By Elaine Magliaro
NOTE: I originally posted this article about charter schools and their backers at Res Ipsa Loquitor on March 16, 2013. I think it bears re-posting at Flowers for Socrates.
In a 2010 New York Times article titled Charter Schools’ New Cheerleaders: Financiers, reporters Tripp Gabriel and Jennifer Medina wrote the following about what was going on in the state of New York:
Wall Street has always put its money where its interests and beliefs lie. But it is far less common that so many financial heavyweights would adopt a social cause like charter schools and advance it with a laserlike focus in the political realm…
Although the April 9 breakfast with Mr. Cuomo was not a formal fund-raiser, the hedge fund managers have been wielding their money to influence educational policy in Albany, particularly among Democrats, who control both the Senate and the Assembly but have historically been aligned with the teachers unions.
They[hedge fund managers] have been contributing generously to lawmakers in hopes of creating a friendlier climate for charter schools. More immediately, they have raised a multimillion-dollar war chest to lobby this month for a bill to raise the maximum number of charter schools statewide to 460 from 200.
That same year—2010—Juan Gonzalez believed that he had uncovered one of the reasons why hedge fund managers, some wealthy Americans, and the executives of some Wall Street banks had become such big proponents of charter schools and had gotten involved in their development. Gonzalez said the banks and other wealthy investors had been making “windfall profits” by taking advantage of “a little-known federal tax break to finance new charter-school construction.” That little know tax break, the New Markets Tax Credit, can be so lucrative, Gonzalez said, “that a lender who uses it can almost double his money in seven years.” He added that the tax break “gives an enormous federal tax credit to banks and equity funds that invest in community projects in underserved communities, and it’s been used heavily now for the last several years for charter schools.”
Gonzalez focused his research on the city of Albany—which, he wrote, “boasts the state’s highest percentage of charter school enrollments.” He provided an explanation of how lucrative investments in building new charter schools can be:
What happens is the investors who put up the money to build charter schools get to basically or virtually double their money in seven years through a thirty-nine percent tax credit from the federal government. In addition, this is a tax credit on money that they’re lending, so they’re also collecting interest on the loans as well as getting the thirty-nine percent tax credit. They piggy-back the tax credit on other kinds of federal tax credits like historic preservation or job creation or brownfields credits.
The result is, you can put in ten million dollars and in seven years double your money. The problem is, that the charter schools end up paying in rents, the debt service on these loans and so now, a lot of the charter schools in Albany are straining paying their debt service–their rent has gone up from $170,000 to $500,000 in a year or–huge increases in their rents as they strain to pay off these loans, these construction loans. The rents are eating-up huge portions of their total cost. And, of course, the money is coming from the state.
Brighter Choice Foundation
According to Gonzalez, “a nonprofit called the Brighter Choice Foundation had employed the New Markets Tax Credit to arrange private financing for five of the city’s nine charter schools.” By 2010, many of those charter schools were struggling to pay escalating rents, which were “going toward the debt service that Brighter Choice incurred during construction.”
Gonzalez gave examples of the escalating rents:
The Henry Johnson Charter School saw the rent for its 31,000-square-foot building skyrocket from $170,000 in 2008 to $560,000 in 2009.
The Albany Community School‘s went from from $195,000 to $350,000.
Green Tech High Charter School rent rose from $443,000 to $487,000.
Gonzalez reported that a number of Albany’s charter schools have fallen into debt to the Brighter Choice Foundation. He wondered why the schools’ financial problems hadn’t raised eyebrows with state regulators or caused concern for the charters’ school boards. He noted that the powerful charter school lobby had “so far successfully battled to prevent independent government audits of how its schools spend their state aid.” He added that “key officers of Albany’s charter school boards are themselves board members, employees or former employees of the Brighter Choice Foundation or its affiliates.”
Gonzalez said that the city of Albany is “exhibit A in the web of potential conflicts that keep popping up in the charter school movement.” It appears Gonzalez is correct about Albany being just one example of what’s going on in the movement. Brighter Horizons isn’t the only “foundation” or company making profits off of charter schools.
Imagine Schools Inc.
There is a national charter school company called Imagine Schools Inc., one of the biggest for-profit charter school management companies in the country. Matthew Haag of the Dallas Morning News wrote about Imagine Schools in 2008:
A national charter school company that plans to open new schools in Texas, including one in McKinney, has run afoul of an education official in Nevada and two of its former principals, and they all pose the same question.
Does Imagine Schools Inc. force its charter schools to spend too much money on complex real estate deals and not enough money on teachers and academic programs?
Virginia-based Imagine Schools has emerged as one of the largest for-profit charter school management companies, running several dozen schools in 12 states. It plans to open Imagine International Academy of North Texas in McKinney next year.
