Rubber Rooms for Everyone.......

Sound familiar? That's because the Big Three Auto Makers do the same thing with their union employees.......no wonder they needed billions of dollars of our money to bail them out, and like them, we bail our schools out year after year, levy by levy........next in line....the US Postal Service, Amtrak, the media, and healthcare workers......we'll all be in rubber rooms.

700 NYC teachers are paid to do nothing

By KAREN MATTHEWS, Associated Press Writer Karen Matthews, Associated Press Writer Mon Jun 22, 5:20 pm ET

NEW YORK – Hundreds of New York City public school teachers accused of offenses ranging from insubordination to sexual misconduct are being paid their full salaries to sit around all day playing Scrabble, surfing the Internet or just staring at the wall, if that's what they want to do.

Because their union contract makes it extremely difficult to fire them, the teachers have been banished by the school system to its "rubber rooms" — off-campus office space where they wait months, even years, for their disciplinary hearings.

The 700 or so teachers can practice yoga, work on their novels, paint portraits of their colleagues — pretty much anything but school work. They have summer vacation just like their classroom colleagues and enjoy weekends and holidays through the school year.

"You just basically sit there for eight hours," said Orlando Ramos, who spent seven months in a rubber room, officially known as a temporary reassignment center, in 2004-05. "I saw several near-fights. `This is my seat.' `I've been sitting here for six months.' That sort of thing."
Ramos was an assistant principal in East Harlem when he was accused of lying at a hearing on whether to suspend a student. Ramos denied the allegation but quit before his case was resolved and took a job in California.

Because the teachers collect their full salaries of $70,000 or more, the city Department of Education estimates the practice costs the taxpayers $65 million a year. The department blames union rules.

"It is extremely difficult to fire a tenured teacher because of the protections afforded to them in their contract," spokeswoman Ann Forte said.

City officials said that they make teachers report to a rubber room instead of sending they home because the union contract requires that they be allowed to continue in their jobs in some fashion while their cases are being heard. The contract does not permit them to be given other work.

Ron Davis, a spokesman for the United Federation of Teachers, said the union and the Department of Education reached an agreement last year to try to reduce the amount of time educators spend in reassignment centers, but progress has been slow.

"No one wants teachers who don't belong in the classroom. However, we cannot neglect the teachers' rights to due process," Davis said. The union represents more than 228,000 employees, including nearly 90,000 teachers.

Many teachers say they are being punished because they ran afoul of a vindictive boss or because they blew the whistle when somebody fudged test scores.

"The principal wants you out, you're gone," said Michael Thomas, a high school math teacher who has been in a reassignment center for 14 months after accusing an assistant principal of tinkering with test results.

City education officials deny teachers are unfairly targeted but say there has been an effort under Mayor Michael Bloomberg to get incompetents out of the classroom. "There's been a push to report anything that you see wrong," Forte said.

Some other school systems likewise pay teachers to do nothing.
The Los Angeles district, the nation's second-largest school system with 620,000 students, behind New York's 1.1 million, said it has 178 teachers and other staff members who are being "housed" while they wait for misconduct charges to be resolved.
Similarly, Mimi Shapiro, who is now retired, said she was assigned to sit in what Philadelphia calls a "cluster office." "They just sit you in a room in a hard chair," she said, "and you just sit."
Teacher advocates say New York's rubber rooms are more extensive than anything that exists elsewhere.

Teachers awaiting disciplinary hearings around the nation typically are sent home, with or without pay, Karen Horwitz, a former Chicago-area teacher who founded the National Association for the Prevention of Teacher Abuse. Some districts find non-classroom work — office duties, for example — for teachers accused of misconduct.

New York City's reassignment centers have existed since the late 1990s, Forte said. But the number of employees assigned to them has ballooned since Bloomberg won more control over the schools in 2002. Most of those sent to rubber rooms are teachers; others are assistant principals, social workers, psychologists and secretaries.

Once their hearings are over, they are either sent back to the classroom or fired. But because their cases are heard by 23 arbitrators who work only five days a month, stints of two or three years in a rubber room are common, and some teachers have been there for five or six.
The nickname refers to the padded cells of old insane asylums. Some teachers say that is fitting, since some of the inhabitants are unstable and don't belong in the classroom. They add that being in a rubber room itself is bad for your mental health.

"Most people in that room are depressed," said Jennifer Saunders, a high school teacher who was in a reassignment center from 2005 to 2008. Saunders said she was charged with petty infractions in an effort to get rid of her: "I was charged with having a student sit in my class with a hat on, singing."

The rubber rooms are monitored, some more strictly than others, teachers said.
"There was a bar across the street," Saunders said. "Teachers would sneak out and hang out there for hours."

