Monthly Archives: April 2011
Daily Benefactor News – 500 Arrested In Syria Crackdown
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500 Arrested In Syria Crackdown – TVNZ
Security forces have arrested some 500 pro-democracy sympathisers across Syria after the government sent in tanks to try to crush protests in the city of Deraa, the Syrian rights organisation Sawasiah said.
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The independent organisation said it had received reports that at least 20 people had been killed in Deraa since tanks moved in on Monday, but communications with the southern town where the protests against President Bashar al-Assad began on March 18 had been cut making it hard to confirm the information.
“Witnesses managed to tell us that at least 20 civilians have been killed in Deraa, but we do not have their names and we cannot verify,” said a Sawasiah official, adding that two civilians were confirmed dead in the Damascus suburb of Douma, which forces entered earlier in the day.
At least 500 were arrested elsewhere in Syria, it said.
Amnesty international, citing sources in Deraa, said at least 23 people were killed when tanks shelled Deraa in what it called “a brutal reaction to people’s demands.”
“By resorting to the use of artillery against its own people today, the Syrian government has shown its determination to crush the peaceful protests at virtually any cost, whatever the price in Syrians’ lives,” said Malcolm Smart, Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Director.
Government forces also stormed the Damascus suburbs of Douma and Mouadhamiya on Monday, shooting and making arrests, a day after they swept into the coastal town of Jabla, where at least 13 civilians were killed, rights campaigners said.
Diplomats said the figures for civilians killed could be as high as 50 in Deraa and 12 in Mouadhamiya, which lies on the road to the occupied Golan Heights southwest of Damascus.
“The regime has chosen to use excessive violence. It worked in 1982, but there is no guarantee it will work again in the age of the internet and phone cameras,” said a senior diplomat referring to the 1982 crushing of a revolt in the city of Hama which killed up to 30,000 people.
Footage posted on the internet by demonstrators in recent days appears to show troops firing on unarmed crowds. In the Damascus suburb of Barzeh residents described security forces firing at unarmed protesters from a heavy machinegun mounted on a truck.
The White House, deploring “brutal violence used by the government of Syria against its people,” said President Barack Obama’s administration was considering targeted sanctions to make clear that “this behaviour is unacceptable.”
Syria has been under US sanctions since 2004 for its support of militant groups. Several Syrian officials, among them Assad’s cousin Rami Makhlouf, a tycoon, are under specific US sanctions for “public corruption.”
Leading human rights campaigner Suhair al-Atassi said Assad has launched a savage war designed to annihilate Syria’s democrats by attacking Deraa, Jabla and Damascus suburbs.
“President Assad’s intentions have been clear since he came out publicly saying he is ‘prepared for war’,” Atassi said, referring to a March 30 speech to parliament.
Security forces and the gunmen loyal to Assad have killed more than 350 civilians across Syria since pro-democracy protests broke out in Deraa, rights groups say. A third of the victims were shot in the past four days as the scale and breadth of a popular revolt against Assad grew.
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The Marxist Moron of the Day
Rachel Maddow, who, like most of MSNBS’s on-air talent just pulls “facts”out of their arsses!
And if Maddow did not win for THAT, she would have won for this!
Calling someone from MSNBC the “top” anything is certainly newsto us.
“I’m not a screamer,” she agrees after the show during a chat in her office, her legs curled up underneath her, and contacts swapped for heavy-framed geekish glasses. “I’m confrontational, but I don’t think that translates into anger.” What it translates into is ratings. In the first quarter of this year, Maddow’s ratings were 26% higher than CNN’s talkshow in the same timeslot (1,065,000 to 848,000), which, incidentally, is hosted by Piers Morgan.
OH goody!
Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr
Ron Paul, YAWN, is running again, make way for the absolutely obnoxious Paulbots!
Sources close to Rep. Ron Paul tell The Daily Caller that the Texas Republican will announce an exploratory committee for president tomorrow afternoon during an appearance in Des Moines, Iowa
There is no way I am not linking this!
