Showing posts with label resignation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label resignation. Show all posts
Sunday, August 28, 2011
In sharp and stark contrast to Dr. John Covington
There's a news story out today on Yahoo! News about a school superintendent who's in, as I said above, sharp contrast to our soon-to-be-leaving-because-he's-a-rat-deserting-a-ship-and-walking-away-from-his-commitments-and-responsibilities. This guy is--get this--giving back his annual salary of $800,000.00 to the school district even though he'll be running "325 schools and 35 school districts with 195,000 students, all for less than a starting California teacher earns." He is Fresno County (Fresno, California) School Superintendent Larry Powell and quoted saying: "How much do we need to keep accumulating?" asks Powell, 63. "There's no reason for me to keep stockpiling money." To which I have to ask, how do you suppose the Kansas City, Missouri School District could possibly find such a superintendent for our schools? Link to original story: http://news.yahoo.com/school-superintendent-gives-800k-pay-150206667.html
Saturday, August 27, 2011
A "Dr. John Covington Lesson"
An old friend of mine works for the KCMO School District and has for several years. He works hard and has a good reputation in the District for doing what needs to be done, frankly, and being a good teacher. So much so that they made him a Teacher instructor (I can't remember the exact title) but basically, a teacher who helps teachers be better teachers. At the beginning of this school year, he was offered a great job at one of the Charter Schools, which he would have loved, first, and secondly, which are offered rarely and only to good teachers. So did he take it? No, no he didn't. And do you know why? He didn't take the better job at the better school because he had made commitments already, to the work he was supposed to be doing and because it was the beginning of the school year, for pity's sake and you just don't leave people "in the lurch" like that, scrambling for a replacement like that. At least you don't unless you're one Superintendeny Dr. John Covington. Then all bets are off. "Screw 'em", right, Dr. Covington?
An open note to Dr. John Covington
Dr. Covington, May you have someone do this to you one day--and very soon. That is, take on a responsibility and then, just as it is to get under way, they stab you in the figurative back and resign the job. It's either that or rot in hell but the first one seems far more civilized. Signed, the children and staff of the Kansas City, Missouri School District and the business community and citizens of Kansas City, Missouri. P.S. Airick Leonard West especially sends his thoughts.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Questions on Dr. Covington's resignation
Oh, yeah, we have questions: 1) Why now? 2) Why all of a sudden? 3) It seems as though some event must have triggered this resignation, surely. What "event" was that? 4) Is there any truth to the rumor about this somehow being involved with a large ($86 million) contract Airich West is somehow supposedly involved in? 5) Was Dr. Covington in any way forced out? 6) If so, if that's the case, by whom was he forced out? 7) Why in heck (I want to say hell) would the superintendent resign at the BEGINNING of the school year? That seems to suggest there was or is some big problem and/or reason for this resignation. 8) If that's the case, what is that big reason? 9) Was this due in part or in whole to some problem--the contract or something else--with Airick West? 10) If so, what was that problem and why is/was it insurmountable? For now, that's enough but the fact is, the answers to these questions alone would be long ones. I hope we find out soon. Links: http://www.kansascity.com/2011/08/24/3097178/covington-steps-down.html; http://videos.kansascity.com/vmix_hosted_apps/p/media?id=108245961; http://www.kansascity.com/2011/08/25/3097850/state-commissioner-says-kc-districts.html; http://voices.kansascity.com/entries/covington-could-have-handled-airick-west/; http://voices.kansascity.com/entries/benson-says-board-community-didnt-protect-covington/
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Oh, that Egyptian President quitting thing? Fugghedaboudit!
Egypt's Mubarak transfers power to vice president
By Maggie Michael, Associated Press
CAIRO – Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak announced he is handing his powers over to his vice president, Omar Suleiman, and ordered constitutional amendments. But the move means he retains his title of president and ensures regime control over the reform process, falling short of protester demands.
Link to original story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110210/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_egypt
By Maggie Michael, Associated Press
CAIRO – Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak announced he is handing his powers over to his vice president, Omar Suleiman, and ordered constitutional amendments. But the move means he retains his title of president and ensures regime control over the reform process, falling short of protester demands.
Link to original story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110210/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_egypt
Friday, January 15, 2010
More of us need to call for the Funk's resignation
I see from over at Tony's KC Blog that the KC Tribune has an article just now by Daniel Starling calling for Mayor Funkhouser to resign.
Here, here!
Attaboy!
Good for him!
It won't happen but, really, more of us--out here on blogs, and everyone across the city--should call for this clown to call it a day on his Mayorship.
What a mess.
We've had it.
