Am I A Conspiracy Theorist ? Maybe !

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I had lunch with a friend last week. 
He said he had been cleaning out his filing cabinet and found this!
I found it both shocking and depressing. I have underlined some of the purported returns of the 1998 TPAF. 
I am a frequent viewer of the TV show"American Greed" on CNBC. Many of the shows are about Ponzi Schemes that are foisted on the public.
When I first looked at the returns on this pension report they immediately reminded me of the returns promised by the fraudsters shown on the aforementioned shows.
Then I began to think about this a bit more. I wonder if this these reported returns were really valid at the time or if they were artificially concocted to those seemingly impossible levels?
You might say " You must be a conspiracy theorist! "
(Well, I don't think I am a  conspiracy theorist but maybe!)
"Why would anyone want to inflated those numbers? "
Someone who wanted to "borrow" (steal) money from the fund so as to give tax breaks and thereby enhance his/her reelection chances and just might like to use these return numbers to justify the "theft", that's who !

Talk About Waste

I read the following replies on the local message board pertaining to the granting of school insurance contracts to companies who doled out campaign contributions. The word "waste" was used and when I thought about NJ "waste" it  raised my BP to all time highs. I just had to write my reply. I guess "waste" is a relative term but below are the postings from the Internet and my reply.
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So in our state there may just be bigger fish to fry than prosecuting the teacher's union in the court of public opinion. Of course, no one would ever get the governor to admit that at a town hall meeting would they? Along with his fake enemy Sweeney. You can't make this stuff up. In this area I'm sure Jersey is a national stand out, while still being 47th in job growth. The new Trenton, yeah OK!!!!!!!!

Perhaps the Teachers Union should be making a big stink about these areas of waste that directly effect their members.
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Talk about waste -
The RU football coach (Shiano- record 68-67 - salary $2M + plenty of bennies) suppose a teacher had barely half his kids pass NJ testing? I kind of think he would be labeled "ineffective, lose tenure and not be paid $2M a year)
The RU basketball coach - salary $650 and a "firing bonus" of over $400K.
The RU AD is given a "quitting bonus" of $1M.
The RU "athletic lawyer" (whatever that means) - $400K a "resigning bonus".
The new basketball coach - salary $1M per year for five years.
The women's basketball coach - $900K per year (at least she's winning).
The retired college Prez - $335,000 per year for teaching 15 hours per week.
The football stadium renovated for $102M with a capacity of 54,000 and the largest attendance ever was 47,000 five years ago.
The tuition at RU doubled over the past 10 years.
Where is the Governor in all this? Why isn't he very good at addressing these issues??
He was very good at capping school Superintendent's salaries.
He was very good at "reforming" (maybe deforming is a better word) public employee's pension and health benefits.
He was very good at losing hundreds of millions of Fed education aid due to incompetence in filling out paper work.
He was very good at handing out "no bid" contracts for the shore clean up (kind of like the insurance contract situation).
He was very good at handing out tens of millions to companies for the incessant testing of school children,
He was very good at capping the funding of public education.
He is very good at promoting tax breaks for the wealthy.
He is very good at eliminating property tax rebates for the average guy.
I thought public criticism, derision and castigation were his forte. I guess he's just lost his touch!!

AND NOW THIS!

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AND

AND 

I spoke with someone the other day about the outrageous salaries of college coaches. He told me that the reason was that successful athletic programs brought alumni dollars to the school. He said that he had been to a Penn State football game a few years back and the alumni there were throwing money at the school hand over fist.
Well, I happened to look up some info about Penn State and it seems that they are not only number one in athletics but also number one in tuition costs for in-state students. In-state tuition is over $17K. 
Doesn't it make you wonder where all that alumni money (if it is really being donated as he claims ) is going ??
PS

 75%  - a  C grade with an A+ salary !! Where Gov. Big Mouth on this ??
Sorry. I'm kind of embarrassed about my careless math ! 257/(257+343) * 100% = 43%
He actually has a 43% win average. 

Another One Bites The Dust

Politicians,"educrats" and corperations will say and do whatever it takes to privatize public education. If you want to see how "privatization" improves public institutions take a look at "prison privatization"!!

My Three Rs of Public Education Privatization - Ripoff , Robbery and Repugnant

"Committee for Our Children", "B4 Kids", "Students First", etc. -
How do they constantly come up with these flowery, lofty titles. 
They must lay awake all night thinking these up!
I'm sure that I can come with more apt titles for these organizations.
How about: 
"Committee for Stealing All We Can From Public Education" or
"Students Second Profits First" or
"B4 for My Kids at Home" or
"Committee to End Tenure So We Can Get Cheaper Teachers" ?

Notice the words "private schools" and "hedge funds". 
Those two phrases appearing in the same article is certainly telling!

Did You Know That W.C.Fields Was a Jersey Politician?

In light of these revelations, I've got an awful lot of questions and comments about the continual squandering of New Jersey monies and the antics hatched in Trenton.
*The tuition at RU has doubled over the last 10 years!! 

(Rutgers University in New Brunswick costs $13,073 in tuition in fees for state residents, now making it the eighth most expensive flagship campus. Penn State in State College, Pa., is first with an annual cost of more than $17,000.
Nationally, the average for tuition for state universities is $8,655)
*Schiano (the ex football coach) was paid over $1M a year + housing and perks!  (All this with a barely winning record of  68-67 record in 11 seasons. Let's pretend for a minute that a teacher had barely half of his students pass the NJ testing barrage over an eleven year period. What would be his reward under the new "tenure reform" laws? Don't you think he might be labeled "ineffective"? ) *RU built a giant football stadium which is rarely (if ever) filled!  (A $102 million stadium expansion project. The highest attendance home game of the season came on November 19, 2011, when 47,447 fans. Rutgers Home Attendance Declined 6.9% per Game in 2011.)
*The ex RU prez got a $335,000 a year job for teaching 15 hours a week! (The aforementioned coach's contract and stadium renovation as well as the doubling of tuition was all "accomplished" under his watch!)
*The state is spending millions on testing children over and over and over!
* RU is a State institution run by the State and  evidently not very well run but now they want  to run Camden Public Schools along with Newark, Paterson and Jersey City which also hasn't been run well by them over the past 20 years.
*The Essex County Executive gets to retire at full pension and still work at full pay.
*Why have we not heard a word out of the "Mouth That Roared" (Christie) about any of this RU situation?
**And despite all this waste, the state still has no money to properly fund the pension!

W.C. Fields was once asked what he did with all his money. His reply was "I spent most of it on wine, women and song - the rest I squandered!"
I never knew he was part of New Jersey government!!

Testing Gone Wild !

I have added numerous captions to the above video.

 

And the point of all this testing and expense?

To help justify eliminating tenure thereby enabling the firing of the higher paid teachers.
To help set the stage for low employee pay when schools are finally privatized.
To justify the privatization of public education.
To justify the state takeover of urban schools.
To allow shoveling money to test creators and publishers.
To help in the attempts to eliminate collective bargaining for public employees.
To destroy what little power the teacher's unions did possess.
Just my humble opinion!