The Blog of the day is The Other McCain, and not just because of post titles like this one!
Amy Alkon Says She Does Not Have a Penis and Does Not Hate Black People
Go on and click the link, you know you want to you sick freaks!
Barbour out, now we need more Cain!
Image via Wikipedia
Haley Barbour was never going to win the GOP nomination, so, it is fine with me that he does not even get in the race. And, as The Other McCain says, whatever helps Herman Cain is fine with me!
So we see that popularity with insiders doesn’t count for much, nor did Barbour’s reputation as a brilliant policy guy or a top fundraiser. Barbour’s dropout means that there are now just two Southerners remaining in the 2012 Republican presidential field: former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Georgia businessman Herman Cain.
The constant refrain of those who have resisted Cain’s gathering grassroots momentum is, “Oh, I like Herman, but he can’t really win.” People who say that are paying attention to the wrong things.
Cain has already visited Iowa 15 times in the past year, usually meeting with small groups of conservative activists. (He spoke to 120 members of the Clinton County GOP last Tuesday.) He’s also visiting New Hampshire, South Carolina and other key states. And if you know Herman Cain, you know that people who meet him always like him.
As McCain mentions, let the “Cain can’t win” crowd go ahead and bleat, the history of United States elections is chock full of candidates that “just could never win”. So, let us see what develops between now and the primaries. Until then, go check out why you should support Herman Cain.
Federal Government Doles Out $125 Billion In “Improper Payments”
Federal Government Doles Out $125 Billion In “Improper Payments” – Judicial Watch
With the national debt and federal spending at an all-time high several U.S. government agencies joined forces to make an outlandish $125 billion in “improper payments” last year, an increase of more than $16 billion from the previous year.
This sort of government waste and corruption is hardly an earth-shattering development. Congressional investigators have for years documented the growing crisis of federal agencies making fraudulent payments to those who don’t qualify yet little has been done to correct the situation. In fact, this month’s audit containing the latest figures stresses that previous investigations have “highlighted long-standing, widespread and significant problems with improper payments in the federal government.”
The impropriety is so pervasive that President Obama issued a much-ballyhooed order last summer commanding federal agencies to create a “Do Not Pay List” to protect taxpayer resources and stem abuse. It has done nothing to protect increasingly scarce taxpayer dollars, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of the U.S. Congress.
In its latest report the GAO reveals that federal agencies made $125.4 billion in improper payments in fiscal 2010, marking a substantial increase from the $109.2 billion it dished out in fiscal 2009. The biggest chunk of the fraudulent payments—more than 90%—was made by social spending programs, mainly Medicare (health coverage for the elderly), Medicaid (health coverage for the poor) and the Labor Department’s unemployment insurance.
Improper income tax credits, Social Security and disability payments, free school lunches and food stamps round off the top 10. Incredibly, just a few weeks ago the U.S. Department of Agriculture launched a $5 million campaign to recruit more food-stamp recipients, even though the GAO reveals that the agency doled out nearly $4.8 billion in improper benefits last year due to “incorrect computations, misapplication of an income or resource exclusion and inadequate verification of accounts and wages.”
There seems to be no end in site to the waste, according to GAO investigators, who diplomatically state that “challenges” remain in “determining the full extent of improper payments across the federal government and in reasonably assuring that effective actions are taken to reduce improper payments.” Some agencies don’t even bother reporting improper payments, the GAO says, so the full extent of the problem will never really be known.
Man Repeatedly Masturbates In Front Of Woman Dressed As Statue Of Liberty
Man Repeatedly Masturbates In Front Of Woman Dressed As Statue Of Liberty – Weekly Vice
Kevin Theriault, a 42-year-old Arizona man was jailed Monday after he allegedly walked up to a woman dressed as the Statue of Liberty and masturbated in front of her. And once wasn’t enough apparently.
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According to Tempe police, a woman dressed as the Statue of Liberty was working in front of a tax preparation business when Theriault reportedly walked up to her, pulled out his penis and proceeded to masturbate in front of her.
