Up North Progressive
Politics and commentary for Northern MichiganDeVos @GLEP_MI Lackey Gary Naeyaert Calls State Rep Charles Brunner Names: May Want To Beat Him Up and Steal His Lunch Money Too
Wednesday , 6, April 2016 Section 16 Leave a comment
Gary Naeyaert reached a new low tonight. Michigan State Representative Charles Brunner called out the Michigan Department of Education’s really bad decision to give Brian “gotta save my meal ticket” Lynch more time to reduce the debt of Bay City Academy. BCA is the charter school that finally exposed convicted felon Steve Ingersoll for the financial shell game he’s played for decades with Michigan taxpayers’ money.
An example of Naeyaert’s white-knighting BCA can be enjoyed below. This all happened because Charles Brunner truthfully commented that Bay City Academy is a “sorry excuse for a school.” He’s not wrong.
Gary Naeyaert often posts identical tweets on both the GLEP and his personal twitter accounts. Just don’t reply to his personal accounts about those carbon copy tweets. He’s trying to keep things professional. Making sure Dick and Betsy DeVos get their money’s worth after all. This is what Naeyaert is paid to do as the director of the Great Lakes Education Project. The DeVos organization’s purpose is to destroy public education because Dick and Betsy think it’s icky that kids attend public schools.
Bay City Academy, the damsel in distress Naeyaert defends with his infantile tweets, has been in trouble one way or another since Steve Ingersoll hatched the scheme to shuffle money from Grand Traverse Academy through his numerous LLC shell bank accounts into his own pocket and make it appear like he was investing in a new for-profit charter school in Bay City. The sentencing hearing has been going since October of 2015, because the federal prosecutors keep exposing more criminal activity that Ingersoll, his business partner Mark Noss, former LSSU charter authorizer head Bruce Harger, and GTA board president Brad Habermehl were planning after Ingersoll was convicted. Son in law Brian Lynch meanwhile attempts to convince anyone BCA has nothing to do with Ingersoll, despite Ingersoll owning the buildings his failing for-profit charter school operates in, and still using Ingersoll’s IVL vision therapy every day as a major part of the school’s curriculum.
What Gary Naeyaert wants people to forget as he reverts to the mental level of a six year old is the truth about for-profit charter schools. Steve Ingersoll is only one person who has taken our tax dollars and converted them into private assets so he can own a house in Traverse City, a mansion in Bay City, and a even a place in Boca Raton, Florida. There are 232 for-profit charter schools currently operating in the state of Michigan with no cap on how many of these tax dollar Hoovers exist. What are the chances there are even more Steve Ingersolls running these money traps in our state?
So while MAPSA screams for an apology from Brunner, and Gary Naeyaert holds his breath until he turns blue to distract us, it’s becoming obvious the for-profit charter school gang may be getting worried more people will learn the truth about for-profit charter schools and the criminals running them. What other reason could there be for Gary Naeyaert to play make believe with his personification of a charter school calling State Rep Brunner childish names?
It’s Just An Accounting Exercise Deemed Appropriate By My Accountants: The Continuing Story of Mark Noss and Steven Ingersoll
Tuesday , 5, April 2016 Dr. Ingersoll, Section 16 4 Comments
While the international press tears through 11.5 million documents leaked from the Panama financial firm, Mossack Fonseca, we have our own leaked shell game still unfolding in the sentencing hearing of Dr. Steve Ingersoll. Lots of dummy companies to spread lots of money around and make it magically disappear into Ingersoll’s pockets. Money he received from the Michigan taxpayers to run for-profit charter schools in the state using his vision therapy program, Integrated Visual Learning.
The Traverse City Record-Eagle condescended to publish a story on Sunday, focusing on Mark Noss and the close business ties he still maintains with Ingersoll despite publicly stating all connections with Ingersoll or Smart Schools Management LLC were severed. If one lesson can be learned from this, it’s that people who know they’ve been doing illegal things get caught, they will do everything possible to convince you they’re not doing illegal things.
The Record-Eagle article is everything you would expect with the lack of coverage from that paper. If only they would spend as much time reporting on the criminal behavior that’s openly happening with Grand Traverse Academy instead of sifting through Traverse City Area Public School’s business searching for anything they can blow up and fabricate into a scandal. Sad when the only comprehensive, forensic coverage happening in the state is being written without pay and published on a blog.
While weeding through Mark Noss’s creative testimony about his continued close business ties with Steve Ingersoll post-conviction, the most mind blowing part is the fee being paid by Noss to Ingersoll from GTA’s coffers for IVL. As Miss Fortune points out, Noss’s name appears with Ingersoll’s on the copyright to IVL, and he uses it in his vision therapy clinic in Traverse City. Why is he paying Ingersoll to use something he owns?
