Anyone looking to order new PJSTA apparel can do so by clicking here. The deadline for ordering is Wednesday, September 24th. The order will be placed on that Thursday and the apparel should be in by early October. All payments can be made upon arrival of the merchandise. We are offering a wide variety of apparel in both red and blue!
I have a lot of thoughts to share on the role of our unions in yesterday’s Cuomo victory in the Democratic primary. Within the next day or two, when I have the time to sit down and get those thoughts on paper I will share them. In the meantime our friend Reality-Based Educator who blogs over at Perdido Street School absolutely hit the nail on the head in his piece today.
Via Perdido Street School…
The only group of people who did more work than de Blasio to help Cuomo and his bank lobbyist running mate win the primary?
The UFT/AFT/NYSUT leaders:
1) who engineered a putsch at NYSUT to make sure the old leaders who had turned on Cuomo were ousted
2) who threatened the Working Families Party with dissolution if WFP gave their ballot slot to Zephyr Teachout
3) who refused to endorse Teachout in the primary and provide much needed cash and support for the Teachout/Wu campaign (as PEF did) and
4) who made robocalls for the campaign.
De Blasio, Weingarten, Magee, Mulgrew – four reasons why Andrew Cuomo will win re-election this year handily in the general election and his bank lobbyist running mate will ride along with him into power.
Head on over and read the entire thing. There are some good quotes from Tim Wu as well on the role that De Blasio played.
If you are into moral victories there were many to be had last night. Zephyr Teachout, while not winning the primary, garnered nearly 35% of the vote, an astounding total for a virtually unknown candidate facing off against an incumbent governor with loads of Wall Street cash. Cuomo had a $35 million war chest, including money from NYSUT, nearly forty times the amount of money Teachout raised. Interestingly enough, Teachout had over 8,000 donors to her campaign while Cuomo had less than 1,000. Teachout won 30 of New York State’s 62 counties, which is fairly stunning. Given their discrepency in fund raising it appears as though Cuomo’s votes cost about $65 per vote while Teachout’s cost $1.50.
Teachout did not endorse Cuomo in her concession speech. She reportedly could not call him to conceded either as he wouldn’t give her his phone number. He is a classy guy that Andy Cuomo.
Teachout’s comments to her reporters last night pretty much say it all. Via the Washington Times…
“What we have done here is incredible.,” Teachout told her supporters in a Manhattan bar. “I will not be your next governor but the Democrats of this state have been heard.”
“Anything over 25 percent against an incumbent with 40 times as much money, one of the most famous names in politics, and a four year’s head start on me, I am really, really proud of what we did.”
I can appreciate the moral victories. I can appreciate the fact that Cuomo’s small margin of victory against a largely unknown challenger virtually eliminates any opportunity for him on the national stage. However I still find myself disappointed and angry. The reality is that we have four more years of a governor who waged all out war on teachers, students, and local communities in his first term. The reality is that big money Wall Street donations bought another election. Perhaps what cuts deepest for me is the reality that with an opportunity to make this a really interesting election, the leadership of our parent unions not only failed to support Teachout, but worked to win the election for the governor’s ticket. But with friends like that who needs enemies? I’ll have more on that later.
Reality-Based Educator with a good write up of the primary here.
Just a reminder that we will once again “wear red for public ed” every Wednesday this year! Here is a reminder from last year about why we launched our #red4ed campaign. Use the hashtag on social media to explain why you support public education. More red shirts are available if you are interested.
Please join us for a fundraiser to help support the daughter of a
Boyle Road fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. Leary…
For a clearer copy of the flyer click here: Aquarium Fundraiser
If you do not work in Comsewogue but want to attend please send your payment to either Lisa DeLuca or Tara Falasco at Boyle Road Elementary School, 424 Boyle Road, Port Jefferson Station, NY 11776.
To visit the Morgan Leary GoFundMe page click here.
Here is how it should look…
We have known for quite a while that the UFT/NYSUT/AFT leadership has been selling out the membership for quite some time now. But today’s deplorable news about AFT President Randi Weingarten making robo calls for Kathy Hochul goes even further than I ever thought they could go. The New York Post describes why it is important for Cuomo to get a Hochul win over Wu in the Democratic Primary tomorrow…
a Wu victory would result in a Cuomo/Wu ticket on the Democratic line in the November election but potentially disastrous Cuomo/Hochul tickets on the Working Families, Independence, and Women’s Equality lines, where no primaries are slated.
Under the state Election Law, votes for a Cuomo/Hochul ticket in November would not be added to the tally for the Cuomo/Wu ticket, potentially costing Cuomo hundreds of thousands of votes.
The UFT/NYSUT/AFT leadership can’t let their pal Cuomo get hurt so Randi is out stumping for the bank lobbyist, Hochul today.
Tomorrow morning I will cast my ballot for Tim Wu as I had always planned to. The robo calls from Cuomo shill Randi Weingarten only cements that. This move also further reinforces my decision to reduce my VOTE COPE contribution to $0.00 this year. If only I could reduce my AFT dues to the same.
Nearly four years ago Andrew Cuomo was elected governor of our state. Our profession has never been the same. He came in promising to be the lobbyist for students. Since then he has underfunded public education while providing tax cuts for corporations and New York’s wealthiest citizens. He has pushed waves upon waves of high stakes testing onto our students and teachers. He has presided over the implementation of the tax cap that has decimated school districts across the state. He has pushed for an increase in the number of charter schools, robbing even more money from public schools. He pushed for a teacher evaluation plan based upon junk science, and he even called for the “death penalty” for schools with failing scores on his high stakes tests.
