SHE IS RIGHT, THEY ARE NOT

Parents outraged after teacher mocks 'bigots,' 'evangelicals' in Dr. Seuss-style poem at school board meeting

Tyler O'Neil

FAUX NEWS
Fri, December 24, 2021

Parents in the Austin, Texas, area expressed outrage after a technology teacher read a Dr. Seuss-style poem mocking "evangelicals" and parents who have expressed concerns about books they call pornographic.

Krista Tyler, instructional technology specialist at Grisham Middle School in the Round Rock Independent School District (ISD) read the poem at the Leander ISD school board meeting Dec. 16.

"Everyone in Leander liked reading a lot/ but some evangelicals in Leader did not," Tyler begins. "These kooks hated reading, the whole reading season./ Please don't ask why, no one quite knows the reason./ It could be perhaps critical thinking causes fright./ It could be their heads aren't screwed on just right./ But whatever the reason, their brains or their fright,/ they can't follow policy in plain black and white."

"These bigots don't get to choose for us, that's clear," Tyler's poem continues. "Then how, I am wondering, did we even get here./ They growl at our meetings, all hawing and humming,/ ‘We must stop this indoctrination from coming!’/ They've come for the books and the bonds and what for?/ Their kids don't even attend Leander schools anymore./ Bring back our books, maintain decorum, good grief./ Wouldn't it be nice to have a meeting in peace?"

Parents 

WHITE EVANGELICAL TRUMPETTES in Round Rock ISD and Leander ISD expressed outrage over Tyler's poem.

BLAH BLAH BLAH FOX OF COURSE GIVES THE NEXT 1000 WORDS TO PROTESTERS 

THE RIGHT WING IDEOLOGY OF WE PAY YOUR WAGES YOU GET NO SAY WE ARE THE BOSS OF YOU

Schools fear mass exodus of teachers: 'We’re overworked, undervalued, and constantly under attack'

Suzanne Perez
Fri, December 24, 2021

Kelly Kluthe, who has taught in public high schools in Kansas and Missouri, recently took a job at a private Catholic grade school, saying she has lost faith in public education.

WICHITA — Kelly Kluthe is one of those rock-star science teachers schools need.

She landed an innovative teaching grant at Olathe West High. She speaks at national conferences about ways to make science lessons fun. She mentored new teachers through the University of Kansas Center for STEM Learning and the UKanTeach program, where she got her start.

She’s been teaching for a decade. Loves science, kids, public education.

And she just quit.

“While I love and believe in education for every student despite their circumstances, public schools as a system don’t love their teachers back,” Kluthe posted on Twitter recently.

“The working conditions have always been challenging, but they became downright unsustainable since the start of the pandemic,” she tweeted. “We’re overworked, undervalued, and constantly under attack from people who have no idea what the hell they’re talking about.”

Kluthe is leaving Crossroads Preparatory Academy, a public charter school in Kansas City, Missouri, for Notre Dame de Sion Grade School, a private Catholic school known for its small classes and college-prep trajectory.

That tweet about her mid-year departure drew thousands of responses from teachers across the country, many of whom say they’re burned out, depressed and disillusioned.

They point to struggles over teaching in-person and remote students simultaneously, filling in for peers during substitute shortages and feeling the pressure to make up for lost learning time. What’s more, they’re caught in the middle of controversial mask mandates, debates over critical race theory and challenges to books in school libraries.

Steve Case, a former teacher and professor who ran the University of Kansas’ now-defunct UKanTeach program, says schools should prepare for a mass exodus of teachers in coming months.

“I’m very, very afraid of a collapsing system here,” he said. “We will see a very large number of teachers who leave teaching altogether and don’t come back.”

Case, who taught Kluthe at KU, said mid-year resignations that were once rare are becoming more common. Generally, teachers will “gut it out for the kids” until the end of the year, he said. But a notably different tenor this fall has some Kansas teachers speaking out against what they say is a toxic environment.

