Politics Stink!

It's becoming very evident that the wheels are falling off Romney's campaign bus. Even his staffers don't like him and Republicans are wishing he would just go away! He is becoming an embarrassment to his party and himself. His statements at a private fundraiser in Florida that were surreptitiously recorded are frightening. He speaks of his disdain for 47% of the people in the country and considers them as freeloaders and people with their hands out for anything they can get - and they don't pay taxes. He says he doesn't worry about them - they don't matter. He went on and on and just let it all hang out. He said he would have been better off if he had been born of Mexican parents and then come to the US. He didn't mention that his great grandfather had moved to Mexico because he had numerous wives as a good Mormon should. I wonder why we never hear about that? He said a lot of things in his talk with his well-heeled friends in Florida. I loved hearing it!

I read an interesting article in "The Oregonian" this morning about Portland Public Schools hiring a Florida administrator for a job overseeing some of our most troubled schools. However, they neglected to check her out enough to find that she had been reassigned in June after being linked to an open and controversial internal investigation. Her name is Suzanne Milano who was six years at the Miami-Dade County Public Schools as the director of mental health and crisis management service. However, she was recently moved to an attendance job. I used to have an attendance job at a local high school, but I'll bet she made more than I did. But I wasn't removed for doing anything improper although I did lie on the office counter one time in honor of a funeral or wedding or one of those special occasions. I think they even put flowers on top of me! Anyway, she was offered the position as the director of charter schools, special programs and the district's academically troubled alternative schools where she would be paid up to $137,700 annually. My attendance job paid nothing like that!

Our people here knew nothing of what had gone on with her in Miami and were soon to find out that she also goes by the name of Suzy Milano-Berrios. They found that she had overused the law called the Baker Act which is in Florida. It allows police officers to take students for involuntary psychiatric evaluations instead of arresting them, thus allowing the chief to pad school crime statistics. The Baker Act allegations were big news in Miami, and a representative of the Fraternal Order of Police could hardly believe she had been hired in Oregon. He wondered why they hadn't done a background check on her. Chief Academic Officer in Portland defended the district's decision to offer Milano a job. And the Human resources executive director said she would see that the district was following up on questions raised by "The Oregonian." "That's where we're at," she said. When I saw what kind of grammar she used, I figured all was lost.