To be clear, there has been no greater enemy of public education in New York State the last four years than Andrew Cuomo. In the years since Cuomo has taken office I have watched colleagues laid off. I have seen others retire and not be replaced. I have watched valuable programs and resources be slashed from our district while the number of hours dedicated to useless high stakes testing has soared. In my last year teaching before Governor Cuomo took office I had a class of 17 (!!!!) fifth graders. This year I have 27 fifth graders. While not all problems in our industry can be traced back to Cuomo, nobody has played a bigger role in the decimation of public education than he has.
We’ve known for a while that he was a crooked politician. Based on yesterday’s classless and cowardly act we know he isn’t a much better person either. So it is high time that we boot Cuomo out of the highest position in state government. Tonight I call on every public educator in New York State, every parent whose children have been exposed to the abusive education reform agenda of the last four years, and every person who attended the #NoMoCuomo rallies this past spring to dedicate the next two days to ousting Cuomo from power. A few ways you can help…
Cuomo has beaten us up for four years. It’s time to give him his Eric Cantor moment!
At yesterday’s Labor Day parade in New York City, Zephyr Teachout approached Andrew Cuomo. The same Andrew Cuomo who has refused to debate her, while outrageously claiming that debates do a disservice to democracy. Not only did Cuomo not debate her yesterday, but he didn’t shake her hand either. As a matter of fact he refused to even acknowledge her presence.
According to the Daily News Cuomo’s running mate, Kathy Hochul, also refused to acknowledge Teachout who even went as far as tapping Hochul on the shoulder.
Teachout said “hi” to Cuomo, the governor ignored her like she was the invisible woman and repeatedly asked, “Where’s Mayor Bill de Blasio?” Hizzoner waded through the crowd and gave Cuomo a kiss on the cheek.
Teachout also tapped Cuomo’s running mate, former Congresswoman Kathy Hochul, on her shoulder. Hochul was also frosty. She never turned around to face Teachout, giving her a steady view of her back.
“I just wanted to say hello as a courtesy,” Teachout said after Cuomo’s snub. “We’ve been running against each other, and it seems pretty clear by now he’s not going to debate.”
Cuomo has refused to debate the Fordham law professor.
“Someone get her out of here!” someone screamed.
…
“I know she was the parade, but I didn’t get a chance to talk to her,” he (Cuomo) said.
Ah yes, Cuomo didn’t get a chance to talk to her. He makes it seem as though he frantically searched for her yet their paths never crossed. Meanwhile she stood two feet away saying “hi” to him.
Andrew Cuomo is the worst kind of politician. He is corrupt and has consistently put the needs of his Wall Street cronies ahead of the people of New York. The video below of the encounter with Teachout showed that he is not just a bad politician, but he is a classless coward as well. The same can be said for Kathy Hochul and Bill de Blasio.
The video is nauseating, compounded only by the appearance of the UFT President (and member of the NYSUT Board of Directors) Michael Mulgrew joining the Cuomo crew for the parade (see the :26 second mark of the video… the guy in the blue UFT hat is Mulgrew).
More on how you can help Teachout in the final days of her campaign before Tuesday’s primary in a little bit.
Labor Day Parade 9-6-14 ZT from John Kenny on Vimeo.
The man who once dubbed himself “the lobbyist for students,” before taking a wrecking ball to New York State’s public education system, now claims that he is refusing to debate his opponent in the Democratic primary, Zephyr Teachout, because he thinks that debates do a disservice to democracy.
“I’ve been in many debates that I think were a disservice to democracy,” he added. “So anyone who says debates are always a service to democracy hasn’t watched all the debates that I’ve been in.”
Huh?
So Cuomo thinks mayoral control of schools, which take school control away from local communities and give it to the mayors of those cities, is just swell. He supports the reform agenda pushed by John King and Merryl Tisch and loathed by virtually every parent and educator in the state. Yet debating an opponent is where Cuomo draws the line on things that do a disservice to democracy?
Regardless of what he is saying, Cuomo is scared. He can feel the surging momentum of Teachout and knows that giving her a platform to make him defend his abysmal record, which has benefitted only big banks and billionaires, could put him in really dangerous territory when it comes to the primary next week.
With Cuomo running scared it makes me harken back to what our friend Reality-Based Educator wrote about him last year, when Cuomo wasn’t in hiding but was instead attacking public schools…
If Governor Cuomo thinks it is time some schools be given the “death penalty” for struggles that are often beyond their means to fix, then it is time for teachers of all political ideologies to get together and help pull the plug on the 2014 Cuomo re-election plan and the Cuomo 2016 presidential plan.
Andrew Cuomo is a thug and a bully and a crook, that we’ve known for a while.
Now, after the “death penalty for schools” statement, he is also a war criminal against public schools.
It is time to put an end to his Reign of Terror.
We finally have a chance to pull the plug on Cuomo. As early as the Democratic primary next Tuesday. Join us tomorrow in Hauppauge as we rally in support of Zephyr Teachout. As we rally in support of public schools. As we rally to end Andrew Cuomo’s Reign of Terror.
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