During a recent meeting of the Blue Valley school board, veteran teacher Dianne O’Bryan urged communities to ease up on the negativity or risk losing more teachers.

“For those angry, highly critical, accusatory parents in our district, please know that you’re a major contributing factor to teachers leaving,” O’Bryan said. “You have a choice to be angry, but we also have a choice to leave.”

Kluthe, 31, said in an interview that she didn’t intend to resign mid-year, but the stresses of teaching started to affect her physical and mental health.

“I was getting anxiety almost every single work night, just dreading coming to work,” she said. “I was starting to resent the students for behavior issues … when I know a lot of those things are outside of their control. It was just not a healthy place for me to be.”

On Twitter, she wrote: “I’m exhausted. I’m burnt out. I have nothing left to give. I need to step away and take care of myself for a bit.”

Her private-school job comes with less pay but also less pressure, Kluthe said — about 10 students per class instead of 23 or more. She also pointed to more planning time, a tight-knit school community and the “freedom to be creative and follow my passions.” She’ll teach fourth- and fifth-grade science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, classes, mentor peers and write a new social justice curriculum.

“I want to retire (as) a teacher,” she said, “but I need a school that will love me as much as I love my work.”

Case, the retired professor, said Kluthe’s comments echo a growing frustration among teachers “who have not had a voice” in discussions around education.

“It’s like, yeah, we’re talking about it. We know all this stuff,” he said. “But nobody’s doing anything about it, and that’s where hope gets lost.”

Suzanne Perez reports on education for KMUW in Wichita and the Kansas News Service.

This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Some experts think Kansas could soon see mass exodus of teachers

DEP: Texas oil company permit for exploratory well in Big Cypress may be denied

Chad Gillis, Fort Myers News-Press
Thu, December 23, 2021, 

The state is encouraging Texas oil speculators to withdraw their plans until more information is provided on how seismic testing and oil drilling in the Big Cypress National Preserve will be remediated.

Burnett Oil has coveted lands in the preserves for years, filing applications with state and federal agencies to allow a 12,000-foot-deep exploration well.

The company conducted seismic testing over the past several years in the preserve, and critics say the company did not comply with mitigation plans for that part of the drilling process.

Betty Osceola leads a group of concerned citizens and Miccosukee and Seminole tribe members on a hike through Big Cypress National Preserve on Saturday, April 10, 2021. The group is unhappy about a proposed oil drilling site in the preserve.

Jaclyn Lopez, with the Center for Biologist Diversity, said she's concerned that Burnett will again violate the terms of the permit by failing to properly address environmental damages.

"We’re quite worried about that," Lopez wrote in an email to The News-Press. "It seems they aren’t able to get the seismic reclamation right after four years, which gives us little reason to believe they’ll get the oil drilling mitigation right."

More: More than 100 manatees died in Lee County waters this year. Advocates concerned about population

Lopez, along with several environmental groups, penned a letter earlier this month to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, expressing their concerns about whether the company will abide by regulations going forward.

Burnett Oil could not be reached for comment.

Others concerned about South Florida's dwindling environmental resources say they'd prefer to see the company give up on its plans in Big Cypress.

Houston Cypress is a member of the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida and is involved with several environmental groups.

More: Lake O water levels high, what does it mean for SWFL?

Cypress said he wants the company to stop operations in the Big Cypress, not that he's in favor of drilling elsewhere.

"Overall, I’m about leaving it in the ground, but my first instinct is to say the oil they would pull up anyway is poor quality," Cypress said. "They could get better elsewhere. I’m not saying drill elsewhere. It’s just my way to get rid of them. Overall, I’m against extraction."

He said the land in the Big Cypress is sacred to his people and that he wants the company to clean up previous damages and leave South Florida.

"We recently created a letter that was very critical of the Burnett oil exploration years ago," Cypress said. "They didn’t clean up their act good enough — ruts in the ground and other disturbances that weren’t mitigated or fixed."

