New Bedford is no better, and now it's directly related to the schools

New Bedford has been in deep trouble for a couple of years. I'll let you guess why. Suffice it to say there are people with some kind of power and an agenda to completely change the face of this city. Change it to a face like theirs. There are businesses leaving and being bought out, companies are changing hands and people are being removed from their long time jobs because they're not the type of people this new regime wants here. I don't believe most of the people who live here even understand that it's happening. 

But they can see what's happening to teachers. New Bedford High School needs to move up from a level 4 school or the state is going to come in and take over. So the new Superintendent has chosen what they call a "turnaround plan" to fix the situation. This requires firing 50% of the staff in order to get a chunk of money. But apparently according to reports from teachers she fired 100% of the teachers just before Christmas telling them they would need to re-apply for their jobs. Most people still think this means she's going to hire back 50% of the teachers. Why should she? She doesn't have to. They just believe that she will. Or better yet that she'll only get rid of 29% because she could count last year's firings as part of the 50%. But she still already fired 100%. This is not something that is going to happen in the future. It already happened. There's no more talking or negotiating. It's a done deal. 

What if those jobs reset to starting teacher salaries? Are teachers who had earned much more going to apply for those jobs, or are they going to move on to some other school system where they can be paid something close to what they were getting? Won't that just drive all the experienced teachers elsewhere? Isn't that what they probably wanted in the first place? They'd get brand new inexperienced teachers with a much smaller budget for salaries that they can brag about later to the types who just want government to "cut spending" no matter what the cost. If the kids don't learn, if the teacher turnaround becomes a constant problem who cares? Spending is down. Besides their type of people send their kids to private school anyway. That will also leave good students who had good teachers, with newbs who can't possibly help them get ready for college the way the experienced teachers who were chased out of town would have. Does no one see this future except me? I think everyone is so stunned by the heavy handed measures that have already been discussed that they haven't followed these thoughts through to the endgame. No more free public education = an illiterate slave class. 

What doesn't help is that local talk radio and the local newspaper are firmly on the side of the new regime. I wonder how that happened? Maybe that's how the new regime came to power in the first place. Maybe this is the destruction of an entire community. Maybe Hitler's rolling around in his grave because he wishes he'd thought of it. Make them turn on each other. Make life so undesirable that they just leave. The sad thing is the number of minorities in the community who still don't get it. They don't know what's happening so they're not only not doing anything about it. Some of them are going along with it. Divide and conquer. Isn't it obvious?

Hey, it's been a while

The world is crazy. Where I live I don't belong. I never did. We got a new mayor here and I don't have any idea what's going on. It almost seems like we don't have one. So there's nothing really to talk about locally unless there's stuff going on behind the scenes that I don't know about.

Back to the world being crazy. There's something going on that I don't understand. My fellow man, or maybe really my fellow American, is really drinking the Kool-Aid. It's fear-flavored and I don't know why they are chugging it but they are. The news cycle after 9/11 trained people to be afraid but it's a long time now. People should be older, wiser.

But no. Last week a jackass shot up a bunch of people in a movie theater in Colorado. And now people who should know better, people in my generation are afraid. Just really generally afraid. The box office for two weekends has been lower than expected because people are afraid to go to the theater. They've not only allowed this "person" to change their lives but they're also just being stupid. Once an event happens, it's happened. If you weren't in that theater, congratulations, you weren't shot. Why now be afraid, nationwide, after the fact? That makes no sense to me. It happened already. And now you're afraid? I don't understand people. And they're obsessed with it. They can't get off the subject. They just want to know why. Supposedly.

There is no why. Don't we know this? Shouldn't we all know this? I think we do. So are people just talking to talk because that's the subject right now? I almost feel like they're not really afraid and not really wondering, they're just talking because that's the subject to talk about and they want to be included in being afraid with the afraid concerned nice people who care so much about the people who died that they're going to stop living until everyone else decides it's okay to go back to normal. Is it social networking that's making people follow the herd, the incredibly stupid herd, even more than ever?

I don't know. Anyway, that's what frightens me. The herd.

So am I a liberal, a tea-partier or what?

I have no idea anymore. I think it's good that there is a Tea Party. Washington needed shaking up. In a time of crisis (?)* their plans could upset the whole applecart. Meaning we could all die. lol It's not funny. But what they want is right, but it's not necessarily the right time to do it.

