The Petey Principle
Word is that everyone’s favorite
Snappy State Senator,
Carol "
Lookee"
Liu has made our own beloved nonentity,
Mr. Ed Honowitz a paid
Liaison for Education in the great state of
California (
click here). In fact, the Senator had a club meeting for
Community Schools just the other day. My new bestest pal
Bill Bogaard was even there.
“The community schools concept fosters intentional collaborations
among school districts; state, county and city government; non-profits;
and businesses,” said Liu, Chair of the Senate Education Committee, “By
aligning these resources we can make major strides towards ensuring that
every child has access to the academic, health, and social supports he
or she needs to succeed. In a time of very limited funding, an
effective Community Schools alignment strategy can leverage resources to
focus on the needs of the whole child and his or her family.”
Mr. Ed is moving uptown on the bottom feeder chain. This is quite
a feat for the, uh, trained art student turned photographer. It must
be nice to come from privilege, and have a wife who tows the financial
line.
Mr. Ed is the symbol for everything that is wrong with education
in California. He is among the elite, the type who think that they are
better than the poor. As the “preferred” ruling class, they believe it
is their duty to suck money from the system, siphon off a bunch
actually, and then serve the reheated scraps to the people they profess
to help.
Think about it, the guy takes pictures. That is what makes him an
education guru? That is his expertise for making decisions for public
education and community schools? Hot damn, sign me up, there’s a camera
on the
iPhone in my pocket right now. I want to be an edumacation guru too. Say, “Cheese!”
Wow. Any blithering fool can become a consultant in California, if you know the right people.
I sing in a punk rock band. Using that same dynamic logic maybe
Carol "
Lookee"
Liu can make me a rocket scientist. Yo, Senator Liu, give me some chemicals, I wanna build rockets and stuff, just like
Jack Parsons. Pasadena Old School style.
Speaking of Rockets, Let’s Talk About San Bruno
Carol Lookee Liu is a taken woman. Sorry guys. Her husband is an energy guy. In fact, if you think about it, so is
Kenny "
Measure A"
Chawkins. But Carol is not married to
Ken. Apparently, neither is
Barbie. So, shall we meet
Mr. Lookee Liu?
Mr. Carol Liu is none other than the
CA Public Utility Commissioner President Michael "
Pet"
Peevey. Mr. Peevey was the former CEO for
Southern CA Edison. Hey, isn’t that where
Mr. Kenny Chawkins works? (
click here). And
John Buchanan? How about
John Fasana? You know, the
710 Tunnel guy?
Is it just me, or is there something about the
PUSD redistricting scheme using lots of contribution money to fund a puppet regime that smells funny?
Well, no. Serving the special interests of power is what politics is all
about. This situation involves real power though, like in, energy
power, not just squash the human insect power.
Keep an eye on
Pasadena and it’s dreams of apartment expansion.
When you get to write your own ticket on power usage, costs, and taxes,
you get more bang for your buck if you have more people to squeeze it
out of. Make them dependent on your electric trains, and that is just
gravy, isn’t it? Just another thought from the wild and crazy guy that
gets yelled at to shut up in
Sierra Madre town meetings and
council chambers. Your town is so doomed that you don’t even know that
your toss away citizens are the only ones who know which way the wind
blows.
Listen. It sure seems that our boy
Mr. Liu Mike Pet Peevey - sorry ladies, he’s already taken - gets to pretty much do whatever he wants (
click here). Well then, we can bet
Ed Honowitz
is in good company, because no one serves his own special interests
while pretending to serve the public’s interest like Mr. Ed does. It
would be quite a competition of self interest.
Remember how old
Pet Peevey named himself investigator of his own
mistake, the one that killed people, and then determined what the
findings and fine would be? That’s right, that is
Mr. Liu and his method of operation. His power, wink wink, knows no bounds.
Look. It is totally consistent with
Ed Honowitz who determined the outcome of the
Brandenburg
child situation - the same one he was involved in. Honowitz knew the
outcome prior to it being written. I wouldn’t doubt if he had to help
that poor sap
Steve Miller write the damn thing.
If you have a minute, take it to sign this petition (
click here) to remove
Peevey. It is 62 signatures shy. For an added bonus, put in the comments that
Ed Honowitz’s best pal Tony
Brandenburg sent you.
Flying the Mr. Ed Freak Flag
The
Pasadena Education Network (aka, “PEN. We’re the Other Guys!”) is also flying the
Mr. Ed freak
flag. They chose to make him their poster boy for parent leadership.
That must mean he’s a great parent leader. He helps bully autistic kids
out of schools, and that is a quality the
PUSD Board of Education supports, so it must be worthy of the
PEN, too.
