GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

1. 

   reality-based educator

   November 17th, 2009 7:55 am

   A report issued by the government TARP watchdog found that President Accountability’s Treasury Secretary, Timmeh Geithner, was responsible for overpayments of billions of dollars in taxpayer money to financial firms in the government bailout.

   According to Huffingtonpost:

   “The authoritative new narrative describes how, while bailing out insurance giant AIG last fall, a team led by Geithner failed nearly every step of the way.

   Instead of bargaining with AIG’s numerous counterparties to resolve its billions of dollars in souring derivatives contracts, Geithner’s team ended up paying top dollar for toxic assets — ‘an amount far above their market value at the time,’ the report notes.”

   Much of that money went to AIG’s biggest counterparty, Goldman Sachs, though JP Morgan and others received Treasury Timmeh’s largesse as well.

   So through either incompetence or corruption, Treasury Timmeh, then head of the NY Fed, cost taxpayers billions of dollars and yet President Accountability decided he had done such a good job with the bailout that he promoted him to run the Treasury Department.

   Now that’s accountability we can believe in!

   Good thing Treaury Timmeh isn’t a teacher - the Daily News, Post and Times editorial boards would be running scathing editorials about the need to fire him.

   Instead the News is running a story about the need to grade and fire bad teachers.

   Fair enough, Mort - how about grading and firing bad Treasury Secretaries while we’re at it?

   (Or did Mort get some of Treasury Timmeh’s largesse as well?)

2. 

   Marty

   November 17th, 2009 9:03 pm

   A funny/sad part of the Times article was the part about Bread and Roses High School getting rid of a new teacher for failing too many kids and bringing down their report card grade. You can imagine the poor rookie, coming out of ed school with the idea that we’re obligated to set high standards for our kids and probably figuring that you’re actually supposed to uphold the “contract” you give to students that breaks down how their grades are calculated. Meanwhile, you have the kids who probably haven’t broken a sweat since the day these silly report cards were invented, not understanding why this one teacher doesn’t pass them even though they showed up for class the entire last week of the final marking period.

   The Times reporters sided with the principal, presenting his libelous remarks about the teacher as settled fact. No attempt to tell the teacher’s side of the story.

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