Charter schools house their students in Texas in a variety of ways, according to the former Charter Resource Center of Texas, from renting space in a shopping center to doing complex property transactions such as Imagine’s.
Typically, after an Imagine-managed charter school gets approval to open, Schoolhouse Finance, Imagine’s real estate arm, purchases a campus and charges the school rent. After the school begins to pay that rent, Schoolhouse sells the campus to a real estate investment trust, which then leases it back to Schoolhouse.
The charter school eventually sends rent payments – in one case upward of 40 percent of the school’s entire publicly funded budget – to two for-profit companies.
“The arrangement is very lucrative because it’s a direct conduit to public funds. The school [property] is paid off with public funds,” said Gary Horton, who oversees charter school funding for the Nevada Department of Education. Nevada’s charter schools include Imagine’s 100 Academy of Excellence in North Las Vegas.
Haag added that charter schools in Texas are generally exempt from the kind of financial oversight that “state education officials give school districts. The agency annually grades how school districts spend their money, but not yet for charters.”
Haag explained what happened with 100 Academy of Excellence in Nevada:
In Nevada, the state awarded 100 Academy of Excellence in North Las Vegas a charter, and the school hired Imagine to run its educational services. Schoolhouse Finance, the Imagine subsidiary, paid for the school’s property and building construction. Schoolhouse Finance then leased the property to the charter school for $1.4 million a year.
Next, Schoolhouse Finance sold the $8 million property to a real estate investment trust, Kansas City, Mo.,-based Entertainment Properties Trust. The trust then leased the property back to Schoolhouse Finance at a lower rate than the charter school pays.
Money remaining after Schoolhouse Finance pays its lease to the trust goes to Imagine Schools Inc. This tiered lease system has led to 10 percent returns on investment for owners and investors in the two companies, Sharp said.
But 100 Academy of Excellence’s annual rent, which represents 40 percent of its annual state-funded budget, leaves the school struggling to pay for textbooks, according to Nevada Department of Education records.
“My concern is that I have to make payments [to the charter school], and I know the payments aren’t going to the kids,” said Horton, a persistent critic of Imagine’s operations.
Stephanie Strom reported in the New York Times in 2010 that soon after 100 Academy of Excellence opened in 2006, the school board began documenting problems. Its bookkeeping practices were lax and it lacked a sufficient number of licensed teachers. The school had also violated regulations requiring competitive bidding when it paid Imagine “for necessities like furniture and computers.”
Strom added that the school had had three principals in four years. She said that two of the principals had been “pressured to resign after complaining that there was not enough money for essentials like textbooks and a school nurse.”
In addition, Strom reported that regulators in a number of states had found that Imagine Schools had “elbowed the charter holders out of virtually all school decision making — hiring and firing principals and staff members, controlling and profiting from school real estate, and retaining fees under contracts that often guarantee Imagine’s management in perpetuity.”
The regulators claimed that Imagine’s arrangements allowed it to use “public money with little oversight.” Marc Dean Millot, a former president of the National Charter Schools Alliance, said, “Under either charter law or traditional nonprofit law, there really is no way an entity should end up on both sides of business transactions.” He added, “Imagine works to dominate the board of the charter holder, and then it does a deal with the board it dominates — and that cannot be an arm’s length transaction.”
White Hat Management
In a 2011 Pro-Publica article titled Charter Schools Outsource Education to Management Firms, With Mixed Results, Sharona Coutts wrote about charter schools run by White Hat Management in Ohio:
Since 2008, an Ohio-based company, White Hat Management, has collected around $230 million to run charter schools in that state. The company has grown into a national chain and reports that it has about 20,000 students across the country. But now 10 of its own schools and the state of Ohio are suing, complaining that many White Hat students are failing, and that the company has refused to account for how it has spent the money.
The dispute between White Hat and Ohio, which is unfolding in state court in Franklin County, provides a glimpse at a larger trend: the growing role of private management companies in publicly funded charter schools.
Coutt reported that about one third of the charter schools in this country are now run by management companies, which can be either for-profit or non-profit, and not run locally. These companies not only have the right to hire and fire staff—they can also develop curricula and discipline students. She added that while the “shortcomings of traditional public schools” have been under scrutiny in recent years—“a look at the private sector’s efforts to run schools in Ohio, Florida and New York shows that turning things over to a company has created its own set of problems for public schools.” She said that government data on charter schools suggest that those with “for-profit managers have somewhat worse academic results than charters without management companies, and a number of boards have clashed with managers over a lack of transparency in how they are using public funds.”
The Ohio Department of Education joined the lawsuit in the fall of 2010. It asked the court to help the “group of public schools break free from dominance by private interests.” The department argued in a court motion that things had not gone well under White Hat’s management. It said, “Most of the schools have received the equivalent of D’s and F’s on their State report cards and their performance has declined during the term of the agreements.”