The woman told investigators that the man had committed the same act on three prior occasions before she finally reported him.
Thinking that the suspect might try again, detectives set up surveillance in front of the business and waited for Theriualt to return. He did.
Theriault allegedly entered the parking lot, unzipped his pants and began to masturbate near the woman just as the woman stated he’d done before.
When questioned about the incidents, Theriualt told detectives that he “just wanted to go home and do his taxes.”
Theriault was booked into the Tempe City Jail on three counts of public sexual indecency and three counts of indecent exposure.
Union Official, Professor Teach How-To College Course In Violent Union Tactics
Union Official, Professor Teach How-To College Course In Violent Union Tactics – Big Government
If you are wondering why some folks are starting to question whether a college education is worth the cost, the video below goes a long way towards explaining it. Recently, the University of Missouri-St. Louis (UMSL) and the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) sponsored two college courses: Introduction to Labor Studies and Labor Politics and Society, to be taught simultaneously through a video conference between to two campuses.
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The Professors are Judy Ancel, Director of Labor Studies at UMKC and Don Giljum, business manager for the International Union of Operating Engineers at Ameren UE in St. Louis. (Bonus: he is a member of the Communist Party.)
In the class, the Professors not only advocate the occasional need for violence and industrial sabotage, they outline specific tactics that can be used. As one of our colleagues pointed out, its the matter-of-factness of it all that is so disturbing.
And yes, the schools, and the professors’ salaries, are funded by taxpayers.
Check back for more explosive, exclusive video later today.
Obama’s EPA Rules Force Shell To Abandon Oil Drilling Plans
Obama’s EPA Rules Force Shell To Abandon Oil Drilling Plans – Fox News
Shell Oil Company has announced it must scrap efforts to drill for oil this summer in the Arctic Ocean off the northern coast of Alaska. The decision comes following a ruling by the EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board to withhold critical air permits. The move has angered some in Congress and triggered a flurry of legislation aimed at stripping the EPA of its oil drilling oversight.
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Shell has spent five years and nearly $4 billion dollars on plans to explore for oil in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas. The leases alone cost $2.2 billion. Shell Vice President Pete Slaiby says obtaining similar air permits for a drilling operation in the Gulf of Mexico would take about 45 days. He’s especially frustrated over the appeal board’s suggestion that the Arctic drill would somehow be hazardous for the people who live in the area. “We think the issues were really not major,” Slaiby said, “and clearly not impactful for the communities we work in.”
The closest village to where Shell proposed to drill is Kaktovik, Alaska. It is one of the most remote places in the United States. According to the latest census, the population is 245 and nearly all of the residents are Alaska natives. The village, which is 1 square mile, sits right along the shores of the Beaufort Sea, 70 miles away from the proposed off-shore drill site.
The EPA’s appeals board ruled that Shell had not taken into consideration emissions from an ice-breaking vessel when calculating overall greenhouse gas emissions from the project. Environmental groups were thrilled by the ruling.
“What the modeling showed was in communities like Kaktovik, Shell’s drilling would increase air pollution levels close to air quality standards,” said Eric Grafe, Earthjustice’s lead attorney on the case. Earthjustice was joined by Center for Biological Diversity and the Alaska Wilderness League in challenging the air permits.
At stake is an estimated 27 billion barrels of oil. That’s how much the U. S. Geological Survey believes is in the U.S. portion of the Arctic Ocean. For perspective, that represents two and a half times more oil than has flowed down the Trans Alaska pipeline throughout its 30-year history. That pipeline is getting dangerously low on oil. At 660,000 barrels a day, it’s carrying only one-third its capacity.
Production on the North Slope of Alaska is declining at a rate of about 7 percent a year. If the volume gets much lower, pipeline officials say they will have to shut it down. Alaska officials are blasting the Environmental Protection Agency.
“It’s driving investment and production overseas,” said Alaska’s DNR Commissioner Dan Sullivan. “That doesn’t help the United States in any way, shape or form.”