And that’s not even the shocking part. He’s paying Ingersoll $12,500 per month to use IVL in his clinic, and it’s coming out of GTA’s (the taxpayers) funds.
$12,500 per month for this crap.
It may be hard to understand how this fee is outrageous when there is nothing to compare it to, so let’s compare it to something. All of the real public schools in the area purchase curriculum for special education students from Unique Learning System. They started with a weekly newspaper that included learning activities and it’s blossomed into a full reading and math curriculum that benefits cognitively impaired and autistic students who rely on graphics for learning. ULS is a standards-based, full curriculum with six grade bands for differentiation. It’s award-winning, and unlike IVL is backed up by actual research.
How much does ULS cost per year? $479 per user, meaning the classroom teacher. Traverse Bay Intermediate School District has about 40 teachers that would use this curriculum. Do the arithmetic, that comes out to about $19,000 per year.
Compare that to the $12,500 per month Mark Noss is paying Steve Ingersoll for something he already owns the copyright; and no one still seems to know if IVL is curriculum, therapy, or what? According to parents and teachers who spoke to Up North Progressive, it appears to function as both. Or neither, except an excuse to siphon more taxpayer money from the state.
The sentencing hearing of Dr. Steve Ingersoll continues today.
Donald Trump Didn’t Blaze Any Trails In The Anti Choice Crusade Today
Wednesday , 30, March 2016 Elections, Presidential Primary 2016 Leave a comment
Of course it’s shocking when an ignorant anti-choicer – or someone pretending to be one on TV comes out and says what all anti-choicers wish could happen. Donald Trump today said – then dialed it back – that women should be punished if they exercise their constitutional right to elect a legal medical procedure. As appalled as people appear to be at the statement today, it’s not like Trump is a vanguard of anti choice rhetoric. He’s parroting what he’s heard others say.
You may be thinking, “But presidents, or presidential candidates don’t say things like that, not in an election year.”
Oh yes they do. Just shy of 30 years ago Vice President George H.W. Bush during a presidential debate with Governor Michael Dukakis had this to say when asked about his stand on abortion and what he thought should happen to people who have them:
I haven’t sorted out the penalties. But I do know, I do know that I oppose abortion. And I favor adoption. And if we can get this law changed, everybody should make the extraordinary effort to take these kids that are unwanted and sometimes aborted, take the – let them come to birth, and then put them in a family where they will be loved. And you see, yes, my position has evolved. And it’s continuing to evolve, and it’s evolving in favor of life. And I have had a couple of exceptions that I support – rape, incest and the life of the mother. Sometimes people feel a little uncomfortable talking about this, but it’s much clearer for me now. As I’ve seen abortions sometimes used as a birth control device, for heavens sakes. See the millions of these killings accumulate, and this is one where you can have an honest difference of opinion. We certainly do. But no, I’m for the sanctity of life, and once that illegality is established, then we can come to grips with the penalty side, and of course there’s got to be some penalties to enforce the law, whatever they may be.
Is it entirely possible that Donald Trump may recall Vice President Bush making this statement in the 1988 presidential debate? Probably not. It’s obvious Trump doesn’t prepare a speech, just parrots the same few statements he blurts out at all of his rallies. This is the same guy who thought back in 1986 hot dog vendors were the ones trashing up Manhattan.
Nothing new. Same horrible things being said about women by horrible people.
Michigan Department of Educations Issues Guidelines For LGBTQ Student Safety and the Michigan GOP Reacts Predictably: Open Comment Period Extended To May 11, 2016
Friday , 25, March 2016 LGBT Rights, Section 16 Leave a comment
About a month ago Michigan public school teachers attended mandatory professional development sessions on providing safe learning environments for LGBTQ students. The program caused enough discussion that school districts reached out to the State Board of Education for help.
The State Board of Education and the Michigan Department of Education developed the guidance at the request of schools and educators asking for recommendations of best practices in creating more supportive learning environments for LGBTQ students, who are at greater risk of suicide, and are not succeeding academically absent a supportive school environment.
School districts across the state found their policies concerning bullying and harassment of LGBTQ students horribly inadequate. Most school staff and teachers are unaware of how out of touch they are with the reality of the problems LGBTQ students face every day in school. At the beginning of the workshop last month, every staff member had to introduce who they were and what pronouns they use. “Pronouns? Why would I need to tell people my pronouns,” was a question many of the attendees asked. They had never heard of such a thing. The levels of confusion from the staff indicate how unprepared our public schools are for making them safe for everyone.
At the request of the state’s school districts, the State Board of Education and the Michigan Department of Education partnered with members of the LGBTQ community to draw up a set of guidelines for assisting public school districts with developing more inclusive policies to ensure all students feel safe at school. With any policy like this, the State Board of Education requested public input on the guidelines.