James D. Colner, an attorney representing the schools, said, “A big part of the argument here is being able to follow the money. We have no idea whether they’re earning a reasonable profit or not. We have no idea whether the money is being efficiently or effectively spent for our students.” That should be of great concern to citizens of Ohio. Coutt contends that oversight of the industry has lagged. She added that it has resulted “in a patchwork of state and district regulation, which experts say is failing to safeguard the interests of children and taxpayers.”
Closing
Laura Clawson (Daily Kos):
In short, education reform is a good cause. Experimentation is good — and some of the best charter schools today have experimented in what could be valuable ways. But the push, coming from Wall Street and the extremely wealthy, for this specific form of charter schools, for this specific way of funding them, is part of both short-term and long-term drives for profit that will accrue to the wealthiest while weakening the middle class. The question is not whether we should back away from the cause of education, or the cause of education reform. The question is in whose interests it should be done and who should most strongly influence the outcomes.
SOURCES & FURTHER READING
Juan Gonzalez: Big Banks Making a Bundle on New Construction as Schools Bear the Cost (Democracy Now!)
Albany charter cash cow: Big banks making a bundle on new construction as schools bear the cost (New York Daily News)
Show us the money: “Master Class” for private equity investors in public education (Parents across America)
“New market tax credits” and charter schools (Parents across America)
Cashing in on the charters: Petrino DiLeo exposes a new attempt by Wall Street to make money off our schools (Socialist Worker)
Charter school company with plans for McKinney is criticized (Susan Ohanian)
The big business of charter schools (Washington Post)
Evil Ed, inc: the Wall Street-charter school connection (Open Left)
Corporations Advise School Closings, While Private Charters Suck Public Schools Away: As charter proponents aim to cash in on major investment returns, Philly braces for a massive schools shakeup. (AlterNet)
Charter Schools’ New Cheerleaders: Financiers (New York Times)
For School Company, Issues of Money and Control (New York Times)
Charter Schools Outsource Education to Management Firms, With Mixed Results (Pro Publica)
Education: follow the money (Daily Kos)
Wall Street Hearts Charter Schools, Gets Rich Off Them (FireDogLake)
Wall Street Behind Charter School Push (Huffington Post)
Nicole Plyler Fisk
Gene Howington
FFS Guest Blogger
Joy of Fishes
Chuck Stanley
shortfinals
Terry Welshans
ann li-summers
wordcloud9
Flowers For Socrates 
Michigan spends $1B on charter schools but fails to hold them accountable
By Jennifer Dixon
Detroit Free Press Staff Writer
6/22/14
http://www.freep.com/article/20140622/NEWS06/306220096/
Excerpt:
Michigan taxpayers pour nearly $1 billion a year into charter schools — but state laws regulating charters are among the nation’s weakest, and the state demands little accountability in how taxpayer dollars are spent and how well children are educated.
A yearlong investigation by the Detroit Free Press reveals that Michigan’s lax oversight has enabled a range of abuses in a system now responsible for more than 140,000 Michigan children. That figure is growing as more parents try charter schools as an alternative to traditional districts.
In reviewing two decades of charter school records, the Free Press found:
Wasteful spending and double-dipping. Board members, school founders and employees steering lucrative deals to themselves or insiders. Schools allowed to operate for years despite poor academic records. No state standards for who operates charter schools or how to oversee them.
And a record number of charter schools run by for-profit companies that rake in taxpayer money and refuse to detail how they spend it, saying they’re private and not subject to disclosure laws. Michigan leads the nation in schools run by for-profits.
Elaine,
I remember this post from RIL and it served as much of the basis for my background in opposing the “Charter School Movement”. This added facts to my visceral distrust of this phony “reform” movement. What you have created here, with your indefatigable research and laser precision, is a virtual resource for understanding and opposing this “con game” by wealthy investors and those who serve them as lackeys. The age old question about prostitution is who is the criminal, the prostitute or the “John” who uses her? While I’m a believer in “legal prostitution”, I don’t believe in “legal fraud”. In this scenario Michelle Rhee and Arne Duncan are the whores and people like Dan Loeb are not the “Johns” but the “Pimps”. The “Johns” are our politicians. That our corporate media pays such deference to these pimps for profit and their paid whores, merely illustrates where most of the media people stand and it isn’t what was taught in Journalism School.
Click to access pa587.pdf
“Such conflict, however, is not peculiar to the last school year, nor is it a recent phenomenon. Throughout American history, public schooling has produced political disputes, animosity, and sometimes even bloodshed between diverse people. Such clashes are inevitable in government-run schooling because all Americans are required to support the public schools, but only those with the most political power control them. Political— and sometimes even physical—conflict has thus been an inescapable public schooling reality.
To end the fighting caused by state-run schooling, we should transform our system from one in which government establishes and controls schools, to one in which individual parents are empowered to select schools that share their moral values and educational goals for their children.”