The EPA did not return repeated calls and e-mails. The Environmental Appeals Board has four members: Edward Reich, Charles Sheehan, Kathie Stein and Anna Wolgast. All are registered Democrats and Kathie Stein was an activist attorney for the Environmental Defense Fund. Members are appointed by the EPA administrator. Alaska’s Republican senator thinks it’s time to make some changes.
“EPA has demonstrated that they’re not competent to handle the process,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski. “So if they’re not competent to handle it, they need to get out of the way.”
Murkowski supported budget amendments that would have stripped the EPA of its oversight role in Arctic offshore drilling. The Interior Department issues air permits to oil companies working in the Gulf of Mexico.
Airport Passenger Screener Charged In Distributing Child Pornography
Airport Passenger Screener Charged In Distributing Child Pornography – Philadelphia Inquirer
A passenger screener at Philadelphia International Airport is facing charges that he distributed more than 100 images of child pornography via Facebook, records show.
Federal agents also allege that Transportation Safety Administration Officer Thomas Gordon Jr. of Philadelphia, who routinely searched airline passengers, uploaded explicit pictures of young girls to an Internet site on which he also posted a photograph of himself in his TSA uniform.
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Homeland Security agents arrested the TSA officer March 24, and he is being held without bail.
Although the case was unsealed Thursday, neither the indictment nor the news release mentioned Gordon’s job searching airline passengers for TSA.
The arrest comes as TSA grapples with several other incidents involving screeners, including a YouTube video posted last week by parents angry about the pat-down their 6-year-old daughter received at an airport in New Orleans. TSA officials said the pat-down was proper; the parents said the girl was “groped.”
Citing privacy rules, TSA spokeswoman Ann Davis would not say if Gordon has been suspended from his job, but noted that he had been in federal custody since his arrest.
“We can assure the public that he is no longer working at the airport,” Davis said.
Gordon began working as a TSA screener at the Philadelphia airport in December 2005, Davis said. The airport has 900 screeners, she said.
If convicted of the child pornography charges, Gordon, 46, faces a minimum mandatory sentence of five years. The maximum prison term is 250 years and the top fine is $3.2 million.
Gordon is paid $37,000 annually as a TSA screener, records show. He has no prior criminal record, officials said.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Levy, chief of his office’s child exploitation unit, declined to comment Friday.
Gordon’s lawyer, Elizabeth Toplin, an assistant federal public defender, could not be reached for comment via e-mail or phone late Friday.
Tipped by the Delaware County District Attorney’s Office, federal agents began investigating Gordon on March 10, according to an affidavit from a Homeland Security Investigations agent.
The tip allegedly included evidence that Gordon had uploaded five explicit photographs of young girls onto the web site Photobucket.
The federal agent alleged that Gordon’s Photobucket account also included a picture of him wearing his blue TSA uniform.
The indictment alleges that Gordon used at least six Facebook accounts and employed multiple names “to upload and store images of sexual exploitation of minor children.”
The charges detail 104 illicit photographs allegedly uploaded over four weeks in February.
Authorities also seized from Gordon an HP laptop and a four-gigabyte flash drive that they say contained more than 600 images or movies containing child pornography, according to court filings.
Gordon’s job as a TSA screener was in jeopardy last year for unrelated reasons, according to an online newsletter of the American Federation of Government Employees.
Citing a family issue, it said Gordon was having “difficulty maintaining his work schedule.” The union lawyer helped convince TSA officials that a change in shift schedule resolved the problem, the newsletter said, and Gordon returned to work.
Taliban Pulls Off Massive Prison Break In Afghanistan: Over 450 Inmates Freed
Taliban Pulls Off Massive Prison Break In Afghanistan: Over 450 Inmates Freed – The Blaze
Taliban militants dug a lengthy tunnel underground and into the main jail in Kandahar city and whisked out more than 450 prisoners, most of whom were Taliban fighters, officials and insurgents said Monday.
