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Archive for the ‘Vouchers’ Category

New round of budget cuts to be announced Friday as π-yush administration grapples with declining state tax revenues

Posted in Charters, Governor's Office, Health Care, Higher Education, Jobs, Layoffs, Legislature, Legislators, Privatization, Revenue, State Agencies, Taxes, Vouchers on December 12, 2012| 12 Comments »

Fiscal Year 2012-13 is just half over but more deep budget cuts will be announced on Friday and, in the words of one state official, “It ain’t gonna be pretty.”

And the latest fiscal problems haven’t even encountered a looming tax rebate program being offered to encourage financial viability of state charter schools, a centerpiece of the Jindal administration.

With health care and higher education already devastated by previous cuts, it’s anyone’s guess who will suffer in the new round of belt tightening.

Higher education has already been hit with more than $426 million in cuts since 2009—$25 million since June—and Gov. Piyush Jindal has been conducting a fire sale to unload state hospitals and prisons, so it’s difficult to pinpoint where other cuts can be implemented.

The Revenue Estimating Conference will meet on Thursday and the Joint Committee on the Budget will meet on Friday to officially hear the bad news.

Without specifics (because they weren’t available when this was written), that bad news is:

• Personal income tax revenue is below projections;

• Corporate income tax revenue is below projections;

• Severance tax revenue is below projections (because of an unexpected drop in the price of natural gas);

• Sales tax revenue is below projections.

With the bulk of state revenue coming from income taxes and sales taxes, the news, it seems, couldn’t be much worse.

But it might.

Remember the alternative fuel tax credit?

That’s the bill authored by former Rep. Jane Smith (R-Bossier City) that promised a tax credit of up to $3,000 for vehicles that burn “alternative fuel. It was estimated at the time that the tax credit would cost the state $907,000 over five years.

After losing her bid to move up to the Senate in 2011, Jindal rewarded her loyalty (read: dedication to tax breaks) by appointing her as deputy secretary of the Department of Revenue.

The intent of the bill was to encourage the conversion of vehicles to propane but between the passage of Smith’s tax rebate bill and its implementation, flex-fuel vehicles that run on a blend of up to 85 percent ethanol hit the market.

These vehicles immediately qualified for the rebate and the real cost turned out to be more like $200 million, an increase of almost 1,900 percent after then-Revenue Secretary Cynthia Bridges got around to creating rules for the program.

Caught in a potential fiscal crisis over the tax credits, Jindal promptly fired Bridges, promoted Smith (who authored the bill in the first place) to interim secretary and rescinded the tax credits.

Now, a similar scenario may have arisen in the form of last session’s House Bill 969.

HB 969, by Rep. Kirk Talbot (R-Baton Rouge), which was subsequently signed into law by Piyush as Act 25, offers tax rebates to those making contributions to charter schools.

Piyush vetoed a similar bill by Rep. Katrina Jackson (D-Monroe) that would have given tax rebates of up to $10 million to those making contributions to public schools because, he said, there was no provision in the state budget for the rebates.

The only problem is, the provisions of Act 25 contain no dollar cap which, like the alternative fuel tax, could blow a gaping hole in the state’s budget should a sufficient number of people make contributions to the private scholarship program.

It’ll be interesting to see how the Boy Blunder handles the latest financial crisis since the state is running out of one-time money with which to plug budget holes, thousands of state jobs have already been eliminated, there are few remaining assets that can be sold off, and health care and higher education have already been cut just about as much as they can stand and still function.

Perhaps Piyush might actually see the need to jettison a few six-figure appointive positions handed out to former legislators like Smith, Noble Ellington, Troy Hebert, Lane Carson and numerous others.

That would be a start—a show of good faith, at least.

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Guest columnist: Shadow schools, John White, subterfuge, accountability and the best interests of our school children

Posted in BESE, Charters, Education, Governor's Office, Guest Columnist, Privatization, Public Records, Vouchers on December 7, 2012| 4 Comments »

Editor’s note: Occasionally we post guest commentary and today’s offering contains what we feel is significant information about the existence of so-called “shadow schools.” The author of this essay is a former employee of the Department of Education (DOE) who possesses information not readily available to the public because of the propensity on the part of the Jindal administration and DOE to withhold information from the public that could potentially be detrimental to the administration’s goal of skewing statistics to put charters, vouchers, and course choice in the best light possible. Because the author is now employed in another field, we reluctantly decided to publish this under a pseudonym.

