Million $$$ teacher

Not that I'm worth a million bucks. Not by a long shot. I spent the last twelve years of my career teaching grade 3 math to high school students. For high school credits! Yup, there's plenty of kids walking around with high school diplomas who struggle with grade 3 math.That was worth something, but not a million dollars. Here's where that kicks in.I was a late bloomer in terms of realizing I had a passion for education. In fact, I'd hated high school when I was a hostage there. To be honest, I was mostly passionate about steady day shift and summers off. I turned 40 the year I started teaching.To my surprise, I enjoyed the job. From the get-go kids liked me."Cool tattoo sir..."Holy shit, these idiots think a bit of ink makes you cool? Anyway, I ran with it. I was quite popular amongst the student population.From the beginning, I was also very much unpopular amongst a certain sort of administrator; the dimwitted careerists who love their power and hate students. Along comes this goofball VP, a man clearly destined for a senior leadership position at the board office, who decides he's gonna make a name for himself by getting rid of me.He spent six months following me around, taking notes every time I violated some petty bullshit rule. The education system is chock full of folks who thrive on making up petty bullshit rules. I once saw a "Protocol for toileting student X" that ran an unbelievable 52 bullet points. Yup, 52 steps in helping a...well, I can't say disabled... ability challenged (?) kid take a crap.I can reduce this to two steps right smartly. Step one - position the kid over the toilet. Step two, have him bend over in front of the 2000psi pressure washer down in the auto shop. Mission accomplished, and you just saved 50 steps!After six months job-shadowing me, the VP who mistook me for his ticket to the board office had a stack of notes about a foot and a half high. I know this because he'd stay late in the photocopier room, sometimes till after five o'clock. Apparently a lot of different people needed copies of his evidence. Then he wrote a pithy letter to the College of Teachers making the case that my presence in the school was a threat to the very lives of my students.Cue the lawyers!My legal team was provided by the Teacher's Federation. The school board also had lawyers on hand. The College of Teachers had their own legal team. The adjudicators were provided an independent legal team because the actual people judging this case were political appointees with no legal expertise. One of them was there because her husband owned a marina where some politicians kept their boats.The first flaw in VP Dickhead's master plan was exposed when it was revealed that the board had not done an evaluation of my teaching prowess (or lack thereof) in over ten years. They're required to be done every three. The obvious first question would be, how do you allow this allegedly incompetent and dangerous teacher to keep endangering the lives of the children, neglect to do at least three scheduled and legally mandated evaluations, and then suddenly discover he's a threat to the lives of the students?  That pretty much stalemated them from the get-go.A couple of years into this imbroglio, I enquired of my main legal person what they had billed on my file."We just passed $100,000" came the reply. The case was to run almost eight years. If one legal team milked this for 100 thou in two years, how much did four legal teams bill in eight years?Sounds like a math problem I'd assign my students... which I did!It's obvious why something that could have been dealt with in an afternoon dragged on for that long.Lawyers.Everybody involved was billing hours to deep pocket organizations. Nobody has any incentive to invoke common sense and get things wrapped. The College of Teachers HQ is on the "Mink Mile" on Bloor Street. When our occasional get-togethers were in recess, you could slip out and buy a $50,000 Philippe Patek next door, if you were so inclined. Lunches were catered by the finest eateries in downtown Toronto. Nobody in their right mind is gonna rush this gravy train!So it was that almost eight years after VP Shitwad posted his pithy letter, and seven years after the shmuck had taken early retirement (never made it to board office), it was agreed all round that nobody had intended any harm, and I promised never to endanger the lives of the children again.And remember, every single person in this sorry saga was being paid by you-know-who. Cut out the school boards and do away with the College of Teachers, and you'd free up billions to invest in actual education.

Eight dollars for large fries and a small root beer at McDonalds?

Get the f@ck outta here!! I remember I used to take the kids there for happy meals on their way home from a "daddy weekend." They'd each get a small burger, fries, and a drink, and I recall that being well under 8 bucks. At Chucks Roadhouse I can get an adult-sized burger and a big plate of fresh-cut fries for under ten bucks... before taxes of course, but that's a real meal, whereas today's Mickey Dee adventure was a mere snack for the Farm Manager. Mind you, if you want a cheesburger they're gonna hit you another four bucks, so I recomment you bring your own cheese. There's a lot of places where your basic burger & fries runs over $20 now. That puts a modest lunch for two, with a beer to wash it down, in the 75-80 range after taxes and a respectful tip. When I say "respectful" I mean towards the staff who serve you. There's a move afoot in some circles to do away with tipping. They claim tipping is just a way for restaurant owners to fob off their responsibility to pay their staff a living wage. While there may be an element of truth to that, there's a bigger element of truth in the fact the folks claiming the moral high ground in the war on tipping are just too f@cking cheap to leave a tip.