DEP sent a letter to the company earlier this week, asking for more information before the permit gets denied.

More: For the birds: Wintering species making their way to Southwest Florida for the season

Burnett submitted changes to the initial permit application last month, and DEP permit reviewers said more information on remediation will be needed before the state can proceed with its review.

"The ongoing changes in project design and mitigation proposals presents a significant challenge to (DEP's) ability to review and assess the permitting criteria," wrote DEP attorney Megan Mills, who is over DEP's permitting program, in a Dec. 20 letter to Burnett. "If reasonable assurances that the permitting criteria have been adequately addressed to support the issuance of a permit are not provided in the next response, your application may be denied."

Burnett has until Feb. 22 to respond with more information, according to the DEP letter.

This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Oil drilling in Big Cypress National Preserve: DEP wants info from Burnett

DoorDash will require all employees to deliver goods or perform other gigs, and some of them aren’t happy

Levi Sumagaysay -

All DoorDash Inc. employees, from software engineers up to the chief executive, will have to perform deliveries or maybe shadow a customer-service agent once a month starting next year — and some of them aren’t happy about it.




DoorDash confirmed Thursday that it told employees this week it is reinstating the program, called WeDash, in January. The company said it has had the program since its inception and in 2018 tied it to a philanthropic effort to address hunger and food waste, but put it on hold because of the pandemic.

The renewed push adds choices for employees who may not be able to do deliveries, a spokeswoman said. Besides WeSupport, which will allow employees to shadow customer-service workers, the company will also eventually offer WeMerchant, a way for employees to take a closer look at the merchant-support side of DoorDash’s business.

On Blind, an app that lets employees post anonymously, a thread about the delivery requirement has about 1,500 comments. The post, which is titled “DoorDash making engineers deliver food,” includes profanity and statements such as “I didn’t sign up for this, there was nothing in the offer letter/job description about this.”

Others responding to the post said it was a good way for engineers to see how their work affects customers and merchants, and possibly to “empathize” with lower-paid delivery workers. Other commenters said their companies have also required white-collar employees to step into the shoes of their companies’ hourly workers once in a while.

A Blind spokesman said Thursday the company can confirm the post was written by a DoorDash employee, because Blind requires users to sign up using their work email addresses. The DoorDash spokeswoman said the complaints on Blind don’t reflect the sentiment of the company’s employees at large.

DoorDash said it was reinstating the program because it wants employees to understand the challenges and problems in its business and help solve them.

The money employees earn from doing deliveries will be donated to nonprofits, according to the company.

Japan's latest life-sized Gundam statue is almost complete




Igor Bonifacic
·Contributing Writer
Thu, December 23, 2021, 12:30 PM·1 min read

No matter how many times a new Gundam statue goes up in Japan, it’s always a sight to behold. This week was no different when workers attached the head of the RX-93FF V to its body as a crowd of onlookers and journalists came to watch the spectacle.

The one-to-one recreation is a riff on Amuro Ray’s Nu Gundam from 1988’s Char’s Counterattack. It stands 81.3 feet tall and is located in front of the LaLaport shopping center in Fukuoka, the most populous city on Japan’s southern island of Kyushu. Gundam creator Yoshiyuki Tomino was involved in the design of the statue, including the new tri-tone color scheme that adorns it.

It’s not the first one-to-one scale Gundam statue to go up in Japan. The one most people are probably familiar with is the RX-0 Unicorn Gundam that stands in Tokyo’s Odaiba district. It was a frequent sight during the 2020 Summer Olympics and the source of many a nerd faux pas during the event. Just ask the BBC and this guy.

According to The Mainichi, there are still some finishing touches workers need to add before the Gundam is complete sometime by the end of February. Hopefully the pandemic eases by then so that there's a possibility people outside of Japan can visit it.