What’s happened since then could potentially make adopting a policy designed to keep our kids safe into a battleground over which bathroom or locker room a student uses based on gender identity, to parent concerns that publics schools are using the issue to undermine the authority of parents by ensuring safe space for children while they are at school. Right wing media such as Daily Caller launched articles using this horrible graphic to alarm parents what Michigan public schools are doing will make children less safe at school. This couldn’t be farther from the truth.
Counting on people to react with fear made what should be an exercise to modify policy and ensure the safety of all children at school into a political fight. Republicans so far have been swift in punishing the State Board of Education with retaliatory moves such as stripping members of travel reimbursement and per diem, and demanding that the State Board of Education should have given parents more time to comment on the guidelines. House Speaker Kevin Cotter demanded an extension and remarked, “My hope is at the end the board will change course and not issue that recommendation.” In other words, not allow school districts to adopt the guidelines that would ensure all students, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, to feel safe at school. Student drop-out rates and suicides are higher with LGBTQ school students because school is not always a safe place for them to be.
The Michigan State Board of Education did extend the deadline comment for the public. Anyone who wishes to leave a comment can do so here. You have until May 11, 2016 to be heard.
Hopefully, enough people who support providing guidelines for all of the children who attend Michigan public schools to learn in a safe environment will take the time to fill out the simple form. The State Board of Education needs positive support for the hard work they put into doing the right thing for our kids.
The Cat Who Needed Vision Therapy: The Continuing Story of Dr. Steve Ingersoll
Monday , 21, March 2016 Dr. Ingersoll, Section 16 1 Comment
Notice how the kitten tries to catch the circles in the image on the paper? The kitten’s brain does the same thing as a human brain when they look at the same optical illusion. The circles on the edge move while the circles the eyes focus on remain stationary. This is because when we look at an image like this it’s actually an incomplete picture, and our brain works to fill in the missing parts of the image, making the circles appear to move.Two years ago, in an article titled, “Continuity At Grand Traverse Academy”, this same image was included and the author stated that if you looked at it and the circles moved, that meant you had poor eye development and needed vision therapy, such as Integrated Visual Learning. The article has since been sponged from the for-profit charter school’s website, but the false advertising using this optical illusion will never be forgotten.
Either the vision therapists at GTA are full of it, or this kitten needs vision therapy. Why are these people still allowed to take tax payer money and claim they’re providing a quality education?
Or for that matter, expand their school so they can suck even more tax dollars away from real public schools? Miss Fortune discovered GTA is planning a huge tax payer-funded expansion that will have us paying the bills for decades.
The charter school cancer is spreading … If only more people could see it, like the Traverse City Record-Eagle. This is no optical illusion.
Tea Party Charter School is One Vote Away From Becoming Reality
Monday , 14, March 2016 Section 16, Tea Party Charter School 3 Comments
The school based on a strict right-wing conservative agenda is one vote away from opening this fall.
Livingston LindbomAmericanChristian Classical Academy found a home in Whitmore Lake Public Schools. The school board granted them a charter in January, and on March 5 the LCA committee held an open house. Tonight, the Charter Township of Brighton Planning Commission will vote whether to allow the new for-profit charter school to construct a building at a meeting scheduled to begin at 7:00 pm. This is the last obstacle stopping Tea Party Charter School from opening in the fall of 2016.
Tea Party Charter School is the fever dream of Pasquale Battaglia, the racist social media icon who talks about indoctrinating children at taxpayer expense between racist rants about President Obama and everyone else he hates, which is everyone who isn’t just as racist and bigoted as he. The school will use Hillsdale College’s politically biased curriculum. According to Hillsdale College’s Barney Charter School Initiative:
The public school is arguably among the most important battlegrounds in our war to reclaim our country from forces that have drawn so many away from first principles. This mission has led us to consider how we can lead in the effort to recover our public schools from the tide of a hundred years of progressivism that has corrupted our nation’s original faithfulness to the previous 24 centuries of teaching the young the liberal arts in the West.
Those well-versed in the art of the dog whistle recognize this rhetoric immediately. When conservatives talk about reclaiming our country from progressivism and restore first principles, what they really mean is make rich white males the dominant class. Something that has yet to be taken away, but they’re convinced it’s happening anyway. Curious place for Whitmore Lake Public Schools to be; providing space for a school with the philosophy of putting public schools out of business.
The meeting is tonight at 7 pm located at 4363 Buno Road, Brighton, MI 48114.
Michigan Department of Transportation Responds To Exit 167 Sign On US 131
Sunday , 13, March 2016 Community Leave a comment
UPDATE: As of this morning, the sign now reads exit 176.
There is an update to the story about the sign that leads people to an exit that doesn’t exist on US 131, and it involves a tragic event. Up North Progressive shared the story about the misprinted sign in Wexford County on US 131 with the Michigan Department of Transportation’s Facebook page. They were amazingly prompt with their response on March 7:
Interesting – thanks for the heads up. We’ll check in with the Cadillac TSC.