By Laird Bradford

Recently I’ve learned that the LDOE has known for many years about the existence of shadow or phantom schools that were created for the express purpose of evading accountability. (Shadow Schools are sites that go unreported to the State and Federal government for reporting purposes, but exist and function as completely independent schools.) In some cases such as Caddo, Jefferson and EBR these efforts were halted in the past. In other cases such as Iberville, St James, and who knows how many others, these efforts are allowed and perhaps even encouraged. (If you doubt me, feel free to call up Iberville (225-687-4341) and ask them what state site code they’ve had assigned to MSA East and MSA West and when they plan on requesting one.)

Only the LDOE knows why rules were made (and made to be broken for some) but this begs a greater question. Where are the children? I mean really? How do they actually keep track of them? Where did they factor in these decisions? Do they factor at all? School districts get State funding for them by reporting they are enrolled at other existing schools, and those Academy students raise the SPS scores of the schools they are reported at, but those are schools, like East Iberville and White Castle, they never actually set foot in.

I hear our leaders like Bobby Jindal and John White claiming they are doing things “for the children,” and that teachers are only worried about themselves. Maybe that’s true. Maybe we all only worry about ourselves. Maybe teachers just went into the profession for the glamorous lifestyles and exorbitant salaries and don’t care about the kids they teach at all. I know I had a lot of teachers growing up that seemed to care a great deal about me, but that could have been part of an elaborate ruse.

I attended public schools in East Baton Rouge Parish. If I looked sad or down my teachers would ask me how my day was going and sometimes it felt good that someone took the time just to ask (though I know now that was just a cynical ploy on their part). When I was bullied and crying once I remember one of my teachers giving me a hug, and offering to help, but such intervention would have only made things worse and I bet they knew that-–-even if it did seem comforting at the time. When I didn’t do as well on a test they would offer to help me after class or in the mornings to catch up or review the topic again . . . “perhaps I could do some extra credit?” But I know now that was also part of a ruse to keep me dumb to the real game—of getting rich off of teaching.

Sometimes I would see my teachers doing part time gigs at the local library or bookstores or even grocery stores to make ends meet-–-or so they said. But I could tell from their wardrobes of all the latest fashions (from 10 to 20 years prior) that they were rolling in the dough-–-so even those jobs must have been part of a clever cover story. I’m sure one day I’ll figure it out.

I know John White is doing everything he can for our children though. He often tells us that he is, which is really quite bold of him since what meager data put out by DOE consistently say otherwise! I believe that is what’s called blind leadership. Sometimes blind leadership is important when you have a goal like privatization in mind, but inconvenient realities like clear evidence that pursuing your true goal [of privatization at any cost] may create vast educational disparities, make pariahs out of teachers, and sacrificial victims out of students. Sometimes you have to sacrifice a few children, or teachers, when the special interests clamor loud enough and the political aspirations of a megalomaniacal governor are at stake.

Unfortunately, despite John White’s catchy and not at all ironic slogan “Louisiana Believes,” Louisiana wasn’t believing fast enough so he was forced to hire a part time PR consultant named Deidre Finn for $144,000 a year (a full time consultant obviously would have been out of his price range.) This must be super important because he certainly wouldn’t do that for purely selfish reasons like spreading glory about himself in preparation for this next gig or to tout a constitutionally-challenged agenda even as children struggle to keep up with their devolutionary lessons (devolution is ok, but evolutionary theory is the devil’s workshop) in ever-increasing class sizes.

And get this folks: John White is only pulling down $275,000 a year! He’s barely getting by. That’s barely what a full time PR consultant makes. It’s no wonder he can’t afford to have any children of his own, or enroll them in our schools. I mean, how could he afford to enroll them in a non-public school (like our new BESE President Chas Roemer does) on such a meager pittance?