Comet Leonard lights up the night sky this Christmas

Thomas Hornberger
Fri, December 24, 2021

Eighty-thousand years ago, Comet Leonard zoomed past Earth for the first time. Now, it's lighting up the skies once again. Leonard is the most anticipated and dazzling comet of the year. It was first discovered by Gregory Leonard, a senior research specialist at the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, earlier this year.

The comet came within 21 million miles of Earth — the closest it will get — on December 12, and is now heading out towards the sun. It's traveling at a speed of 158,084 miles per hour, relative to Earth, according to the astronomy site EarthSky.

"This is the last time we are going to see the comet," Leonard said in an interview posted by the University of Arizona. "It's speeding along at escape velocity, 44 miles per second. After its slingshot around the sun, it will be ejected from our solar system, and it may stumble into another star system millions of years from now."

/ Credit: / Getty Images

The comet can be seen at night about an hour after sunset above the southwestern horizon. Experts are saying to use Venus as a guide to help you find the comet. NASA says you may need binoculars to spot it.

This will be the last chance stargazers have for viewing before the comet travels deep into space — if it doesn't break up first. The comet, which is mostly made up of space dust, rock and ice, could disintegrate at any time.

The NASA and ESA Solar Orbiter Heliospheric Imager caught several images of the comet passing Earth last week. They used the images to create a video.

 

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

A Second Morgan Stanley Trader Linked to FX Probe Leaves the Lender

Donal Griffin
Thu, December 23, 2021


(Bloomberg) -- A Morgan Stanley currency trader, whose unit was tied to an internal probe into suspected mismarking in 2019, has left the firm, the second such departure in recent months.

Rodrigo Jolig, who helped run the New York-based bank’s FX options business before being suspended amid an internal probe two years ago, was discharged in November after the investment bank disclosed allegations about his conduct, according to filings from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

The allegations against Jolig were linked to “valuation control processes and marking non-securities positions relative to profit and loss goals” and “communicating about affiliate business using an unapproved communication platform,” the Finra filing shows. The claims are similar to those levied against his former boss Thiago Melzer, the bank’s ex-head of FX options trading who was discharged in June, Bloomberg reported.

Jolig and Melzer were stars at the Wall Street lender until a series of complex transactions linked to the Turkish lira went awry in 2019, losing millions of dollars and prompting officials at the bank to investigate whether traders had been valuing the deals improperly, Bloomberg revealed at the time. The status of that review -- and its conclusions -- are unclear.

Mark Lake, a spokesman for Morgan Stanley in New York, declined to comment. Roberta Scrivano, a spokeswoman for Jolig, also declined comment.

Both Jolig and Melzer have since started hedge funds in their native Brazil, Bloomberg reported in September. Jolig is a partner in Alphatree Capital, a new hedge fund backed by the family of Brazilian property tycoon Elie Horn. Melzer has started a fund called Upon Global Capital, where he is chief investment officer.

Fund Critic Birdthistle to Take Reins at SEC’s Division of Investment Management

By Kenneth Corbin

BARRONS
Dec. 23, 2021 2:51 pm ET

The Securities and Exchange Commission has tapped a law professor and vocal critic of the mutual fund industry to head up the Division of Investment Management, the unit of the agency that develops policy governing the advisor and fund industries.

William Birdthistle will join the SEC from the Chicago-Kent College of Law, where his research has focused on securities regulation and investment funds, which figures to be an active area of policymaking under the agenda of Chairman Gary Gensler.


Birdthistle is a prominent critic of the fund sector, arguing that the industry is riddled with bad behavior among asset managers. As the head of the division that develops policy in the fund and advisor space, he will now have a chance to put his ideas into regulatory initiatives.

“Professor Birdthistle will bring remarkable expertise in investment funds to the SEC,” Gensler says in a statement.


William Birdthistle at the law library at Chicago-Kent College of Law.