Thanks for following MDOT!
You’re welcome! About eight hours later there was an update from MDOT:
Got some more info on that sign for you. The private company contracted by MDOT to install those blue accommodations signs is well aware of the issue. In fact, the company had plans to get it replaced until a terrible crash occurred recently, killing one of the contractor’s workers. Things have been on hold for awhile but it will be taken care of.
MDOT provided a link to the story about the crash, in which it’s revealed that the worker who died in the crash lost his life while working near the exit 176 ramp. Sean Jordan was from Holly. He died when he was struck by a semi on February 8, 2016. the driver of the truck was taken into custody, but all charges against him were dropped on March 8. The Wexford County Sheriff’s Deputy makes an insightful comment:
You usually don’t see construction workers in the wintertime on the side of the road, working on signs or doing road construction.
The private company Jordan worked for is Action Traffic Maintenance in Flint. There are plans in the future to replace the sign with the correct exit number on it, but that has yet to happen, and the fatality is part of the reason for the delay.
Condolences to the family of Sean Jordan.
Aubrey McClendon’s Northern Michigan Connection: “Drilling a Dry Hole Changes Things”
Monday , 7, March 2016 Section 16 Leave a comment
On Tuesday, March 1, 2016, The Justice Department indicted fracking developer Aubrey McClendon for bid-rigging over land deals. Less than 24 hours later, Aubrey McClendon drove his SUV at a high rate of speed into a wall and died instantly. Condolences to the family of Aubrey McClendon. Up North Progressive chose to not publish this article until after a few days passed.
Aubrey McClendon is infamously known for wanting to develop lake shore property near Saugatuck. As bad as that may be, McClendon was also involved in Michigan in a much more sinister way, and most people in Michigan are likely unaware of McClendon’s business in Northern Michigan. This is not an accident. Aubrey McClendon deliberately wanted to conceal his identity to the residents living in this region of the state. In the summer of 2010, hundreds of people representing Western Land Services of Ludington and a company called Northern Michigan Land Exploration flooded communities all over northern Michigan offering hundreds and even thousands of dollars per acre to lease the mineral rights from land owners. Many may remember receiving a phone call before a person from Western Land Services came to their home.
Many Northern Michigan residents will also remember when the money for those leases never materialized, because according to Aubrey McClendon, “drilling a dry hole changes things.” Meaning most of those leases Michigan landowners signed expecting a big bonus were never paid. Northern Michigan Land Exploration was a shell company set up by another shell company to conceal who was behind the bogus leases – Audrey McClendon’s Chesapeake Oil. In fact, Western Land Services in Ludington was required to keep the real lessee a secret as they called on almost a thousand households in Northern Michigan peddling Chesapeake’s offer.
John Wilson’s company was part of that scam. They knew who they were working for, but never revealed that to the people they tried to lease land from. Right now Wilson wants people to buy into this new for-profit charter school, Gateway To Success Academy. A school he claims was not his idea, but would annoy Jamie Bandstra every time he walked into the doomed Journey Alternative Ed program and ask out loud, “How is my school coming?”
Something to think about as we hear more about this miracle charter school that’s going to save education in Northern Michigan. Another dry hole that will change nothing but divert funding away from our real public schools.
Some Thoughts About Exit ‘167’ On Northbound US 131
Tuesday , 1, March 2016 Uncategorized Leave a comment
North of Tustin but just south of the rest stop near Cadillac on northbound US 131, a blue sign beckons to motorists that accommodations are available from three hotels if they exit the highway using the off ramp numbered 167. A curious anomaly, because the Tustin exit on US 131 is numbered 168 and miles south of this sign.
You can’t help but wonder, is this elusive exit 167 like platform 9 and 3/4, and one must ram the sign at full-speed to exit US 131 and get to these hotels?
Or perhaps this is the route to the anti Hotel California: You can check in any time you like, if you can find it.
Perhaps like Brigadoon exit 167 only appears once every hundred years, and if you don’t vacate your hotel room by the 11 am checkout, you’re stuck there forever. What about the people who managed to find exit 167? Did they find an elusive spring of immortality and now live like the Tuck family?
Maybe it’s somewhere over the rainbow. and you have to ride a tornado to get to the three hotels listed as being available at off ramp 167.
Or it could be none of these things but instead a clever nod to Eris, Goddess of Chaos, by the Michigan Department of Transportation. After all, the numerology for 167 is obvious: 1+6+7=14, and 1+4=5. Discordians occasionally look for signs from Eris when they randomly need a Discordian oracle.
Despite closely looking for it when passing by the sign, exit 167 has yet to reveal itself. Every morning it’s the the rest stop and then exit 176, one of four exits to the town of Cadillac.
But that elusive fifth exit 167, north of exit 168 … maybe today will be the day.