Michelle Rhee: Worse Than The Pope?

Sex scandals are common. Here we have one involving the mayor of Sacramento, Kevin "KJ" Johnson, a teenage girl, and Michelle Rhee doing damage control for her beau, KJ. Where are the grown-ups?

From Jim Horn:

And somewhere between misappropriation of federal funds and the sadistic boot camps and the improper sexual physical conduct, Kevin [Johnson] and Michelle [Rhee] fell in love, so much so that Michelle became chair of damage control for Kevin, even as the plan to bring St. Hope to DC went off the rails. Kevin ended up paying back $400,000, no criminal charges were filed, Keven became mayor of Sacramento, and the Obama Administration fired Walpin, the IG who wrote the criminal referral on Kevin, who, by the way, is a round ball bud of the President. Cozy.

Rock On, Claire McCaskill

From HuffPo:

Sen. Claire McCaskill has delivered a sharp threat to the wallets of corporate executives who took large compensation packages even as their companies accepted government bailout funds. Things, she warned, are going to change.

"I've been mad for a while," said the Missouri Democrat. "When we passed the initial half of the TARP money, [there were] rumors about bonuses, the fact that too many of these guys were holding onto the jobs even though they were running these companies into the ground. Reality didn't seem to be the order of the day."

So McCaskill took to the Senate floor on Friday to put an end to the surrealism. In a bill that came to the surprise of reporters, her colleagues, and the White House alike -- there was no coordination with the Obama administration, she said -- the Missouri Democrat called for compensation for employees of bailout recipients to be capped at $400,000 a year. [Emphasis mine]

"They don't get it," McCaskill said on the floor. "These people are idiots. You can't use taxpayer money to pay out $18-billion in bonuses... What planet are these people on?"

Teachers Teach. Students Learn (If They Choose To)

From a NYT article. Students are being asked to attend, and sometimes lead the parent/teacher conference. I don't think I have written much about conferences, but I have always allowed and encouraged my students to attend for exactly the reason this mom mentions in the following statement:

“My daughter is learning that the teacher is not responsible for her learning. Cierra knows that she is responsible for her own success.”

I know some of you are going to find that simple, wrong, or simply wrong, but its very right; teachers do the teaching, students do the learning. To put the responsibility for a student's learning onto the teacher is just backwards. That's of course what NCLB does though; it puts all of the responsibility for student outcomes on someone other than the student. A student takes a test, and a teacher gets graded. Sounds kind of backwards, no?

Kudos to Cierra's mom for raising a child to be responsible for her actions and outcomes. We definitely do not need more folks out there who think they can get bailed out by someone else.

Senate Candidate #5

SC#5 is Jesse Jackson Jr. What a scandal! Looks like Illinois Democrats should all just resign. Horrible! At least Obama has a history of staying away from these scum. That is how people apparently think of Obama--above the fray, ethical, clearly not involved in this nonsense. But still, oy vey!

Update: Seems JJ has been an informant for the FBI against Blago for a long time. I suppose JJ is in the clear now, and poised to become Governor of Illinois!