Only those with the most political power control public schools, now there is a thought.
http://www.alternet.org/education/fbi-raids-charter-school-operators-jump
Pete,
Thanks for the link! I hadn’t read that article.
Hi Elaine,
It’s late, I wanted to write a few words here the other day but for the time & energy…
Just a brief comment, maybe more on down the road.
“The Stone Age Didn’t End Because They Ran Out of Rocks”
If I had a grand kid threatened with this USA “Nazi” educational system I’d cut my leg off to get them to hell out of here. “” No Joke””
Just like so many of our other institutions the education system has Failed Completely.
Phk the Cheese, let us out of the trap!
Elaine, I like you, I believe you a good & decent person & I am only offering you my advise as I see it.
You/we will either be part of the solution or we’ll be part of the problem.
Google Gutenberg Press vs Computers vs Careers as Wooden Wagon Wheel Manufacturers.
Gnite
Oky,
I was a public school teacher for more than three decades. I worked with many fine educators over the years. I don’t know where you got the idea that the USA has “Nazi” educational system.
Elaine,
I was privileged to have been taught be some very fine educators in a small rural community.
We should look back sometimes to see where we made the wrong turn is what I’m saying.
In the words of one of my finest, paraphrasing: Please stop wasting oxygen in the room people, (Like Oky1), some of these people really need it & can put it to good use.
IE: You’ll be the one to decide if your the Wooden Wheel mfg or not.
I can’t make the decision for, only you can.
Me, I’ve decided, in part, I’m going to be the best German Sheppard trainer fort at least one more dog so my son will have the finest dog I can train for him & the family.
(The last one could count you your change back out of a $20 bill & I’m upping the math skills with this pup.)
Any suggestions? 🙂 Really, I’m all ears now with this pup, he’s sharp as I’ve seen. Game on.
** Oky1 says:
August 20, 2014 at 10:28 pm **
https://flowersforsocrates.com/2014/08/05/theme-to-game-of-thrones-redux/#comment-13651
** I don’t know where you got the idea that the USA has “Nazi” educational system.**
**Kindergarten – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Friedrich Fröbel created the name Kindergarten in German in 1840. …. is sometimes called jardin d’enfants, which is a calque of the German word Kindergarten.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindergarten -**
I’m interested in lreaning as much German as I ccan as another hobby, but I’ve many hobbies.
I’ve only vetted 5 min. of this 20 some minute video on the govt putting Rat Poison in school kids Water/Food, but I’ve a Massive file on the subject awaiting help.
Dr. Paul Connett – CT Water Fluoridation
And also another Massive File on the Vax scam the Nazis are Running through our Public Schools.
Phk the Cheese, get those Kids to Hell Out of That Trap!!!
I’m do not even giving my Dogs Unfiltered Water! & I Very Mindful of the Vax Fraud.
Sorry Elaine, I’m not the one over the top on this stuff, I’m not the one poisoning lil kids in the public schools, families & pets, those other aholes are, & I’ve the research to back it up, but I need help to get it out to the public.
It’s out there for anyone to look at it if they will.
Much more, but I must stop now.
Later….
The plants in my garden thrive with attention & die easier of neglect.
It’s hardly a new concept.
The question remains, are you a Teacher or one of “Those” teachers?
Some of us believe it’s time to get back to teaching.
(I’m positive my teachers have already approved.)
IE:
**We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the class room
Teachers leave those kids alone
(yells) Hey, teachers! Leave those kids alone!
All in all, it’s just a
Nother brick in the wall
All in all, you’re just a
Nother brick in the wall
(british kids)
We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the class room
Teachers leave those kids alone
(yells) Hey, teachers! Leave those kids alone!
All in all, it’s just a
Nother brick in the wall
All in all, you’re just a
Nother brick in the wall
(beat)
If u dont eat ur meat u kant have ne pudding
How kan u have any pudding if u dont eat ur meat
If u dont eat ur meat u kant have ne pudding
How kan u have any pudding if u dont eat ur meat
If u dont eat ur meat u kant have any pudding
How kan u have any pudding if u dont eat ur meat **
Oky,
You’re not making any sense.
Elaine,
I was wondering the same thing. Either really tired or maybe sampling a bit too much Jack Daniels. I have gone back the next morning after up late writing while groggy and find what I wrote to be…..strange.
I think Oky is a drunk poster, he gets enamored of random songs and videos and he thinks they mean something.
I was a barback while working my way through high school. It has a lot to do with why I don’t drink! Oky reminds me of the drunks that would break into singing along with the stereo and making up the words they don’t know. Fine philosophers of life, pontificating from the bottom of a pint of the hard stuff.
Elaine,
The 1st thing that needs done is to stop as much of the intentional poisoning of those kids & their parents.
