Morning Joe's Joe passionately opined today, at the show's round table (temporarily on the road, in Florida) on the need for Romney to launch some bold ideas to win conservatives and draw a stark contrast with Obama, as opposed to just running on a nebulous "successful businessman will save economy" positive and a barbed "Im not Newt" negative. This was spurred by prior discussion that zeroed in on Jeb Bush declining to publicly throw support behind Romney. Joe likes Jeb a LOT and used Jeb's unwillingness to endorse as one more reason why Rommey should go for big conservative ideas, ie, Jeb would be more likely to support Romney if only he would draw a sharper contrast between himself and Obama.
Joe then helpfully offered just such a move for Mitt - go up against the teachers unions! (Joe is a BIG fan of teachers' unions... as the reason Johnny can't read and as evil propagator of multiple national afflictions) According to Joe, not only would this BOLDly distinguish Mitt from the union-enthralled Obama (On this planet?), as the candidate he and other conservatives yearn for, but it just might follow that this would endear him to Jeb. It appears Joe thinks Jeb frets and fumes, as he does, that Obama is in the clutches of the nasty teachers' unions. Putty in their underhanded hands.
News flash beneath the fold, Joe.
Hello? Remember this? link
President Obama and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush will come together at Miami Central High School today to speak about education.
The pair is expected to tout the school as an example of a low-performing school that has rapidly improved on standardized tests.
They will also express bipartisan support for controversial reforms such as opening more charter schools and evaluating teachers based on their students' performance on tests -- and discuss the future of former President George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind policy.
That snippet doesnt even mention both Jeb and Obama are big proponents of merit pay.
I can only imagine that Joe Scarborough suffers from flashes of amnesia, given that he has hosted many a news show, day after day, month after month, in which just such information poured forth from bipartisan-friendly reform pushers, his guests on set, especially since he was in the thick of NBC's extremely biased "Education Nation" - a week long propaganda bonanza for these reforms. How else to explain how he missed that it was Obama who launched a full bore agenda that often whacked away at long held union protections and 'principles' (hard to use that term when theyve been sold out) and was receiving high praise from the likes of Newt Gingrich and Bill Bennett? I guess he also missed Candidate Obama's praise for rightwing reform darling, Michelle Rhee...
here:
But Walker's [Infamous anti-union WI Gov Scott Walker, of course - NYCee] argument - that greedy teachers are putting their own interests over the interests of the public - resonates in part because in recent years, many Democrats have made that argument as well.
Exhibit A is former D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee. Under Democratic mayor Adrian Fenty, she repeatedly clashed with the Washington Teachers' Union, which she said put the interests of adults over those of children. "Cooperation, collaboration, and consensus-building are way overrated," Rhee said at the Aspen Institute's education summit in 2008. She told journalist John Merrow it is imperative that teachers-union bargaining rights exclude issues such as devising a fair teacher-evaluation system.
Since resigning as chancellor last year, Rhee has launched a new organization, StudentsFirst, with the express goal of raising $1 billion to counter teachers unions. Her approach remains confrontational. In a profound sense, Democrats like Michelle Rhee have paved the way for Scott Walker.
But Rhee couldn't have done it alone. Then-candidate Barack Obama endorsed Rhee in a 2008 debate as a "wonderful new superintendent" and later applauded the firing of every single unionized teacher at Central Falls High School in Rhode Island. (The teachers were later rehired.)
For god sakes, Joe, give the guy his due! He got union leaders to cave and agree to their own weakening, to sign on to the reforms, a mandatory aspect of Race to the Top critieria, which accompanied reform laws, which were enacted in 34 states in the mad dash to win Race to the Top. All this was, allegedly, to help "reformed" teachers teach better (What a mess the eval system has become in NY and elsewhere!) and to get that yummy grant money (paltry sum and terribly restricted usage).