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The massive overnight jailbreak in Afghanistan’s second-largest city underscores the Afghan government’s continuing weakness in the south despite an influx of international troops, funding and advisers. Kandahar city, in particular, has been a focus of the international effort to establish a strong Afghan government presence in former Taliban strongholds.
The 1,200-inmate Sarposa Prison has been part of that plan. The facility has undergone security upgrades and tightened procedures following a brazen 2008 Taliban attack that freed 900 prisoners. Afghan government officials and their NATO backers have regularly said that the prison has vastly improved security since that attack.
But on Sunday night, about 475 prisoners streamed out of a tunnel that had been dug into the facility and disappeared into Kandahar city, prison supervisor Ghulam Dastagir Mayar said. He said the majority of the missing were Taliban militants.
“This is a blow,” presidential spokesman Waheed Omar said. “A prison break of this magnitude of course points to a vulnerability.” He did not provide details on the incident, saying that the investigation had just started.
The prison break also weakens the argument that the international troops are making good progress in handing over more responsibility for security to Afghan forces, which will eventually enable the coalition to leave. President Barack Obama plans to start drawing down forces in July.
The Kandahar escape is the latest in a series of high-profile Taliban operations that show the insurgency is fighting back strongly against the surge of U.S. and NATO forces. Over the past year, tens of thousands of U.S. and NATO reinforcements routed the Taliban from many of their southern strongholds, captured leading figures and destroyed weapons caches.
The militants have responded with major attacks across the nation as the spring fighting season has kicked off. In the past two weeks, Taliban agents have launched attacks from inside the Defense Ministry, a Kandahar city police station and a shared Afghan-U.S. military base in the east. In neighboring Helmand province on Saturday, a gunman assassinated the former top civilian chief of Marjah district, where U.S. Marines started the renewed push into the south. The victim, Abdul Zahir, was also deputy of the provincial peace council.
Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said insurgents dug the 1,050-foot (320-meter) tunnel to Sarposa Prison over five months, bypassing government checkpoints and major roads. The diggers finally poked through to the prison cells Sunday night, and the inmates were ushered through the tunnel to freedom by three prisoners who had been informed of the plan, Mujahid said in a statement.
He said more than 500 inmates were freed, and that about 100 of them were Taliban commanders. The prisoners were led through the tunnel over four and a half hours, with the final inmates exiting around 3:30 a.m., all without drawing the attention of prison guards, Mujahid said. The insurgents said they then used a number of vehicles to shuttle the escaped convicts to secure locations.
Four of those who escaped were provincial-level Taliban commanders, said Qari Yousef Ahmadi, another Taliban spokesman
The highest-profile Taliban inmates would likely not be held at Sarposa. The U.S. keeps detainees it considers a threat at a facility outside of Bagram Air Base in eastern Afghanistan. Other key Taliban prisoners are held by the Afghan government in a high-security wing of the main prison in Kabul.
A man who Taliban spokesmen said was one of the inmates who helped organize the escape from the inside said a group of inmates obtained copies of the keys to the cells ahead of time.
“There were four or five of us who knew that our friends were digging a tunnel from the outside,” said Mohammad Abdullah, who said he had been in Sarposa prison for two years after being captured in nearby Zhari district with a stockpile of weapons. “Some of our friends helped us by providing copies of the keys. When the time came at night, we managed to open the doors for friends who were in other rooms.”
He said they woke the inmates up four or five at a time to get them out quietly. Abdullah spoke by phone on a number supplied by a Taliban spokesman. His account could not be immediately verified.
There are guard towers at each corner of the prison compound, which is illuminated at night and protected by a ring of concrete barriers topped with razor wire. The entrance can only be reached by passing through multiple checkpoints and gates.
An Afghan government official who is familiar with Sarposa Prison said that while the external security has been greatly improved, the internal controls were not as strong. He said the Taliban prisoners in Sarposa were very united and would rally together to make demands from their jailers for better treatment or more privileges. He spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to talk to the media.