But we can’t even seem to get that done even with all the main line scientific studies that have already been done.
And that poisoning of the masses my very well be the reason many have trouble understand weather they’ve been drinking or not.
I hate to break the news to you but Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie type school isn’t coming back.
And the type of school system we have is obsolete & is ending, so yes there’s a war going on to gut what’s left of it for profit.
The educating kids isn’t the objective of this current system, brainwashing & running kids as a rancher would cattle for profit is the motive.
On a side note would you rather people have few drinks & post on a msg bb or would you rather they have a few drinks & drive home from a bar?
Last I checked in Ok the limit is now so low that just looking at a beer truck will get a person a dui.
Notice the kid below understands the current school system. Well, a few more vaccines will fix that problem. (sarc off)
https://flowersforsocrates.com/2014/08/16/poetry-friday-belated-edition-meet-malcolm-x-london/
**Elaine M. says:
August 21, 2014 at 12:29 am **
After reviewing a bit of the history on the subject & listening to some experts on the subject.
Take a look for yourself.
Oky,
What do you mean by a “bit of history?” Can you remember the titles of the books and/or articles that you have read on the subject?
Public schools are not all the same. Schools in poor communities don’t have the same kind of funding and support that schools in middle class and wealthy communities have. I taught in a progressive public school system. Unfortunately, the school reform movement brought with it high stakes testing of students and a narrowing of the school curriculum–something that teachers and their unions fought against. But the mainstream media and talking head pundits bought the school reformers’ rhetoric. Arne Duncan has been a disaster as the Secretary of Education. He doesn’t have a clue how to go about improving education in troubled school districts.
Oky,
Another thing: I taught in public schools from 1968 until my retirement in 2004. I was trained to be a teacher. I also provided educational workshops for teachers in my and other school districts, for the Massachusetts DOE, for local and state reading councils, and for colleges and universities in the New England area. In addition, I taught at the Boston University School of Education for six years. I have a good understanding of public school education in this country.
Oky: On your side note, I’d rather you didn’t feel like having a few drinks gives you the right to spew your drunken vomit for ten posts in a row and pollute the thread and the comment queue. Call up the Hot Chick Chat, there’s a telephone actress out there that needs your help paying her rent, and she’ll talk about anything you want, even if you are drunk.
** Statewide numbers
Sixteen percent of third-graders statewide scored unsatisfactory on the Oklahoma Core Curriculum Test. The students will have two additional opportunities to demonstrate basic reading skills through a student portfolio or an alternative reading assessment provided under the state’s Reading Sufficiency Act, Pemberton said.
Of 48,691 Oklahoma third-graders:
•1,120 scored advanced on the reading test
•32,531 scored proficient
•7,070 scored limited knowledge
•7,970 scored unsatisfactory.
Other reaction
Tulsa Public Schools Superintendent Keith Ballard also criticized the Education Department for releasing the results early, calling the move “highly unethical.”
Nearly 33 percent of third-graders in the Tulsa district scored unsatisfactory on the test.**
http://newsok.com/nearly-30-percent-of-oklahoma-city-third-graders-score-unsatisfactory-on-state-reading-test/article/4747866/?page=2
Elaine,
My wife & I taught both our kids to read “Before” the entering Kindergarten & this so called Public Education System.
So basically my wife got our limited teaching certificate the day the kids graduated college.
As you can see from the public release results the public schools are a Ph’d up mess & failure.
The state pulls peoples drivers licenses all time for an number of reasons.
I think “We the People” should revoke those leading the teachers licenses to teach & to be leaders.
(Note: I’m say the Leaders of the teachers & not the teachers.)
Now I don’t know how you personally feel about that Pink Floyd’s 1979 rock opera, The Wall, & the one of it’s songs, posted above, but it is relevant to the subject of public education. Maybe you could understand it?
It’s clear to me the the govt & most teachers didn’t learn anything from that 1979 piece & just continued on course of destroying the Public Ed system.
**Elaine M. says:
August 21, 2014 at 11:10 am**
I can’t answer your question just yet.
There are two people & their work I’m thinking of in particular, but I don’t recall their names at the moment. When I find them again I’ll try to post it.
That one gal I’m thinking of, I think came out of NYC Ed & moved as head or subhead of the US Dept of Ed. I had already heard some of that same history of US Ed system & I thought she done a fair job documenting much of it.
Tony C,
Feel free to submit a blood test to Gene so we can all see the dope you’re running on.
Personally I think you need a new dealer because the stuff you’re on has left you loony at times.
For example there isn’t enough booze in the world for most people to get them to support your position of supporting International Crimes Against Humanity & your support GMOs & it’s poisoning of kids & the Gen Pop.
Oky,
Fortunately, the schools in my state aren’t “a Ph’d up mess & failure.” Teachers and parents take education seriously up here. We don’t teach creationism in the schools. We teach real science.
