MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry tore into New York City Mayor Bloomberg for his latest tactic: blaming teen pregnancy for causing poverty.
Harris-Perry knows that poverty is caused by the economic structure of society, by a society that allows one man–like Michael Bloomberg or Bill Gates or Eli Broad–to accumulate many billions of dollars while millions are trapped in miserable living conditions with low wages or no jobs.
Harris-Perry knows that the 1% blame the poor for their poverty.
They also blame teachers and public schools for causing poverty.
Thanks, Melissa, for nailing it.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The Mayor has treated his position less as a representative and advocate of his city and it’s people, and more as a personal platform and facilitator of his personal agendas.
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Dan,
Don’t you know the mayor sees himself not as our elected leader or representative or public servant, but as the CEO or nanny of a naughty, in disciplined, ignorant populace who require constant minding, chiding, correcting, and supervision.
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Hey, Mayor Bloomberg and Joel Klein and the rest of you…
What happened to poverty isn’t destiny?
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I find it interesting that as a teacher I can simultaneously be “incompetent” AND be responsible for our economic crisis.
Hmmmmmmmm . . .
Is it my “incompetency” that has CAUSED it? Or is it just another way to blame the lower socioeconomic groups for being victims?
When I worked as Director for a Battered Women’s Shelter, we advocated that it was un-PC to “blame the victim.” Now the reformers want me to blame myself for the world’s ills?
Scratching my head over that one . . .
There is no logic here. Don’t try to find any.
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I have said it before and I will say it again. Mikey has business with corporate reformers so it is in his own best interest to tank the NYC school system so that it gives the appearance that corporate charter schools are the only choice. He is a man who bets against his own team, to promote his future personal agendas.
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Isn’t it interesting how plutocrats think that the rich will work harder if you give them more, but the poor will work harder if you give them less.
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The mayor equates being rich with being sagacious. Will someone please tutor him in vocabulary, even if it is a private (not public school) tutor!
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Maybe the thousands of dollars that went to that ridiculous campaign could have gone to the NYC education system as we struggle to implement the Common Core with no curriculum and no technology.
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Don’t forget that Melissa H-P has shown herself to be a pawn of the corporatists. The evidence? One of her first guests was Eva Moskowitz, in a fawning interview. More evidence? Her role in “Education Nation,” shilling for the BB’s. I’ve been boycotting her show (more or less — she has good guests, mostly) until she does a full segment on the privatization of public schools, who’s behind it, and just why it’s so bad for all kids, but especially poor and minority kids. She’d rather take on an easy target like this Bloomberg bimbo-ism. I’m waiting, Melissa. Or are you too afraid to take on the Big Boys?
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Here we finally get to it. What is the cause of poverty? “The economic structure of society.” I’d like to hear a fuller exposition of the implied claim that the rich don’t earn their wealth and that it is stolen from the poor, and second the implied claim that the remedy is more equal distribution of the wealth that the rich accumulate back to the poor so that they won’t be poor and thus will automatically begin performing in school like non-poverty kids.
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I love the way she uses statistics to skewer Bloomberg. It is a lessen in how easy it is to get statistics to tell you what you want rather than tell you what is.
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Read the book Winner Take All Politics…says it all
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there are people you would never ever know have boatloads of money and spread it around and employ hundreds and are quietly benevolent and live modestly.
unlike bloomberg and gates and bono et al just happen to represent the megalomaniacal 1% plagueing the earth and trying to mold it into their myopic Utopia. the definitive pronouncements about poverty seem to be read from indoctrinated authors scripts rather than from those who have lived life read history and worked their ass off. that is practical reality, not the mumbo jumbo social justice farce. go buy 3, 16 ounce sugary sodas and pour them into a bucket and swill to your hearts content, put some booze in it too because bloomberg is the tip of the iceberg.
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” poverty is caused by the economic structure of society, by a society that allows one man–like Michael Bloomberg or Bill Gates or Eli Broad–to accumulate many billions of dollars while millions are trapped in miserable living conditions with low wages or no jobs.”
society Allows?
capitalism enables people to accumulate wealth, many inspired by their poverty or in spite of their poverty. what they were taught as children allows them to accumulate or spend it overpowering and manipulating others. their lack of conscience, or religion, or parenting or education is to blame. not capitalism, for every bloomberg there is a quiet billionair doing good.
so collectivism is the solution suggested here? because this society allows these men to accumulate wealth< are we supposed to take it away, soviet style like the collectivism in common core, like gifted children held back by neutralizing group learning by other students, and no content except the constant harping on divisive issues, racism, sexism, genderism, ableism, global death cultism… it's sick.
commmon core education is pure misery.
increased poverty and misery will be its legacy, and that seems to be by design.
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