Listen. For $75 a pop, you can go to the
PEN Wine Festival, chug vino, and even rub shoulders with the upper crust of
Pasadena Dems and
ACTors. It’s like a DEMitasse ball, only it’s with wine. Maybe even some of the good stuff.
As appealing as it is to drop $75 a pop, go in, get smashed with a bunch
of snobs, and easily underclass them all. I find that a certain charm
can certainly be had sitting out on the curb with a bottle of
Maddog 20/20. Hell, I could even upscale it a bit with some
Strawberry Hill. I know that would really impress the ladies.
Enchante, madame.
Intermission: Let’s Talk about Edwin Diaz for a Moment
That is a great deal of heady information, I know. For the people who
need a quick break to reload their coffee, take it now during this
intermission. Never let it be said that I don’t think of others. That
brings me to this intermission topic,
Mr. Edwin Phonefixer Diaz.
As you know,
Big Eddy D.’s big delivery to the
PUSD was
this: He fixed the telephones. It was what was considered his single
greatest achievement. Which is why I am sorry to report that the actual
phone fixer was
Gary Phonefixer Carnow. This makes perfect sense
since it would take a technician to fix something that complicated. That
means Eddy D. didn’t exactly do anything at all except smile really big
at the wine sipping meetings and other photo ops.
Props to
Carnow, and a Bronx Cheer for
Eddy Payday Diaz.
An Ego is a Terrible Thing to Waste
Still, there has to be a better way to honor
Honowitz. His ego
should never outshine the honors heaped upon him. It would hurt his ego.
We don’t want to deflate that. Imagine how long it took him to puff it
up.
What do I think? Why, it is funny that you should ask.
I think we should honor
Mr. Ed in ways that truly serve his
needs. Something more permanent than the awards he’s been given already.
Awards, as I have already shared, are what are given to the ineffective
for mediocrity.
Honowitz needs way more than that. Otherwise he
might come back for more honors. We gotta send him packing with so many
honors, and celebrating how little he did, that he won’t come back.
Listen. As tempting it is to name a building after him, like the
Sierra Madre Elementary School did for the former school principal
Gayle "
I’m glad I live on the other side of Michillinda Avenue”
Bluemel, another
Pinocchio Auditorium in the district won’t do. No, no, no. Simply naming a barn at the
John Muir Farm wouldn’t serve the ego of our favorite marble mouthed maven of mendacity. Think about it. The
Mr. Ed Barn. It is so, totally lacking.
No. A hypocrite as spectacular as
Honowitz should never be
canonized in a way so mild. His ego would never recover, and it might
force him to talk on, and on, and on ... to the point that he might
accidentally immolate himself.
I think we could honor him in some of the ways
Kim Jong Il was honored, such as this page filled with pictures of the former supreme leader
Kim Jong Il Looking at Things (
click here).
That was before he died, of course. Though, I must admit that, in a
way, the idea of Kim Jong Il still be escorted around to look at things
might show advanced reverence to the former supreme leader.
That’s right, we could have a site full of our former board leader just looking at things. We could call it,
Mr. Ed Looking at Things, and we could fill it with images of the brayish one, jaw wide open going, “gah!” and just, you know, looking at things.
Or his memory could live on forever, in celluloid grace (
click here). There are no limits for our new
Pasadena, aka
Extremely East Hollywood star. I have seen how versatile he is (
click here).
Educational Consultants, Screwing Public Schools One Conference at a Time
What is it that makes a consultant worth their salt? That is my question
for today because I see and attend workshops by consultants all the
time. I bring this up because consultants are paid thousands of dollars -
sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars - by school districts in
America every single day. But what do they do, and how is their quality actually measured?
Check it out, they are not. That’s right, it is simply private
enterprise. Sure, you can call it a non-profit. All the smart guys do,
but that doesn’t mean that you can’t profit from it. That just means you
can use loopholes to get the breaks that hard working honest people
can’t use.
Educational Consultants, especially the good ones (whatever that means since their is
no industry standard)
are simply the ones that market their wares best. All you need is an
idea, a marketing firm, and some networking skills. Networking skills
are critical because, like everything else in a corrupt, broken system -
it’s not what you do, it’s who you know.
Ask
Mr. Ed. Last month he had the
City Council of Pasadena falling over itself because he brought in
Comrade Judy Chu to pitch for
Community Schools.
Community Schools are the latest catch phrase for drumming up taxpayer
pity taxes to fund a whole slew of social programs that previously
failed, all under a nice new umbrella.
Old wine in a new bottle, right? Hey, maybe there’s more of a tie-in to that
PEN Wine Sloshing party for
Ed Honowitz than meets the eye.
Revisiting Condoms, Condos, Community Schools; Drugs Bad, Veggies Good
On Tuesday, February 20, 2013, I made a brief reference, and questioned the
Pasadena City Council and the
Pasadena Unified Board of Education if they knew anything about the
Oakland Community School (
click here).