Why no blame for parents in your state? Parents are their children’s first teachers.They should read to their children, help them with their schoolwork, encourage them to study and try hard. Parents should support the schools and work with teachers and administrators to make sure their children are getting a quality education.
What did you do that was useful today TonyC?
As my grandfather used to say, “Don’t you kids make me get off this porch.”
Gnite,
If someone wishes to kick me in the boys there is always the morning.
But a cup a coffee 1st if you will otherwise I might just get mean. LOL:)
Oky says: What did you do that was useful today TonyC?
Yesterday, specifically, I was writing an academic paper on how to solve a rather difficult engineering problem for which I have invented a new approach and a solution that beats anything else ever done on the problem. Not only is my work original, it has already been tested and adopted by the FAA as a component of ensuring aircraft safety. Generalizing my approach and publishing it will help engineers, physicists, and other scientists in general throughout the world; tens of thousands of them, affecting millions of lives.
Now this paper will be about a four month project, and it took me four months of headaches and obsession to invent a solution in the first place. I did that because I was asked to look into it and see what I could do to help. All in all, this will be about a 200 work-day effort, and yesterday was just one of the days I could devote to it. But I made progress and count it as useful.
What did you do? Drink and surf the net?
http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/pages/book.htm
I haven’t listened to all the video below, just of it.
http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/pages/Video_Gallagher_Iserbyt_Mastery_Learning_OBE_BF.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Thomson_Iserbyt
Oky1,
Perhaps the schools in Oklahoma are so bad because the State has been in control of people who are anti-tax and pro-business as priorities. In that respect Oklahoma ranks at the bottom with more than a few Southern States who don’t make public education a priority. You get what you pay for.
The reason I can draw Blue Prints is because in my mind I see every detail & can write it down & draw in detail 3 dimensional drawings detailing it.
Years of study I believe I now know most every major sub system, component pieces to this current system of Govt/Wallst crap.
Below is on this major hub, The Us Ed Sys., that manages every spook on that wheel of this subcomponent.
Gnite. It’s 100 degree days for a least 6 more with higher heat indexes, I consider it a very dangerous condition for the people around me, mine & our health. Even in AC.
Btw: Tony, I can potty train a pup in 5-6 days, but you know ole dogs, I guess you don’t see the obvious pile you’re leaving. In a few years, when your older & looking back, maybe then you’ll gain some vision. And don’t fret, it’s coming up behind you at 150 miles an hour.
BTW: Oky, you’re drunk.
Oky says: in my mind I see every detail & can write it down & draw in detail 3 dimensional drawings detailing it.
Hm, got the word “detail” stuck rattling around in your cup?
Oky says: In a few years, when your older & looking back, maybe then you’ll gain some vision.
In a few years? You’re a moron, I remember when “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” was a hot new song from some teen group named after a bug … The Beatles.
Oky says: it’s coming up behind you at 150 miles an hour.
Maybe it came up behind you, Oky, but I’m not as unaware as you. I pay out of pocket for imaging, lab, and stress tests on a regular schedule to help ensure the common things that sneak up on most people don’t sneak up on me. You see, I already have some vision.
Now have another drink and sing a song. If you can’t do anything useful you might as well numb your brain and walk into that big saloon in the sky singing.
Were seeing the results come in everywhere from the works of guys like you Tony.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2730791/Are-STUPID-Britons-people-IQ-decline.html
Oky: The only way my work can make people stupider is by saving the lives of people like you so natural selection doesn’t take the morons out of the gene pool. I suppose that is regrettable on one level, but morally I think even moronic life is valuable.
If you think “my work” is teaching, I do not teach and I never have, I am a research-only professor. I worked for 25 years before I decided to retire to academia, for that 25 years I solved technical problems for the military and industry that had nothing to do with education.
A few hundred years of “guys like me” understanding the world and solving problems are the reason the intellectually incompetent lazy “guys like you” aren’t dying at 30 of infection or pneumonia or disease, instead you get to hang around for decades in your drunken stupidity and irritate guys like me with your moronic misunderstandings and pointless pontifications on how unfair society is, even though morons have never had it better. Thanks to guys like me.
TonyC,
I believe you said you’re an atheist & that’s fine with me.
Now I have some issues with organized religion, but I understand those followers mostly have a decent moral compass they live by.
But your moral compass is all over the map.
One example of this is you claim to wish to help humanity yet you support evil tyrants like Bill Gates & Warren Buffet who are viscously attacking humanity “thanks to guys like you”.
Post hung
Oky1, your post has been freed.
** Mike Spindell says:
August 22, 2014 at 4:24 pm **
Mike,
I used the case in Ok for an example, but the problem is nationwide. It’s not surprising to me why IQs are dropping, but it’s shocking that society has yet been unwilling to correct some of the simple known problems. Like removing as many toxins out of the air, water, food, meds as we can.