Pastorale Americana

Saturday, December 1, 2012 Pastorale Americana ll The first time I visited Detroit was in 1967, just weeks before the riots. Detroit was a happening place, and the freeways were choked with the cars that had made her great and workers going to and from the gargantuan factories where those cars were built and countless trucks ferrying car parts from one factory to another. I had no clue about the seething resentment that lurked beneath that veneer of prosperity.Visiting Detroit forty-five years later is a different kind of trip. Where did Detroit go?In 1967 resistance to the Viet Nam war was just hitting its stride. Fast forward forty-five years. America has been at war in Afghanistan for over a decade. Resistance has yet to begin. This past week's announcement that "withdrawal" from Afghanistan at the end of 2014 would entail leaving 10,000 US troops there was met with a collective yawn.Americans are a far more passive people than they were a half century ago. They have been bullied into submission by their plutocrat overlords and the apparatchiks in Washington who get rich doing their bidding.Fifty years ago, the UAW was a force to be taken seriously.Today they are an emasculated shadow of their past, a labor organization that gratefully accepts whatever crumbs the bosses leave on the shop floor, or whatever shop floors the bosses deign to leave in America.America's precipitous industrial decline coincided with the rise of the buccaneer capitalist. Not that they weren't always there, but over the past fifty years American culture has made them icons. America certainly didn't lack for business icons before, but in the past the captains of industry generally contributed something to the broader society.As the share of GDP derived from industry constantly shrank and that of finance capital grew, the new business icons were men who made their fortunes by destroying the common good. Sending American industry offshore was deemed brilliant management. Throwing entire communities out of work in the name of "efficiency" was met with accolades from the business press and obscene bonuses at the end of the year for the brilliant managers.Then came the hedge funds. An entire industry devoted to squeezing every last possible penny out of every last vestige of the old economy and what was once considered the commonwealth. Corporate responsibility? What's a thousand jobs in Kansas or Illinois compared to a handful of rich people getting even richer?Corporations are people too, after all.Every four years the two parties who represent the plutocracy put on a great bit of theater for the voting masses who have watched their standard of living steadily erode generation after generation. It's the greatest show on earth, and the apparatchiks never tire of congratulating one another on how great the American democracy is.And it is great, for the plutocrats and their technocrats, the hedge fund managers and the corporations, for the senators and congressmen who keep the whole charade running smoothly, and for the intellectuals and think-tankers and media folks who run the propaganda machinery that makes it all possible.But by my count there's about 99% of Americans missing out on the good times.What puzzles me is why they put up with it.

Canada falls to AEL

And who are the AEL, you ask? Why, that would be the American Empire Loyalists, of course! And they totally run Canada! Every think-tank, every poly-sci department, every mainstream media outlet from the Globe to the CBC to whatever is left of PostMedia (half a dozen unpaid interns working out of a Tim Hortons in Burlington); each and every voice we hear demands fealty to the American Empire. Land of the Free. Home of the Brave. Leader of the Free World. The Light upon the Hill… and so forth. America is the undisputed leader of Team Democracy in the epic battle against “authoritarianism.” You know; China, Iran and Russia. And of course, their vassals in North Korea, Cuba, and a few other shithole countries. We must prepare to fight them to save our democracy and our values. “Our values” have been on full display to the world as the genocide in Gaza has been unfolding. In the “free world” we’re discouraged from watching Al Jazeera. In the rest of the world they’ve been watching 24/7 coverage of the IDF massacre-of-the-day for almost four months now. The rest of the world finds our values rather repugnant. Perhaps we Canadians should reconsider our alliances. I’d vote for opting out of the American Empire. I don't think the values of the Empire reflect Canadian values today. Let's join the rest of the world instead.

Another sign Israel heading for civil war

Today, more than forty Israeli A-listers, including several former heads of Mossad and the IDF, released an open letter demanding the removal of The Greatest Leader since Moses. They believe Bibi has become an existential threat to the country. With that in mind, take a look at a Haaretz story from a few days ago; Army weighs giving anti-tank weapons to West Bank settlers. Ponder that for a moment. The residents of the illegal settlements are at war with Palestinian olive farmers and teenagers who throw rocks at settler vehicles. They do not have tanks. So what up with the anti-tank weapons? I’ll tell you what up. The shock of 10/7 united the country in a lust for retribution. But, 26,000 dead Palestinians later, the blood lust has been sated. People are coming to their senses, as mentioned above. Itamar Ben Gvir, the fascist gauleiter who rules over the West Bank, is afraid some idealistic clique of secular officers may mutiny against Bibi and his settler base. And they have tanks.

Hague schmague

That was the concise two-word rejoinder to the interim ICJ report from Israel’s Minister for National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir. Anyone inclined to optimism needs to spend a few minutes acquainting themselves with Ben-Gvir’s political history and track record of egregiously racist rhetoric. The sad truth is that he has, more than anyone, brought into the mainstream the beliefs of what just a few years ago would have been considered an extremist fringe of religious nutters. The rulings of the ICJ mean nothing to people who answer to a higher power. No less a jurist than The Almighty ordered the Israelites to extinguish the “seed of Amalek” 3,000 years ago, so fuck the ICJ. Ben-Gvir and his ilk, having been given a taste of power in Netanyahu’s cabinet, will not easily relinquish it.

Give hate a chance

When you consider the events of 10/7, there’s no denying those Hamas fighters were motivated by hate. They hate the people who have humiliated and abused their people for the better part of a century. When you consider the 26,000 Palestinians slaughtered since, there’s no denying those IDF fighters are motivated by hate. They hate the people who challenge their claim to God-given sovereignty over the land between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean sea. The question is, whose hate will prevail? The grass-roots hate on the Arab side? Or the astro-turfed PR hate manufactured by the other side? At the end of the day, most people can still tell the difference between victim and predator.