But let’s get back to more missing children!

Did you also know that despite record theoretical dropout declines, our graduate counts are relatively unchanged, even as our student enrollment climbs year after year? Despite the touted evidence from DOE that our annual dropout rate has roughly halved by to 9000 fewer dropouts on an annual basis since around 2006, our graduate counts, and all of our completer counts, have remained roughly the same. Every year since Katrina our enrollment has increased by around six thousand students. However, our graduates have increased maybe 1000 or so annually over the same time period. Does anyone know where those students are (because DOE seems to have lost track of them)?

Did you know DOE still hasn’t managed to count the students enrolled on October 1st of 2012? This count was supposed to be completed by the end of October, but it seems they are having serious problems in this department, too. It’s a good thing we don’t rely on that data for anything important, except allocating funding for schools or complying with act 54, that silly thing where students get linked to teachers to determine if teachers get to keep their jobs or tenure or some such. . . nothing really important.

John White also seems to have lost track of the children in his pursuit of creating what he calls “options” for parents. He is adamantly opposed to measuring the success, or failures, of non-public schools receiving vouchers, and in favor of loosening many of the requirements for charters schools, virtual schools, online course providers, and traditional charters in regards to teacher qualifications and class sizes. White believes it is more important to allow parents to make decisions, and market forces to decide success and failures, than to look after the welfare of children we pay him $275,000 a year to care about.

But that’s not his call to make!

For good or ill, John White is the Louisiana Superintendent of Education, not the Patron Saint of Free Enterprise and Anarchy. His job is to ensure all students receive a quality education, not to ensure that a free market, over time, renders a verdict as to who is a winner or loser. A school that is deemed “good” to a parent (maybe because they are close by and offer an afterschool babysitting service) may not be at all good for a child for creating an educated and fully functioning and responsible citizen. Moreover, if John White actually had any experience as a parent, he would realize that parents look at data and read reports, just like everyone else. By depriving parents of any yardstick by which to measure these myriad uncharted education operators he is vastly underserving parents and students. He is acting as a free enterprise messiah, a partisan demagogue, but not as a responsible Superintendent of Education worthy of a $275,000 salary.

John White and the Louisiana Department of education have lost track of dropouts, lost track of schools and the students in those schools, and lost track of the data used to provide funding based on student counts. What he has found is a cadre of political science majors, like his Compass Director Molly Horstman, and PR folks like Dave Lefkowith, and Diedre Finn to foist his political spewings upon us, hoping if he repeats his lies enough, we will “believe” them.

Thanks to Jindal and contributions from privatization forces, BESE (our state board of education) has been hijacked and instead of providing oversight, merely provides a rubber stamp to anything John White or Jindal proposes.

John White has lost some of our children, but his job is not done yet. With his destructive, deluded and dysfunctional policies he has plans to lose them all.

Tell John White it’s time to find the children again. It really is the least he could do.

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Notable Quotables

Posted in ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, BESE, Charters, Governor's Office, Notable Quotables, Recovery School District, RSD, Vouchers on November 30, 2012| 3 Comments »

“There is no question in my mind that this is all part of the ALEC game plan.”

—Bloomfield Hills (Michigan) School Superintendent Ron Glass, discussing four bills now pending before the Michigan Legislature that, if passed, would implement public education “reforms” virtually identical to those now tied up in litigation in Louisiana. Glass said the bills were part of the game plan of the American Legislative Exchange Council which writes “model legislation” for its state lawmaker members to take back home for passage.

“This is not a laissez faire plea to defend the status quo. This is about making sure this tidal wave of untested legislation does not sweep away the valued programs our local community has proudly built into its cherished school system.”

—Glass, in a “call to action” that he sent out to opponents of the four bills.

“The coalition of the status quo have fought reform every step of the way…”

—π-yush Jindal, attempting to be clever in referring to the Coalition for Louisiana Public Education which opposes his education “reform” programs. (Psst! Hey, π-yush: it should be, “The coalition….has fought reform….” Gotta make your subject and verb agree. Didn’t they teach you that at Baton Rouge Magnet and at Brown?)