Pregnant mothers are figuratively having their wombs hammered & then as soon as the kid is born they hit it with a Hep B vax that nearly no kid needs & it gets worst from there.
Breast feed babies have larger brains & are healthier then formula feed babies.
Another issue I ran into while researching alternative energy was why wasn’t there more support for it.
Centralized coal fired/Nat Gas fired power plants collect taxes from rate payers & then the power plants send some of that Tax Money on to Central Control Public Schools & county govts etc. In many cases those schools are the largest employers in town.
In the case of coal, those plants belch out millions of tons/tons of Smog, Mercury, Arsenic, SO2, etc.
With Nat Gas/oil we now have fracking, which in turn is release massive amounts of methane into the air, among problems.
And with a High pressure weather system, like we have around here often, all that smog/toxins hang low at the surface making it even hotter.
Remember mercury causing the phrase “Mad as a Hatter”, that’s because it’s a Neurotoxin.
So what have is Lil Johnny & Susie Q with learning disabilities, respiratory problems & other ailments because the Coal/gas/oil/govt/schools want that revenue even at the expense of the general public & their kids.
Kids have a harder time learning when they are sickly.
Most of the time there’s plenty of solar & wind energy potential available, but it’s always about the money & maintaining centralized control.
And you may note that this is often why it may seem I’m thread jumping is because often other issues are interconnected components to the original issue/thread as I see them.
Thank You James.
Gnite Tony C. I’m toast.
Oky: Viscously? Perhaps you meant viciously.
I don’t believe your conspiracy-theorist nut baggery, in infowars, natural news, etc. Vaccines save lives. They may cost some lives too; I have an autistic child in my family; my wife and I will leave everything we have to his future care. I am convinced by the comparative chemical analysis of his hair, compared to that of his mother’s and father’s pubic hair, that the child is suffering from a deranged mineral transport system, which I also believe is one of the most common sources of autism. In particular an immune system dysfunction in elimination of heavy metal atoms.
You may be interested to know I do not buy into the exoneration of vaccination; I think that is excessive and excessively applied. More importantly, I have read the academic studies that supposedly exonerate vaccines, and disagree strongly with their methodology and application of statistics; they are taking the wrong approach.
Because the question isn’t about all children, the question is about what may be a very tiny subset of children. About 1 in 70 males are getting autism; 1.4%. At the time of the studies, it was closer to 1%. The trials and statistics are not being done correctly when 99% of the population in question is expected to have no reaction whatsoever to a vaccine; their sample sizes must be much larger and different mathematics must be employed to make a small but important change in a tiny population discernible from the noise of change in the 99% population. Imagine, for example you have 1000 kids. There might be 10 in there with the problem, but you don’t know which 10. If you divide this group into two protocols, there is a pretty good chance the 10 will not be evenly divided at all; in fact the chances of an even divide are only 24.6%. The closest divides would be 4:6 or 6:4, a 41% chance, and it means one protocol group has 50% more of the target population than the other group!
That said, vaccines may well contribute to the onset of autism; but I do not think they are the direct problem.
I believe deranged mineral transport is something that occurs naturally, and in a clean non-industrial environment presents less of a challenge to neural development; incidences of autism are strongly correlated to measured levels of atomic heavy metal pollution levels by geography, both in the USA and throughout the world.
************
What makes you think I support Bill Gates? I think that guy is a criminal that made billions through illegal competition, theft, and threats.
I suppose I “support” Warren Buffett, more than Gates, I don’t like their relationship but Buffett’s company, Berkshire, has not acted criminally, to my knowledge. It makes money in ways I consider honorable, pretty simple business that produces value through work, manufacturing, insurance, transportation, etc. That and (like Soros) some simple contrarianism due to truly independent thinking, betting against widespread public perceptions and turning out to be right often enough to offset the losses of turning out to be wrong.
I support vaccinations; even if they kill some people. Polio ruins more lives than vaccination does. I don’t buy into any hyperbole about “forced at gunpoint,” fuck those guys for saying it, they are probably just sociopaths trying to exploit emotions to make a buck. Mandatory vaccination saves lives; if it also costs some, the balance is still positive, even if I and my family are the bad luck victims. We should work to make vaccines safer, not to eliminate them.
Stop dreaming of some unattainable perfect world, Oky. There are better solutions and worse solutions, neither is pure and never will be. Your fantasies of perfection get in the way of progress and cause you to actually advocate for worse solutions, more death and destruction and lost children.
**Tony C. says:
August 24, 2014 at 8:10 am **
TonyC,
I very glad you wrote that post. It’s important to me I give you my reasoned response from my side.
Either the heatwave here will break or I’ll adjust & just as soon as one happens I’ll have you a polite response.