Judith Cohen, an art teacher who has been in a rubber room near Madison Square Garden for three years, said she passes the time by painting watercolors of her fellow detainees.

"The day just seemed to crawl by until I started painting," Cohen said, adding that others read, play dominoes or sleep. Cohen said she was charged with using abusive language when a girl cut her with scissors.

Some sell real estate, earn graduate degrees or teach each other yoga and tai chi.
David Suker, who has been in a Brooklyn reassignment center for three months, said he has used the time to plan summer trips to Alaska, Cape Cod and Costa Rica. Suker said he was falsely accused of throwing a girl's test sign-up form in the garbage during an argument.

"It's sort of peaceful knowing that you're going to work to do nothing," he said.
Philip Nobile is a journalist who has written for New York Magazine and the Village Voice and is known for his scathing criticism of public figures. A teacher at Brooklyn's Cobble Hill School of American Studies, Nobile was assigned to a rubber room in 2007, "supposedly for pushing a boy while I was breaking up a fight." He contends the school system is retaliating against him for exposing wrongdoing.

He is spending his time working on his case and writing magazine articles and a novel.
"This is what happens to political prisoners throughout history," he said, alluding to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. "They put us in prison and we write our `Letter From the Birmingham Jail.'"

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Joe Manzoli and Christy Mihos

I received a Father’s Day Quiz from Marshall Horwitz of Holden Ma asking who was the chief architect that led to the demise of the Roxbury, Dorchester, Mattapan corridor in the middle 60's to early 70s. It was a predominately Jewish neighborhood back then. The answer was Barney Frank, correctly answered by Joe Manzoli.

I am not surprised Joe had the correct answer because he is probably the foremost politically savvy Republican activist in this state. He also grew up in Mattapan which may explain his tenacity and his success to get Republicans elected in this the blue state.

I met Joe last year when he was the campaign manager for Jeff Beatty for U.S Senate. I saw how he built a network of thousands of volunteers form Boston to the Berkshires for Beatty who got a million votes in a tough year for Republicans in Massachusetts and indeed this nation.

The good news is that Joe is now campaigning for Christy Mihos for Governor and is teaming up with Dick Morris. Morris is the foremost political consultant in this country. He helped Ed King and Bill Weld get elected Governor as well as led the Prop 2 ½ campaign back in the early 80’s.

Christy Mihos who is best known for battling waist and corruption on the Big Dig and the Mass Turnpike is no slouch either. A true Citizen Patriot and reformer, Mihos is successful businessman who has the funds and resources to beat Deval Patrick and win the corner office for Republicans.

The only other question would be who should be his lieutenant governor. Who knows? Perhaps we can get Jeff Beatty to run!

- Sam

ACLU: Helping Hamas raise U.S. dollars

Want to raise more money for the nefarious? Emerson is known for the quality and depth of his research.

ACLU Recommendations Would Mean "More Money for Hamas"IPT News
June 22, 2009
http://www.investigativeproject.org/1073/aclu-recommendations-would-mean-more-money-for

The American Civil Liberties Union released a report June 16 (together with
a You Tube video) attacking the U.S. government's efforts to shut down
terrorist-financing charities. The report was based on 120 interviews, 115
of which were conducted with Muslim community leaders and other Muslims
"directly affected by" U.S. government policies regarding the charities.

It suggests (contrary to a substantial body of evidence) - that the U.S.
government was wrong to have acted against the Holy Land Foundation for
Relief and Development, the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, the Global
Relief Foundation and other charities accused of raising money for terrorist
organizations. The report also perpetuates the myth that the United States
government may be planning to prosecute persons for unwittingly contributing
to charities that were fronts for terrorism.

The ACLU asserts that post-September 11 policies targeting these charities
have a "disproportionate" effect on Muslims and "are undermining American
Muslims' protected constitutional liberties and violating their fundamental
human rights to freedom of religion, freedom of association, and freedom
from discrimination."

It recommends a series of policy changes which include repealing Executive
Order 13224, issued shortly after September 11, which creates mechanisms for
designating persons and organizations as "specially designated global
terrorists" (SDGTs). The ACLU also calls on the FBI to employ the" least
intrusive means" necessary to accomplish its investigative objectives and
urges the federal government to ban law enforcement practices that
"disproportionately" target people "based on ethnicity, national origin or
religion."

In his June 4 Cairo speech, President Obama asserted that there are too many
impediments to Muslim efforts to fulfill their obligation to give charity,
or zakat. As we have previously noted, this is patently untrue. The only way
"loosen" restrictions would be to effectively to cripple current U.S. law
barring material support for terrorism.

