry, and prevent another Great Depression. With the final sale of GM stock, this important chapter in our nation’s history is now closed,” said Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew.

So if we hear anything about it at all, we'll hear about the $11 Billion it cost us.  We won't hear about the several hundred thousand jobs Americans didn't lose, and we won't hear about the (probably) hundreds of billions of dollars in saved &/or generated GDP, and we sure as fuck won't hear about "investment in American Industry".  We'll only hear about Gubmint Motors and how Obama's Secret Socialist Puppets on Wall Street (?) squandered all that money - which will conveniently make it just a tiny bit harder to remember how the GOP's Gov't Shutdown cost us close to $25 Billion while generating precisely dick in economic returns.

Some people.

And speaking of 'some people', did ya catch the bit about lifting the restrictions on GM Execs' pay?  Guess what happens next.

Sometimes, it's impossible to figure out who I'm s'posed to be mad at.  And I'm beginning to understand that that's kinda the whole fucking point.

Some Tunes

Snake Eyes --The Milk Carton Kids



swing low, swing low
for to carry me home
in fire the skies of red

my breath's gone cold
a kiss from the coal
a blanket of snow overhead

slow, holy roller
it's just rock and roll

hold your tears
where they've hung all these years
down from the heavens above

old snake eyes
you had better disguise
all that appears of thee

pray for love
from the heavens above
laid in the ashes below

And a Tiny Desk Concert via NPR:

Advertising Genius

Nice Try

I appreciate the attempts, but at some point this shit just ain't funny anymore.

Nerd Alert

WARNING:  

You are entering a Free-Ranging Science Area

Those choosing to remain ignorant must exit now.

Nerds are among my favorite people.  Because they know stuff.

Today's Pix

FauxRage Fatigue

If "conservatives" actually stopped pimping the War-On-Christmas, then what would we do without the annual Jon Stewart bit mocking them?

We used to get Christmas Specials on TV - Bob Hope and Andy Williams and Johnny Mathis and Bing Crosby and anybody else they could find who once upon a time had a tune in the Top 40 and who could still string a coupla heartbeats together.  Now we have this new holiday tradition:

Today's Pix