We have decidedly not become "The City That Works" he promised. Far from it.
Streets unrepaired in good weather--unplowed in bad.
Steel plates on holes.
Bad morale downtown.
Lawsuits left and right.
Heck, he's bad to have just because of the expense of his rule.
Let it be said again: Mayor Mark Funkhouser--and his wife--need to go.
And they should do the honorable, intelligent thing and resign.
They won't but that's what should happen.
Here, here!
Attaboy!
Good for him!
It won't happen but, really, more of us--out here on blogs, and everyone across the city--should call for this clown to call it a day on his Mayorship.
What a mess.
We've had it.
We have decidedly not become "The City That Works" he promised. Far from it.
Streets unrepaired in good weather--unplowed in bad.
Steel plates on holes.
Bad morale downtown.
Lawsuits left and right.
Heck, he's bad to have just because of the expense of his rule.
Let it be said again: Mayor Mark Funkhouser--and his wife--need to go.
And they should do the honorable, intelligent thing and resign.
They won't but that's what should happen.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Here we go again (2nd post in one day, too!)
Hud chief resigns amid criminal probe (don'tcha just love this Bush Administration?)
By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer 1 minute ago
HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson, his tenure tarnished by allegations of political favoritism and a criminal investigation, announced his resignation Monday amid the wreckage of the national housing crisis.
He leaves behind a trail of unanswered questions about whether he tilted the Department of Housing and Urban Development toward Republican contractors and cronies.
The move comes at a shaky time for the economy, with soaring mortgage foreclosures imperiling the nation's credit markets.
In announcing that his last day at HUD will be April 18, Jackson said only, "There comes a time when one must attend more diligently to personal and family matters."
Some Congressional Democrats had pushed for him to leave.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton said that while Jackson's resignation is "appropriate, it does nothing to address the Bush administration's wait-and-don't-see posture to our nation's housing crisis."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said HUD will be called on to work with Congress on assisting refinancing for borrowers faced with imminent foreclosure.
The ethical allegations against Jackson "meant that the Bush administration's ineffective housing policies were being burdened by an even more ineffective HUD Secretary," Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said after Jackson's announcement.
President Bush called Jackson "a strong leader and a good man." Ties between the two men go back to the 1980s when they lived in the same Dallas neighborhood. It was Jackson's personal ties to Bush that brought him to Washington, where he displayed a forceful personal style at HUD for seven years, first as the agency's No. 2 official and since 2004 in the top slot.
Despite a strong commitment to housing for those in need, Jackson was capable of ill-advised public comments.
Last year, after the subprime mortgage crisis erupted, many policymakers underlined the disproportionate impact of the high-risk, high-cost mortgages on minorities and the elderly, who often are targets of predatory lending practices that lure people into loans they are incapable of repaying.
Asked about the problems with subprime mortgages last June, Jackson insisted that many such borrowers were not unsophisticated, low-income people but what he called "Yuppies, Buppies and Guppies" — well-educated, young, black and gay upwardly mobile achievers — with expensive cars who bought $400,000 homes with little or no money down.
In announcing his departure, Jackson said that in his time at HUD, "We have helped families keep their homes. We have transformed public housing. We have reduced chronic homelessness. And we have preserved affordable housing and increased minority homeownership."
Bush has been cool to the idea of a big federal housing rescue. "The temptation of Washington is to say that anything short of a massive government intervention in the housing market amounts to inaction," the president said recently. "I strongly disagree with that sentiment."
On Monday on his way out of the country for a trip built around a NATO summit, Bush said he wants Congress to modernize HUD's Federal Housing Administration, allowing more struggling homeowners to refinance their mortgages.
In October, the National Journal first reported on the criminal investigation of Jackson. The FBI has been examining the ties between Jackson and a friend who was paid $392,000 by Jackson's department as a construction manager in New Orleans. Jackson's friend got the job after Jackson asked a staff member to pass along his name to the Housing Authority of New Orleans.
In another instance of alleged favoritism that came to light in February, the Philadelphia housing authority alleges that Jackson retaliated against the agency because it refused to award a vacant lot worth $2 million to soul-music producer-turned-community developer Kenny Gamble for redevelopment of a public housing complex.
Jackson's problems began in 2006, when he told a group of commercial real estate executives that he had revoked a contract because the applicant who thanked him said he did not like President Bush. Jackson later told investigators "I lied" when he made the remark about taking back the contract.
The probe of Jackson's comment by the HUD inspector general ended with no action taken against him, but the investigators brought to light friction between the HUD secretary and some contractors who have long done business with the agency, a number of them donors to Democrats. On Monday, the IG's office said it had seen Jackson's latest remarks and "there is nothing more that we can add."