The ACLU recommendations mean "more money for Hamas," said Dennis Lormel,
who created the FBI's terror financing section. Terrorist organizations like
Hamas and Hezbollah use the charities to build hospitals and provide food to
the poor to win the trust of local Muslims. They then use "this credibility
to enlist children as suicide bombers," Lormel said.

But if the ACLU had its way, the U.S. government would lose critical tools
for preventing U.S. charities from sending money to terrorist organizations.
Using the "least intrusive means" would make it much more difficult (if not
impossible) to shut down terrorist- financing charities like HLF, Lormel
told IPT News, because they could deny the government the ability to use
methods like wiretaps which were critical to building a case against the
group for providing funds to Hamas.

Ending the SDGT designations would take away a valuable deterrent to abuse.
"We know from experience that people stop donating to these charities once
they are designated as supporters of terrorism," added Lormel, a 28-year FBI
veteran who oversaw its stepped-up efforts to shut off the flow of funds to
terrorist organizations after September 11.

The ACLU complaints about the "disproportionate" impact of these
investigations on Muslims overlook the reality that most of "the terrorist
violence we've seen the past eight years comes from the Muslim world," says
Jonathan Schanzer, who worked as a Treasury Department counterterrorism
analyst in the George W. Bush Administration.

One myth running through the ACLU report is that the government may be
preparing to prosecute persons who contributed to such charities out of
ignorance.

American law makes it illegal to provide support to any entity designated a
terrorist group by the federal government. But the 1995 executive order
signed by President Clinton and legislation enacted the following year by
Congress cementing it into law do not affect donations to relief agencies
that have not been so designated.

Virginia Imam Mohamed Magid claims that Muslims have a legitimate fear that
they could innocently contribute to a charity today and find themselves
under investigation several years later if the government concludes that the
charity is financing terror.

But for someone to be convicted of a crime, prosecutors must prove they knew
that money would go to benefit a terrorist organization.

Before the Treasury Department shut down the HLF in 2001, it had been
considered the largest Muslim charity in the United States. Five leaders of
the organization were convicted and sentenced to long prison terms for
providing $12 million to Hamas. But Jim Jacks, the lead federal prosecutor
in the HLF case, notes that only leaders were charged - not the people who
contributed money believing it would be used for humanitarian projects.

"There was never an instance where a donor has been prosecuted or sanctioned
for making donations to the Holy Land Foundation," Jacks said. "The people
who were prosecuted and held accountable were the people that set up and ran
the Holy Land Foundation and knew what they were doing." Lormel said the
procedure used in the HLF trial has been implemented across the board. "The
government has not gone after donors in any of the other [terror-financing]
cases," he said.

The ACLU suggests in its report that that the HLF, Global Relief Foundation
(GRF), Al-Haramain and Benevolence International Foundation cases were
little more than witch hunts targeting Muslims who were not involved in
terrorism. But in each of these cases, the government has presented
substantial information linking the groups to terror.

In the HLF case, the five defendants were convicted after a two-month trial
on all counts of conspiring to provide money to Hamas. Jurors convicted the
five after hearing testimony from expert witnesses such as Matthew Levitt,
former deputy assistant Treasury secretary, who explained the connection
between Hamas' military and social branches and how the HLF used zakat
committees to route money to Hamas. During the sentencing hearing, U.S.
District Judge Jorge Solis repeatedly said the evidence was clear that "The
purpose of creating the Holy Land Foundation was as a fundraising arm for
Hamas."

In the GRF case, the Treasury Department detailed the group's connections to
al Qaeda and the Taliban, including contacts with Wadih el-Hage, Osama
bin-Laden's personal secretary, who was convicted for his role in the August
1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

After years of wrangling with Saudi Arabia, the Treasury Department last
year designated Al-Haramain's worldwide operation for having provided
material and financial support to al Qaeda. In Bosnia, for example, they
found links between Al-Haramain and Al-Gama al-Islamiyya, an Egyptian terror
group that signed Osama bin Laden's Feb. 23, 1998 fatwas against the United
States. In Bangladesh and Kenya, Al-Haramain members were implicated in
assassination plots against U.S. citizens. These are just a small fraction
of the connections between Al-Haramain and terrorist organizations cited by
the Treasury Department in designating it a supporter of terrorism. In the
case of the Benevolence International Foundation, the group was designated
for supporting terrorism because of memos like this, in which members of the
group establish a terrorist base in Sudan. The designation occurred in 2002
after Bosnian authorities uncovered ties between Benevolence International
Foundation and Al Qaeda.

But in attempting to manufacture a case that the U.S. government is
persecuting Muslims, the ACLU chose to overlook considerable evidence
showing that these charities are involved in terrorism.