	Comments By Email Posts

New York Times: Not Quite a Reporter, but Raking Muck and Reaping Wrath

By GerritsenBeach.net, on January 24th, 2011

The New York Times tries to grapple what GerritsenBeach.net is exactly

Anonymous

January 24, 2011 at 7:44 pm · Reply

omg…

Woodchip gate made it to the new york times

Well-loved. Like or Dislike: 19 5
whatever

January 24, 2011 at 9:47 pm · Reply

You might call it “The rakes of wrath”.

Well-loved. Like or Dislike: 9 3
nobody

January 25, 2011 at 12:12 am · Reply

Congrats!

Well-loved. Like or Dislike: 13 6
Retrofresh

January 25, 2011 at 12:31 pm · Reply

Woot! Awesome!

Well-loved. Like or Dislike: 10 5
Kelly D

January 25, 2011 at 1:02 pm · Reply

Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
I can not Believe this guy is exposing the Beach Trash.

Poorly-rated. Like or Dislike: 8 14
dvsness

January 25, 2011 at 2:10 pm · Reply

Interesting comments from all over the country on the NYT site.

Hot debate. What do you think? 9 6
LJ Burgess

January 25, 2011 at 2:36 pm · Reply

Greetings Gerritsen Beach, Brooklyn, New York!!

Some of us here on the Eastern Shore of Maryland are watching these neighborhood “issues” with rapt fascination!

You are not alone!

So…do we censor/censure the citizen journalists as they do in communist China? Do we drive them underground as they have in border towns of Mexico? Or perhaps find a way to “remove” them as they do in the new mother Russia?

Or…we could look at this crazy “democracy” idea, and let FREEDOM decide which course to take!!

Maybe if the citizens would/could look past their own self interests, you guys might find some truth in your hearts.

Here on the Shore, if kids acted out and destroyed someone else’s property, they’d still be locked up in Juvy, after their parents gave them a swift boot!

Well-loved. Like or Dislike: 27 3
Retrofresh

January 25, 2011 at 2:55 pm · Reply

@dvsness Unfortunately they closed the article to further comments.

Like or Dislike: 3 1
Guido

January 25, 2011 at 3:16 pm · Reply

The Cats out of the Bag Good People of Gerritsen Beach LOL

Hot debate. What do you think? 7 6
Anonymous

January 25, 2011 at 4:05 pm · Reply

Would Renee Soir-Cullen feel the same way if in a few years her son decided to rob a bank to impress his older siblings or should he continue to break bus windows and possibly permanently maim passengers? Behavior like this should be publicized if only to embarass the miscreant to terminate his activities.

Well-loved. Like or Dislike: 16 5
Mark

January 25, 2011 at 5:12 pm · Reply

Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
I am from Illinois and stumbled across your web site. Keep up the good work. Blogs serve a vital role in exposing issues that were not previously being covered. This transparency and openess exposes secrets and stories that otherwise would not be told.

I have such a short story. In many suburban Chicago K-12 school districts, teachers and administrators receive a 6% pay raise, each of the last 4 years prior to their retirement. That is a 24% increase over 4 years which results in a spiked underfunded Pension. This happens even if non-tenured teachers are layed off, B team sports are cut, reading aides are cut, fees are increased, etc. How is this possible?

First of all, the Teachers Retirement System (TRS) pension fund allows such a practice. In fact, they previously allowed up to a 20% increase, and so the 6% increase is actually “reformed”.

The exact percent is negotiated in the Collective Bargaining Agreement. Who negotiates the Collective Bargaining Agreement? On one side of the table is a “Union Negotiating Team” consisting of say 6 union teachers and 2 union reps. Union reps are full-time employees employed by the union, they do not teach. On the other side of the table is the “Board of Education Negotiating Team” consisting of say 1 Board Member, the Superintendent, and 5 Assistant Superintendents.

Let’s look at the dynamics of this negotiation. The teachers ask for their 6% end-of-career increase. Remember that’s 6% per year for 4 years, 24% total. If the Assistant Superindtendents accept this increase, the teachers will not complain, and the Assistant Superintendents can thus receive the same deal when their contracts are negotiated.

The Superintendent has to be careful, because the Board has the authority to fire the Superintendent.

The board members election campaign was typically bankrolled by the Union PAC. How does that work?

The school gets the majority of their funding from property taxes. The citizen pays property taxes to the county. The county sends a share to the school district. The school district pays the teacher, and a payroll deduction for Union Dues goes to the local, state, and national “Education Associations” which in fact are unions. The “Education Associations” send money to their Political Action Committees (PAC). The PACs have a name such as “Acme Education Association PAC”.

Back to our story. The PAC endorses candidates and provides campaign funds, which produce slick, glossy, and colorful signs and brochures. Rarely can a candidate raise more money than a Union PAC. The candidate with the most money usually wins the election. Thus Board member has been bankrolled indirectly by the teacher union and the taxpayer themselves.

Most in the public are not aware the “Education Associations” are Unions. Doing the math, the words “Education Association” appear six times – the local, state, and Federal Union; and the local, state, and Federal PAC. Unions and PACs thus appear to taxpayers as “Education Association” helping the kids. Now in fact some of their activities do help children, but the bottom line as demonstrated is their first interest is themselves. The taxpayer doesn’t realize the Education Association is involved in union negotiations. It never occurs to the taxpayer that the teachers would receive a bonus just for filling out paperwork, money which could have been spent on teachers, extra-curricular activities, reading instruction, etc.

You would the think us Illinois taxpayers and the legislators could put an end to this, but hey, you are talking about Illinois. We’ll get around to this “reform” someday. You see, we got so many reforms to do, we can’t do them all at once. In the meantime we’ll raise taxes.

You might not be surprised that public sector employee unions including the Education Unions (Illinois Education Assocation, National Education Assocation, Illinois Federation of Teachers, American Federation of Teachers) are top donors to the Democratic Governor, Democtratic Speaker of the Senate, and Democratic Speaker of the House.

Poorly-rated. Like or Dislike: 5 15
GB DUDE

January 25, 2011 at 6:09 pm · Reply

Good stuff to the CEO of GB.net. Well deserved

Hot debate. What do you think? 9 6
blueMagoo

January 25, 2011 at 7:10 pm · Reply

One thing that pops up in reading the Times article is the ethical issue of identifying yourself as the administrator of a, now at least, fairly popular blog when you talk to people about local issues and esp. if you take videos & pictures of them for later publication.

I’m not talking about the Halloween wilding type of stuff but the personal interviews. Anyone breaking the law has absolutely no expectation of privacy unless they are taken into custody where their rights become more clearly defined.

While you may not have the legal right to tell them I would think you have an ethical right to be as upfront as possible with people. This may take some of the heat off you on the more controversial issues that you blog on and hopefully you won’t run into someone with a large bank account that wants to take on these currently very gray legal issues. That could get expensive for the administrator.

Well-loved. Like or Dislike: 10 4
AnonymousT

November 9, 2011 at 3:29 am · Reply

Next is your Tv debut!!! GO GET EM!!!

Like or Dislike: 1 1