Illinois Institute of Technology

“The Division of Investment Management develops regulatory policies to oversee investment companies and investment advisors so that American investors can confidently save to buy homes, pay for college, or plan for retirement,” Gensler says. “I look forward to working closely with William to execute our mission.”

Birdthistle did not immediately respond to a request for comment on his priorities at the SEC. In a statement, he lauds the investment management unit’s “exceptional reputation for protecting investors in funds and the asset management arena,” and says he is eager to work with the chairman and staff “to help investors and others.”

As author of the 2016 book Empire of the Fund: The Way We Save Now, Birdthistle argues that Americans saving for retirement through fund-heavy 401(k) plans and IRAs are vulnerable to “the built-in flaws, perverse incentives, and litany of scandals that have bedeviled mutual funds,” according to a synopsis of the book.

“Though Americans often hear of the importance of low fees in fund investing, few are aware of the panoply of ways that some financial advisors have illegally diverted money out of mutual funds: from abetting hedge funds in trading after the legal deadline, to inflating the assets on which they are paid a percentage, to paying kickbacks for brokers to sell their funds,” the synopsis says.

Birdthistle joins the commission at a time when the chairman has laid out an ambitious regulatory agenda, and brought in staffers like Barbara Roper, a leading advocate for stricter investor protections, that signal a pivot toward a more muscular regulatory regime that has some industry leaders worried. Writing this week in Barron’s, Baird Vice Chairman John Taft warned that the industry is facing “the single most aggressive regulatory push we’ve seen from the SEC in decades.”

The addition of Birdthistle to the division of the SEC overseeing funds and advisors won’t likely allay any of those concerns.

“One would expect that he will bring a very strong pro-investor bias to the SEC Division of Investment Management, with a particular focus on transparency,” Bill Singer, a veteran securities attorney and the author of the Broke and Broker blog, says in an email to Barron’s Advisor.

“My expectation is that he will push for more clarity as to fees and will certainly seek to discourage the conflicts inherent in the ’40 Act community that are nurtured by the overlap of mutual funds, investment advisors, and brokerage firms,” Singer said, referring the 1940 Investment Advisers Act and Investment Company Act, the foundational statutes for regulation of advisors and fund companies.

Duane Thompson, president of the consultancy Potomac Strategies, anticipates that Birdthistle could advance the commission’s efforts to crack down on funds and advisors that advertise ESG investments, products that purport to make commitments around environmental, social, and governance practices. That could include ensuring that an advisor’s ESG disclosures on Form ADV are in line with their portfolios.

Thompson also notes that Birdthistle, an academic, follows a pattern of Gensler bringing in outsiders to head divisions, rather than the more customary selections of prominent Wall Street attorneys, suggesting that “a modest shakeup is in store in terms of prioritizing which regulatory issues to tackle.”

“Given the shakeup at the division levels by Chairman Gensler, I think there could be a few surprises in store for this part of the securities industry,” Thompson says. “We’ll just have to wait and see what Mr. Birdthistle has in mind.”

PRIVATIZATION CHICKENS HOME TO ROOST
U.K. Government Repeats Bulb Energy Mistake by Failing to Hedge

Todd Gillespie, Lucca de Paoli and Alex Morales
Thu, December 23, 2021




(Bloomberg) -- After nationalizing Bulb Energy Ltd., the U.K. government is making the same mistake that helped take down the nation’s seventh biggest supplier in the first place: failing to hedge adequately.

The energy firm, currently run by special administrator, isn’t buying power and gas in advance to shield its finances from rising prices as Treasury rules won’t allow the government to hedge, said people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named because the details are private. Bulb’s employees are also being paid higher salaries as administrator Teneo Inc. seek to retain staff needed to run the firm.

All of that risks ballooning the 1.7-billion-pound ($2.3 billion) bailout bill that will eventually be paid by consumers. Gas prices in the U.K. have surged more than 60% since the government announced it was taking steps to run Bulb. The forced nationalization -- the first since the 2008 banking crisis -- had already been questioned as cheaper options were available.