My opinion on the debt ceiling crisis: I liked Boehner's plan. Raise it for now, but have another crisis date looming so they'll be forced to do the things they probably should have been doing all along. Cutting waste and fraud, etc. But will these ninnies even cut waste and fraud, or will they let illegal aliens stay and get public assistance and college money Americans can't get, while cutting things like education and medicare. It's a problem because they always go for the wrong things.

So whose side am I on anyway? I really can't tell you. I think we're screwed either way. It almost makes you not want a government at all, which is what the Tea Party sort of really wants. But the anarchist way is much too dangerous. Overpopulation means it really isn't possible for a decent person to just go out there and pull themselves up by their bootstraps. People need help.

And as far as I'm concerned they should get it. So maybe I'm a socialist? I always wanted universal healthcare. And I think our education system should be totally reformed but also mostly free. For Americans, that is. I think government's main purpose is to provide a safe secure environment for people, so that means fixing roads and infrastructure. I think we should really lock down our borders. We should be creating jobs on both those fronts putting Americans back to work strengthening our country. Americans working means Americans buying means economic recovery. Isn't it really that simple? What don't they get about that?

I'm curious to see what's going to happen but kinda scared too. I really don't think they have any idea what they're doing.

*I'm not sure we're even in a crisis right now, because I just can't trust these people.

Only violence against Guatemalans is intolerable

So in today's Standard Times the mayor says that hate crimes will not be tolerated. Apparently some kid stabbed a Guatemalan man the other day. People get stabbed here all the time. Sometimes they get shot even. But I guess that can be tolerated because people don't count, only certain kinds of people count. Or only certain people who will get you some kind of headline that makes you proud of yourself as a supposed hippie do-gooder count. Well New Bedford is full of crime that goes unchecked every day. But we can ignore all that. If you really weren't racist, you'd want everyone to be treated equally meaning everyone who is the victim of a crime should feel the support of the community not specific members of the community who may or may not be part of the community legally. What's right and what's wrong compared to the law and what the law enforcement people seem to think are laws around here seem to be up to individual opinion. Go ahead and prosecute the hell out of this kid and then prosecute the hell out of everyone else who is victimizing innocent people in this craphole of a city. I am sick to death of double standards and corruption.

New Bedford Half-Marathon

So this year's half-marathon was much better organized than last year's and it seemed a lot more people came out too. Here are some videos of the race.

Catching Up on New Bedford

Catching up soon....

The news is going to kill us

You know, I haven't posted in a long while. I've been too freaked out to post. EVERYTHING IS WRONG. You can't get over one thing before something else happens. Whether it's earthquakes, oil spills, the burning hot world, killer mosquitoes, countrywide flooding, trapped miners, or gigantic hurricanes coming to your house, the average person does not have a moment anymore to call down. I personally can't take it anymore.

I live on the east coast and right now they're telling us all to have an evacuation plan for Hurricane Earl. THE WHOLE EAST COAST. Where the hell is the whole east coast supposed to go? Anyway, I don't have a car so I guess I'll just have to wade it out. Not funny really. But the point is they're panicking us because of their failures with Katrina. Katrina was such a problem because of where it hit. New Orleans is below sea level. I don't know how many places on the east coast are below sea level but it's not everyone. Are the other places that got hit by Katrina still bad off? I don't know they don't say. But they did a whole week on Katrina on CNN because they can't get over it. New Orleans looked a lot better off mentally than the media did.

The media is our problem. They keep freaking everyone out about everything. I don't know why. I don't know how much power they think people have over things. They want to keep us focused on these issues, but for what? We can't do anything about them. Future disasters are going to affect people too. That just can't be helped. But this constant panic making people think they're responsible for fixing everything and making sure it never happens again. They've got people in a mental vice. It's too much. It's been too much. And they're not going to stop.

The one thing I'm absolutely sure they did get people to do is to create this wretched economy. It was their panic that they spread to normal people that got people to cash in their investments and close their accounts that started us on this tumble. You can blame the housing crash all you want but that was one of the things that really got it rolling. And this was all after it started going downhill the day after the election that made George W. Bush president. People thought the salad days were gone when Gore didn't make it, they panicked, and that's when the stock market started diving. Then after 9/11, and don't we all remember how very much the media taught us to panic that day, it was pretty much a done deal, starting with the airline industry.

They're still doing it. They still can't shut up. They keep spreading the fear and honestly, I kinda think it's too late now. How can we possible get our minds back from these fear mongers?

It's about F'in time!

Investigation into Jackson, Murphy, Haim deaths

This has been going on for so long. I wondered how many high-profile people they were going to let die first. You can just imagine how many normal people succumbed to these vipers.