My point that night was this: I wanted to show everyone in the room
that they didn’t know what was being discussed, what its history was, or
where it came from. I believe I succeeded. I was an amusing
distraction.
What was served on the
Pasadena City Council floor was simple. Because
Honowitz brought the mess to the table, it was swallowed hook, line, and sinker. It didn’t matter if it was an
Edsel, or a
Mercedes. It was going to be driven off the showroom floor either way.
After all,
Mr. Ed brought in
Congresswoman Judy Chu, and
she gave an entire presentation on the topic. That must mean something!
I’m not sure what, but it must’ve been important because she’s a
Congresswoman and came to us all the way from
Monterey Park (
click here) to talk. I mean, she was even on the
California Tax Board! That must mean something to someone somewhere! Color me impressed.
Imagine all of the gas she must have used! Don’t worry, your pretty little head. It was written off.
Worship at the Altar of the Community Schools. Or, The Petey Principle Revisited
Honowitz needs to worship at the altar of the
Community Schools, and so do you. After all, his future hangs on the passing of these programs. A bit later
Peter Dreier waltzed up to plug his baby
IIPK -
Invest in Pasadena Kids (
click here).
Petey worked on this baby a long time. His non-partisan, non-profit
group first came to my attention when they were selling little stickers
to local Pasadena businesses in a harebrained program called
Buy in PUSD (
click here), a total failure concocted with
Pasadena Educational Foundation (
click here). The idea was that you and I, Joe Spender and Josie Shopper would see that sticker and we would go there to spend our money.
Among the big donors in
Buy in PUSD is the
Seville Group, Inc (
click here), as well as picture takers for all of the schools,
LifeTouch National Schools Studios (
click here). Sadly, their kick off party would be some of the best business
Bob’s Big Boy did over on
Del Mar Avenue (
click here). Apparently all of the
PUSD staff from Hudson Avenue were eating someplace else. I assume somewhere healthier, and more copacetic with the
Healthy Food folks.
Like lots of crappy programs,
Buy In PUSD didn’t pan out like one would have hoped, not that anyone can really blame
IIPK or
PEF
for that. People generally don’t want to invest in failing business
ideas, even one that is supposed to raise revenues for schools - unless
there is a bunch of safeguards. Investments need fresh cash flow to do
that. Of course, you never did hear too much about that part.
Fear not, any failure can be resurrected under a new name. It is called
restructuring. That is how the guys downtown do it, so it would follow
that a non-profit would as well.
One of the howlers at the
Joint Pasadena City/PUSD meeting was just that.
Honowitz made
a pitch to weave the less used programs (that is code for failures) and
work them up into better outreach (that is code for repackaging them)
so that more funding won’t be asked for (and that is code for right now
before he can write up a grant to get a piece of it).
You can bet that you will hear much more from
Honowitz and
Mrs. Honowitz-Pais (
click here) as the
Community Schools Program (
click here) becomes deeply intertwined with the Pasadena City scheme. Oops, I mean plan. The accolades heaped onto
LAEP (
click here) come from none other than the
Huffington Post. Search
Peter Dreier,
Ed Honowitz, and
Huffington Post and you’ll see what I mean. For even more super duper good times, Google Ed Honowitz and Brandenburg. Pals-4-Ever.
The Pasadena Plan for Poverty
It is a given that the
PUSD and
Pasadena City Council have a demonstrable need for poverty written into their
General Plan, and anticipates its growth for the next twenty years.
The
Pasadena General Plan (
click here) will
go down in recent history as one of the most expensive, cost
ineffective collaborations between local government and a school
district ever to devise a “progressive” plan to fleece local taxpayers,
coming and going.
That is what
Community Schools anticipates. It is a plan for poverty, a plan for failure, and a framework for the funding of a
Social Engineering Bureaucracy.
Then your health, both mental and physical, as well as the dynamics of
your family, shopping, travel, and recreation can all be superseded by
people who know what you want and need more than you do.
I suppose everyone deserves their day in the sun, even if it’s the desert sun, and
Ed Honowitz was basking in the glory. Most of the world class city council were so smitten by
Comrade Chu’s visit to the world class city that they didn’t see how badly they were being bamboozled by Honowitz’s very own
Community Schools Scheme. Oh, I mean, plan.
Or maybe they did.
I am certainly glad that the spirit of
Martin Chuzzlewits lives on. The smart guys have structured such a plan for us all, and anticipate a utopia that is not only free from
Soma, but is everything that a
Skinnerian Walden could, and would, provide.
A Letter from Mary to the PUSD
We get 300 page views a week on our
Censure Honowitz post. There are people who expect this to happen. Will there ever be a censure of Ed Honowitz put through?
A Response from her Spouse
Haha. Good one.