The area outside the prison was swarming with security forces – both Afghan and American – after the prison break. Many of the international troops were focused on a house nearby the prison – perhaps an indicator that it was the starting point for the tunnel. Police mounted a search operation Monday to recapture the prisoners and Omar said 13 had been caught by midday.
Asked how the tunnel was dug without anyone noticing, Wesa said only that the incident was still under investigation.
In the 2008 attack, dozens of militants on motorbikes and two suicide bombers assaulted the prison. One suicide bomber set off an explosives-laden tanker truck at the prison gate while a second bomber blew up an escape route through a back wall. About 900 inmates escaped, including 400 Taliban fighters.
Daily Benefactor News – NYC’s Fire-Proof Criminal Teachers Go Back To Class
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NYC’s Fire-Proof Criminal Teachers Go Back To Class – New York Post
They’ve killed, looted taxpayer funds and committed other heinous crimes – but the city can’t keep these criminals out of the classroom.
More than 500 teachers convicted of crimes in the last five years – from drunken driving to assault to manslaughter – are still skulking around the schools because the Department of Education is hamstrung from getting rid of them.
Only those with sex-related convictions can be given the boot immediately – but the rest of the rogues’ gallery gets to continue teaching throughout the arduous process of disciplinary hearings, according to records obtained by The Post.
Among the most vile is Staten Island elementary-school teacher Kim DePrima, who was entrusted with the care of her special-education students even after a conviction for failing to keep her pit bulls from mauling to death a 90-year-old neighbor in August 2008.
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…………………..Kim DePrima
Prosecutors said neighbors warned her and her boyfriend that their dogs, Popeye and Brutus, needed better restraints after they had broken free and run amok.
DePrima hardly learned her lesson and was arrested again in January, when the ex-con she was with shot up the home of one of her ex-boyfriends. An unspent 9mm round was found in her car.
She’s been temporarily sidelined – but allowed to keep her paychecks – and will return to the classroom if acquitted.
But the first manslaughter rap should have been the final straw for DePrima, outraged officials said.
“Why would you allow a convicted felon to teach impressionable young children? What kind of message does that send to them, let alone their parents and the taxpayers of this city?” asked Staten Island District Attorney Daniel Donovan.
“It just seems to fly in the face of common sense.”
The problem for city educrats is the arcane system of hearings afforded to tenured teachers like DePrima, regardless of how their cases play out in court.
After her guilty plea to felony manslaughter, DePrima was entitled to an internal hearing, known by its state education law number as 3020-A, at which she was able to fend off the city’s efforts to give her the heave-ho.
The arbitrator in all 3020-A cases is selected jointly by the state teachers union and the Department of Education.
This arbitrator stunningly saw no connection between DePrima’s inability to control her killer dogs at home and her ability to look after the needs of her elementary-school kids at Stapleton’s PS 57.
DePrima, now 40, was slapped with a fine worth three months’ pay – out of a salary of $81,000 – and allowed to return to the classroom last year at PS 26 in Travis.
By contrast, her boyfriend at the time – a convicted rapist – was sentenced to three years in prison for the mauling.
DePrima’s attorney, Mike Ryan, likened the pit-bull tragedy to a horrible car accident.
“This wasn’t a circumstance where Ms. DePrima went out and intentionally tried to harm someone,” he said. “This was a situation where it was a tragic unfolding of events, and she accepted responsibility for her actions on that day.”
But DePrima is not alone.
Monique Wallace, a special-education teacher formerly assigned to PS 180 in Brooklyn, was convicted in 2009 of stealing nearly $40,000 in federal funds by lying about her job and income on an application for subsidized housing intended for poor families.
City education officials initiated proceedings to fire her, arguing that because her criminal actions were serious and extended over a five-year period, she could not be trusted or deemed qualified to serve as a role model for children.
But Wallace argued, and an arbitrator agreed, that her actions were not relevant to her ability to teach.
The 41-year-old was slapped with a $500 fine and is now earning $63,000 as a teacher at the SEEALL Academy in Mapleton, Brooklyn.
