If anyone is wondering why the previously-tolerant United Federation of Teachers (UFT) is suddenly desperate to sink charter schools, you need to remember what has been the most important decision about the New York City schools in the past decade, the one that has sealed the fate of the city’s schools for the next decade or two. Not the increase in charter schools. Not mayoral control. Not the Campaign for Fiscal Equity court decision. The most important decision is the shift from a teacher retirement age of 62 to a teacher retirement age of 55, with teachers then 55 or over at the time of its enactment not required to put in an extra dime, and those near retirement required to put in extra for just a few years. The result of that decision is a sweet deal for those cashing in and moving out, but will be devastating for New York City’s children – and for younger and future teachers (if the city can even afford to hire teachers to replace those who retire), particularly when the federal stimulus dollars expire. The city’s schools have been, in effect, re-Lindsayed, and will face a repeat of the 1970s as a result.

The UFT wants desperately to disassociate the pension deal with the coming consequences. So does the Bloomberg Administration, which agreed to the deal (why I don’t know). So do the Democrats and Republicans in the New York State legislature, who approved it unanimously. Charter schools, however, operating in the same city with less money but less of that money going to the retired, will be in a position to offer a better education and better pay and working conditions to those teachers actually on the job.  As the walls close in on the 25/55 pension deal, that is a comparison the UFT desperately wants to stop.

(UPDATE: The date of the barbecue has been changed to one week later: Saturday 16th May, 2009.)

Political seasons come and go; some call them “silly season(s)”, some call them other names. Some of the terms I won’t repeat here on this ‘family’ blog site/lol. I don’t call them anything other than what they are (and I will keep that a secret). I just try to have a lil fun during the stressful times, that’s all. You’ve got to be able to laugh at yourself folks: otherwise you will lose it. So; now that I am trying to juggle between running for the city council and blogging about things political in New York (and some other places sometimes), I keep getting my sanity tested near everyday. 

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0409/20833.html

A little over a year ago, I wrote on this blog about my theory of the electorates.

For those of you who missed it, there was a rare matter of fact statement of fact in the Washington Post last week. As a result of the recession Social Security payroll tax revenue is falling, and “the trust fund's annual surplus is forecast to all but vanish next year — nearly a decade ahead of schedule — and deprive the government of billions of dollars it had been counting on to help balance the nation's books.” To balance the nation’s books? You mean there aren’t trillions being saved in the Social Security “trust fund?” “The Treasury Department has for decades borrowed money from the Social Security trust fund to finance government operations. If it is no longer able to do so, it could be forced to borrow an additional $700 billion over the next decade from China, Japan and other investors. And at some point, perhaps as early as 2017, according to the CBO, the Treasury would have to start repaying the billions it has borrowed from the trust fund over the past 25 years, driving the nation further into debt or forcing Congress to raise taxes.” Isn’t this what I said two years ago here? (And other thoughtful people have said over and over again for two decades, but been largely ignored).

“The blame for this disaster lies with state Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith, who lacked the vision and leadership to usher a viable rescue plan through his house.

The blame lies with Brooklyn Sen. Carl Kruger, who led the charge against tolling the East River and Harlem River bridges as a crucial source of funding.

When this department last looked in upon Jonathan Tasini, he had just lost a Democratic Primary campaign for US Senate run on the premise that Hillary Clinton was insufficiently liberal (and that Ned Lamont was barely an improvement). As I’d predicted back then, the punch line of his joke of a crusade was that Tasini ended up getting most of his votes from right wing reactionaries.

The extremely close election in the 20^th Congressional District has partisans on both sides predicting their candidate will win after all the paper ballots are counted. Each side seems to have already determined who received the most votes among the 6,000-10,000 paper ballots that none of them has seen.

Observant readers are used to some inconsistent ideas among newspaper columnists, pundits & editorial pages.

The U.S. monthly employment and unemployment totals have been in the news in recent months, mostly for startling declines in the former. The employment numbers are compiled by state departments of labor, based on surveys of businesses, and then aggregated by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. They are based on the unemployment insurance tax records, but that information doesn’t come in until long after the surveys, when all the taxes are paid. Every March the past survey data is “rebenchmarked” back to what it should have been based on the unemployment insurance tax data that had arrived afterward. It is very difficult for the survey to completely identify a big short run changes in the economy, not the least because those doing the surveying can’t know how many new businesses have started recently, and are thus not included in the list of businesses to be surveyed. This year’s rebenchmarking, as shown by the attached spreadsheet, produced some stunning revisions.