Re: TonyC
** I don’t believe your conspiracy-theorist nut baggery, in infowars, natural news, etc. Vaccines save lives. They may cost some lives too; I have an autistic child in my family; my wife and I will leave everything we have to his future care. I am convinced by the comparative chemical analysis of his hair, compared to that of his mother’s and father’s pubic hair, that the child is suffering from a deranged mineral transport system, which I also believe is one of the most common sources of autism. In particular an immune system dysfunction in elimination of heavy metal atoms. **
I remember you saying you had an autistic person in your family as do I & so do friends of mine so I’ve tried to be respectful on this issue as you at least understand the aftermath of this issue.
It’s also fine you have your sources & opinions you trust as I do.
I also tend to believe some of this is related to heavy metal/industrial toxins. But I would add biological agents as suspect.
** You may be interested to know I do not buy into the exoneration of vaccination; I think that is excessive and excessively applied. More importantly, I have read the academic studies that supposedly exonerate vaccines, and disagree strongly with their methodology and application of statistics; they are taking the wrong approach. **
We’ve all seen corruption across every major sector, like GMOs, & the studies are massaged, cooked, stepped on or Key pieces were buried so I have little faith in their research until it’s data, all their data, has been released in public so anyone that wishes can study it, confirm or refute it.
** believe deranged mineral transport is something that occurs naturally, and in a clean non-industrial environment presents less of a challenge to neural development; incidences of autism are strongly correlated to measured levels of atomic heavy metal pollution levels by geography, both in the USA and throughout the world. **
I agree with you here on this issue.
************
** What makes you think I support Bill Gates? I think that guy is a criminal that made billions through illegal competition, theft, and threats.
I suppose I “support” Warren Buffett, more than Gates, I don’t like their relationship but Buffett’s company, Berkshire, has not acted criminally, to my knowledge. It makes money in ways I consider honorable, pretty simple business that produces value through work, manufacturing, insurance, transportation, etc. That and (like Soros) some simple contrarianism due to truly independent thinking, betting against widespread public perceptions and turning out to be right often enough to offset the losses of turning out to be wrong. **
It seems pointless for me to argue with you here as it’s a matter of public record from the DOJ, FBI, SEC, other govt agencies, & many lawyers who’ve successfully sued all point to Warren Buffet/Bill Gates being creeps & have committed crimes in which the companies should have been placed in bankruptcy court & management sent to jail instead they made plea deals & walked & only had to pay a faction of the damage they cause in fines & without admit guilt in most cases.
IE: Wells Fargo & his insurance connection with AIG/Goldman for starters.
So it’s not my opinion or Alex Jones opinion.
** I support vaccinations; even if they kill some people. Polio ruins more lives than vaccination does. I don’t buy into any hyperbole about “forced at gunpoint,” fuck those guys for saying it, they are probably just sociopaths trying to exploit emotions to make a buck. Mandatory vaccination saves lives; if it also costs some, the balance is still positive, even if I and my family are the bad luck victims. We should work to make vaccines safer, not to eliminate them. **
Here is where your morals & logic fall to pieces.
1st of all, you nor the govt have the Right to physical assault people/kids with a dangerous biological/chemical through mandatory vaccines.
At the point of that happening any person has the right to use violence to repulse the attack.
These biological/chemical vaccines in some cases are the same as a communicable disease released onto the public that once released can not recalled or destroyed.
There’s supposed to be US Laws & protect for the public against this type stuff.
I can’t more strongly suggest you need to go to Wiki & read the Ethics/Morality issues addressed in the Nuremberg Code that came out of the Nuremberg trails.
Your positions on vaccine & GMOs is in direct violation of those codes.
2nd. If your vaccines work & you’re vaccinated why would you demand mandatory vaccines for those of us that will refuse them. It’s illogical on your part because even if we got sick your vaccine is supposed to protect you.
3rd I consider it Child Abuse on your part to support mandatory vaccines for kids for the same reasons list in my 1st complaint.
4th. I agree vaccines can work, but the current vaccines I do not believe have been proven safe or effective. And then there’s the question of how many vaccines should even be given. We don’t need to vaccinating for everything.
**
Stop dreaming of some unattainable perfect world, Oky. There are better solutions and worse solutions, neither is pure and never will be. Your fantasies of perfection get in the way of progress and cause you to actually advocate for worse solutions, more death and destruction and lost children. **
I don’t believe the world will every be perfect & do believe some solutions are better then others & either solution will likely have some negative fall out at times.
I also believe it’s some of your opinions, as noted above, that will cause more death and destruction and lost children.
I’m very liberal politically in many areas. For example if you wish to be a heroin addict, fine, but you’ve not the right to cause trouble for anyone else because of it. But you have no Right to spread Biological/Chemical agents that others have no choice as to if they wish to be expose to or not.
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