Similarly, Staten Islander Mark Corso, a teacher at IS 51, was busted in April 2006 as part of a “boiler room” investment-fraud scheme he had participated in years earlier.
He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit securities fraud, a Class D felony, in 2009, and was ordered to pay $1.1 million in restitution.
In part because he had served as a cooperating witness for the feds, Department of Education officials couldn’t win their argument before an arbitrator that a Wall Street scammer did not belong in front of students.
Corso, 52, who makes $45,500, is on leave from IS 51 in Graniteville but is still eligible to teach there. He could not be reached for comment.
Department of Education officials said he committed a crime of “moral turpitude” and described the circumstance as akin to keeping a convicted pedophile as a teacher.
According to testimony, Corso said he continued to participate in the scam only to protect himself from organized-crime figures.
Critics of the disciplinary process say part of the problem is that the joint selection of hearing officers can sway arbitrators to a middle-of-the-road decision.
If their rulings are deemed to favor one side considerably over the other, they might risk future assignments – which pay thousands of dollars per day.
Jay Warona, legal counsel for the New York State School Boards Association, said having the state Education Department appoint hearing officers would go a long way toward eliminating the problem.
“We want people to render decisions as they see them,” he said.
But a number of arbitrators say the process is strictly rooted in state law and prior rulings, where the disciplinary system has been characterized as rehabilitative rather than punitive.
“The fundamental question is: Is this personal salvageable, or is she not?” said one arbitrator, who insisted on anonymity because it would put future assignments at risk.
“If she’s salvageable, we should see if we can give her help.”
The city Department of Education, meanwhile, has argued that it should have more leeway in deciding whether someone’s actions make them unfit to serve children.
Its attempts to dismiss a number of misbehaving employees were stymied last year.
Debra Watson, a sticky-fingered school secretary at Brooklyn’s Foundation Academy, was convicted of petit larceny last year after stealing thousands of taxpayer dollars from the Department of Social Services.
She wasn’t tenured when she was busted in January 2008 but had earned tenure by the time the city’s glacierlike disciplinary system caught up with her.
The city sought to boot her, noting her financial responsibilities as a secretary, but she was slapped with only a $1,000 fine and didn’t miss a single day of work.
And the problems don’t just end with the felons.
In September 2008, Bronx teacher Dora Aviles ran after a misbehaving fourth-grade special-education student and tackled him, straddled him, pinned his arms to the floor and wouldn’t let him get up until he had apologized.
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…………………..Dora Aviles
Witnesses testified that the PS 126 student screamed, “Help me! She’s trying to kill me!”
The child also told her, “You’re hurting me! You’re hurting me!”
While not criminal in nature, Aviles’ behavior was deemed by the arbitrator as “something one might have expected from a class bully, not a teacher.”
But he still let her off with a fine of two months’ salary because of her clean record.
At her hearing, Aviles, who makes $64,000 working at PS 63 in Morrisania, claimed that she tripped over the boy and that she apologized to him.
Particularly with mass layoffs on the horizon, education officials say they’re dismayed that they don’t have the right to dismiss seriously misbehaving teachers – including outright criminals – who in most other fields could be fired on the spot.
“Because of the way state law and the contract require that we terminate tenured teachers… we don’t get to make rational decisions about convicted felons,” said Mike Best, the Department of Education’s general counsel.
“And that’s an unfortunate thing.”
And it’s no way to run an effective workplace, he said.
“Particularly in egregious cases, that’s not really the way an employer ought to have to make employment decisions,” he added.
“It should be easier for us to get rid of them.”
—————————————————— NOTE TO READERS ——————————————————
THE DAILY BENEFACTOR now provides you with a large selection of NEWS WIDGETS containing RSS feeds from the most comprehensive news sources on the internet, such as THE DRUDGE REPORT, GATEWAY PUNDIT, THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER, WORLDNETDAILY, POLITICO, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, CNS, MICHELLE MALKIN, BREITBART, and THE JERUSALEM POST. Check them out!
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Gatordoug
darcprynce
Dave C