“We’re focused on continuing to deliver the best possible service for our members during this period,” Bulb said in a statement to Bloomberg News. “In order to do this, we’ve offered team members who stay with Bulb - excluding our executive team - a payment on top of their normal salary.”

The U.K. energy market is facing a crisis, with 24 firms that supply households having failed since August, forcing millions of customers to switch supplier. As gas prices soared 500% this year, many small providers that weren’t hedged couldn’t afford to buy energy for their clients.

Bulb, which lacked the large balance sheets and generation capacity of bigger firms, was put into special administration on Nov. 22 after energy regulator Ofgem judged it too large to be absorbed through the normal process, in which a new supplier is appointed to take on the customers of failed rivals. The founder of Ovo Group, the U.K.’s second-largest supplier, cast doubt on the nationalization process.

Energy providers that absorbed customers from smaller companies have already been granted 1.8 billion pounds by Ofgem to cover initial wholesale costs. That will also add to the mounting bills for the government and taxpayers over the coming year.

U.K. households are set for an 18-billion-pound increase in energy bills in 2022, according to Investec Plc. The surge in gas prices has left the energy price cap -- the ceiling for what firms can charge most customers -- on course to increase by 56% in April, to an average of 2,000 pounds per household a year, analysts Nathan Piper, Sandra Horsfield and Martin Young wrote in a report.

China Mobile Boosts Share Sale to World’s Second-Biggest in 2021

Bloomberg News
Thu, December 23, 2021


(Bloomberg) -- China Mobile Ltd., the country’s largest wireless carrier by revenue, is set to raise $8.78 billion from its Shanghai listing, making it the world’s second largest offering this year -- thanks in part to state support.

The state-run company, which was removed from the New York Stock Exchange earlier this year due to an investment ban ordered by former U.S. President Donald Trump, will exercise its over-allotment option for the offer due to strong demand from domestic retail and state investors, according a Shanghai bourse filing.

That would enable China Mobile to raise a total of 56 billion yuan from the sale, making it the world’s second largest offering this year after electric pickup truck maker Rivian Automotive Inc.’s $13.7 billion IPO, Bloomberg data show. It would also become one of the 10 largest share offers for the nation’s domestic stock market in a decade. Companies listing in mainland China had raised nearly a record $80 billion this year, up about 17% from 2020.

The A-share offer has attracted a total of 19 strategic investors, mostly state-owned entities including the National Council for Social Security Fund, China-Africa Development Fund, China Culture Industrial Investment Fund, National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund, State Grid Yingda International Holdings Co., State Development & Investment Corp., China FAW Group Co., and state-run insurers like China Life Insurance Co. -- as well as the Brunei Investment Agency -- the filing shows.

The NYSE suspended trading in China Mobile in January, along with the Asian nation’s other major state-owned operators, China Telecom Corp. and China Unicom Hong Kong Ltd. That development followed an order barring U.S. investments in Chinese companies the Trump administration deemed a threat to national security. China Telecom listed in Shanghai in August after raising more than $7 billion. China United Network Communications Ltd. is already trading on the exchange.

The strategic investors for China Mobile will pay 24.3 billion yuan for 49.9% of its planned A-share offer of 845.7 million shares ahead of exercise of the green shoe option, and they will be subject to lock-up period from 12 months to 36 months.

All of the over-allotment portion of the A-share offer, or 126.86 million shares, will be allocated to retail investors, according to the filing. Earlier this week, China Mobile said its A-share issue was 805.68 times covered from retail investors’ subscription.

Proceeds from the listing in the Chinese financial hub will be used to fund 5G network expansion, cloud infrastructure, smart-living projects and tech development that will cost the company 157 billion yuan in total, China Mobile has said.

China International Capital Corp. and Citic Securities Co. are sponsors of China Mobile’s A-share offer. The main underwriters include Huatai United Securities Co., BOC International (China) Co. and China Merchants Securities Co.