In the IG probe, some of Jackson's own aides contradicted his account of one incident in which investigators found the HUD secretary had blocked a contract for several months to one heavily Democratic donor. Jackson blamed his aides for the delay in the award.
Jackson was the first black leader of the housing authority in Dallas, where his integration efforts caused clashes with some local homeowners in predominantly white neighborhoods.
___
Associated Press writers Marcy Gordon, Ben Feller, Hope Yen and Devlin Barrett contributed to this report
Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
Copyright © 2008 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer 1 minute ago
HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson, his tenure tarnished by allegations of political favoritism and a criminal investigation, announced his resignation Monday amid the wreckage of the national housing crisis.
He leaves behind a trail of unanswered questions about whether he tilted the Department of Housing and Urban Development toward Republican contractors and cronies.
The move comes at a shaky time for the economy, with soaring mortgage foreclosures imperiling the nation's credit markets.
In announcing that his last day at HUD will be April 18, Jackson said only, "There comes a time when one must attend more diligently to personal and family matters."
Some Congressional Democrats had pushed for him to leave.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton said that while Jackson's resignation is "appropriate, it does nothing to address the Bush administration's wait-and-don't-see posture to our nation's housing crisis."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said HUD will be called on to work with Congress on assisting refinancing for borrowers faced with imminent foreclosure.
The ethical allegations against Jackson "meant that the Bush administration's ineffective housing policies were being burdened by an even more ineffective HUD Secretary," Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said after Jackson's announcement.
President Bush called Jackson "a strong leader and a good man." Ties between the two men go back to the 1980s when they lived in the same Dallas neighborhood. It was Jackson's personal ties to Bush that brought him to Washington, where he displayed a forceful personal style at HUD for seven years, first as the agency's No. 2 official and since 2004 in the top slot.
Despite a strong commitment to housing for those in need, Jackson was capable of ill-advised public comments.
Last year, after the subprime mortgage crisis erupted, many policymakers underlined the disproportionate impact of the high-risk, high-cost mortgages on minorities and the elderly, who often are targets of predatory lending practices that lure people into loans they are incapable of repaying.
Asked about the problems with subprime mortgages last June, Jackson insisted that many such borrowers were not unsophisticated, low-income people but what he called "Yuppies, Buppies and Guppies" — well-educated, young, black and gay upwardly mobile achievers — with expensive cars who bought $400,000 homes with little or no money down.
In announcing his departure, Jackson said that in his time at HUD, "We have helped families keep their homes. We have transformed public housing. We have reduced chronic homelessness. And we have preserved affordable housing and increased minority homeownership."
Bush has been cool to the idea of a big federal housing rescue. "The temptation of Washington is to say that anything short of a massive government intervention in the housing market amounts to inaction," the president said recently. "I strongly disagree with that sentiment."
On Monday on his way out of the country for a trip built around a NATO summit, Bush said he wants Congress to modernize HUD's Federal Housing Administration, allowing more struggling homeowners to refinance their mortgages.
In October, the National Journal first reported on the criminal investigation of Jackson. The FBI has been examining the ties between Jackson and a friend who was paid $392,000 by Jackson's department as a construction manager in New Orleans. Jackson's friend got the job after Jackson asked a staff member to pass along his name to the Housing Authority of New Orleans.
In another instance of alleged favoritism that came to light in February, the Philadelphia housing authority alleges that Jackson retaliated against the agency because it refused to award a vacant lot worth $2 million to soul-music producer-turned-community developer Kenny Gamble for redevelopment of a public housing complex.
Jackson's problems began in 2006, when he told a group of commercial real estate executives that he had revoked a contract because the applicant who thanked him said he did not like President Bush. Jackson later told investigators "I lied" when he made the remark about taking back the contract.
The probe of Jackson's comment by the HUD inspector general ended with no action taken against him, but the investigators brought to light friction between the HUD secretary and some contractors who have long done business with the agency, a number of them donors to Democrats. On Monday, the IG's office said it had seen Jackson's latest remarks and "there is nothing more that we can add."
In the IG probe, some of Jackson's own aides contradicted his account of one incident in which investigators found the HUD secretary had blocked a contract for several months to one heavily Democratic donor. Jackson blamed his aides for the delay in the award.
Jackson was the first black leader of the housing authority in Dallas, where his integration efforts caused clashes with some local homeowners in predominantly white neighborhoods.
___
Associated Press writers Marcy Gordon, Ben Feller, Hope Yen and Devlin Barrett contributed to this report
Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
Copyright © 2008 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
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