In NY, Wall Street's hedge fund operatives assisted big time to get us to a Race to the Top win, pouring millions into the effort to change our laws. (Union leadership flipped under Dem pressure, and we won RttT, ie, teachers and public education lost.) Think these guys care about how well teachers teach the kids? Or could it be they care about the money that further privatizing of the education system will pour into their coffers, under the laws that make it more possible? (These same folks who were so helpful to Obama, Wall Street's operatives and their buddies, Democrats for Education Reform, are now pushing for vouchers in various states)
For more on Reform Dems and Wall Street collusion, etc, see Obama's Education Agenda which leads to illumination from Ravitch. Also, read some of Peter Meyer's accounts, in Education Next, of the successful Wall Street+Dem collusion in the fight for NY to change its laws, on the road to RttT.
Here is a snippet: link
They were helped by a lobbying blitzkrieg led by Joe Williams [Joe Williams is the head of Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) - NYCee] and former Bloomberg campaign manager Bradley Tusk, who put together, with ample funds from Wall Street, Education Reform Now (ERN), a group with a single purpose: to bring the state legislature into the RttT reform fold.
Williams spread ERN money around on everything from brochures and mailings to door knocking in key legislative districts. “We ran $4 to $5 million worth of television ads,” Williams recalls, “blaming the teachers union for losing the chance to win $700 million in round one and urging the legislature to bring home the money for New York.”
The Williams team crafted a campaign not about teacher evaluations or firewalls or charter schools, but about “whether New York should get $700 million from Obama,” says Williams. “We wanted this to be an up or down vote on progress and the money.”
“The union, in my view, did not want to be blamed for not getting Race to the Top,” recalls Joel Klein, then chancellor of New York City’s public schools
On this one, however, NYSUT faced stiff competition from the Williams-led ERN team, which, while telling the public that this was up or down on the money, was telling legislators it was up or down on the nitty-gritty issues of teacher evaluations and charter reform.
[snip]
In the capitol, the union won some accountability and transparency fights—prohibiting for-profit organizations from running charters, making charters adhere to state comptroller audits, and demanding they serve more special education and ELL students—but lost the bigger issues of saturation and the cap, which legislators agreed to raise from 200 to 460.
When I asked Iannuzzi how NYSUT, which used to own the legislature, lost those key parts of the charter fight, he said, “The answer is hedge fund operators…who could write out a check for a million dollars a shot.”
But ERN had also found the key public relations nuance that made the money work: Walking away from $700 million in a recession was not smart. No one would get lost in the weeds on that message.
Which is ironic, as Joel Klein says, since “it is, literally, a drop in the ocean.” New York State spends more than $50 billion a year on K–12 public education; New York City’s school budget is some $22 billion. Seven hundred million, spread out over four years, represented less than one-half of 1 percent of the state’s education spending, and $350 million for Gotham, over four years, is the same droplet. “But if you can use it for the things you care about,” says Klein, “it’s important.”
So I dont know where Joe can find much contrast with Obama for Mitt, except stylistically. Or unless Mitt were to go full Scott Walker, promising to completely blow up collective bargaining, which even Joe has said was a bridge too far (to blow up). That seemingly reasonable attitude by Joe toward collective bargaining was in tandem with most reformista talking heads, after they'd relentlessly bashed teachers/unions/public schools to great effect, pushed the bipartisan rightwing reform agenda successfully, to concession after concession, ie, victory. So, they kindly drew the line at abolishing collective bargaining... once its been so restricted and weakened, its essentially a paper tiger. Awesome!
G W Bush couldnt have gone nearly as far right on ed reform as Obama, and neither could Mitt. But Obama could and did. He boldly and proactively grabbed the right wing reform baton from Bush, and, with the help of his bipartisan troops and corporate media, ran it that long, extra-special mile to the finish line.
Obama IS the Democratic version of "Only Nixon Could Go to China," when it comes to enacting rightwing education deform.
Now if someone would kindly deliver the news to Joe.
(Election season is so painfully funny, on so many levels, I could almost cry.)