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Michigan latest to attempt implementation of ALEC-inspired school reform identical to Louisiana’s–even cloning the RSD

Posted in ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, BESE, Charters, Education, Governor's Office, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Privatization, Recovery School District, RSD, Vouchers on November 29, 2012| 3 Comments »

At the risk of sounding like one of those freaky conspiracists who wear tinfoil hats and insist we never really landed on the moon, recent events in the state of Michigan have a familiar—and ominous—ring.

The creation of the Education Achievement Authority (EAA) in that state is eerily akin to Louisiana’s Recovery School District (RSD) and certainly lends support to the theory that the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is behind a national move to turn public schools into for-profit corporate entities with little or no public accountability.

We will return to the Michigan developments presently but first, some background.

The combination of vouchers, charters and computer courses are being promoted by the administration at the expense of public education funding—again, with no accountability built into the so-called “reforms.”

The RSD, which pre-dates the voucher and online courses, for a time was under the leadership void of Paul Vallas, then under equally inept State Superintendent John White and most recently under Patrick Dobard. No matter who heads it up, the RSD has proved a smashing failure and a gaping dark hole into which state revenues seem to vanish.

Vallas, during his tenure, took a state vehicle on personal business to Chicago on more than 30 occasions. On one of those trips, he appeared on a Chicago television station where he announced that he would run for mayor. He never became a candidate and the personal use of the state vehicle for the out-of-state trips was not discovered until he wrecked the vehicle in Chicago.

He also hired cronies from his previous tenures at education departments in Chicago and Philadelphia.

State audits of the RSD have turned up numerous irregularities and there were problems with a private transportation company receiving payment for busing students for the district. The RSD received still another black eye over reports of sexual activity between students at the school, prolonged teacher absences from classrooms (classes reported went unsupervised for weeks at a time) and chargers of attempted bribery. The LDOE official who reported the incidents and his supervisor were summarily fired.

And now comes a report by an outfit called Research on Reforms that reveals that each of the 12 RSD-New Orleans direct-run schools and 38 (79 percent) of the 48 RSD-New Orleans charter schools received 2012 school performance scores (SPS) of “D” or “F.”

The precise definition of a “failing school,” however, has remained in a state of flux since 2005, says the report, entitled Recovery School District in New Orleans: National Model for Reform or District in Academic Crisis.

“The Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) has continuously revised its definition and labels of ‘failing’ schools to the extent that it is difficult to follow the real progress of any school historically,” it said. “It is imperative that the reader visit the historical state legislative actions that resulted in the creation of the RSD-NO and the disenfranchisement of the citizens in New Orleans in order to determine whether or not the RSD has failed in its commitment to public school students in New Orleans.”

And now Jindal’s education reform packages are tied up in state and federal courts.

In Tangipahoa Parish, a federal judge has already ruled against the state in a lawsuit that could be a precursor to legal problems for the entire Jindal education package passed earlier this year by the legislature.

U.S. District Judge Ivan Lemelle ruled that Acts 1 and 2 of the 2012 legislative session were in violation of a desegregation consent decree currently in effect in Tangipahoa and could have implications for other districts in the state under similar orders.

Lemelle said the acts would “impair or impede” the parish’s ability to comply with federal desegregation laws and that more than 40 other school districts across the state that are under similar agreements could also be affected.

Education Department officials indicated the ruling will be appealed.

On Wednesday of this week, trial kicked off in 19th District Court in Baton Rouge in a lawsuit brought against LDOE by the state’s two largest teacher unions and dozens of local school boards.

The plaintiffs are claiming that Act 2, which created the school voucher system and Senate Concurrent Resolution 99, which is the state’s Minimum Foundation Program (MFP) for funding public education, were unconstitutional.

The argue that the voucher system diverts local funds for purposes for which they were never approved by taxpayers and that the MFP resolution, approved on June 4, the last day of the session, failed to obtained the constitutionally-mandated two-thirds vote because the resolution resulted in a “fiscal impact,” which requires a two-thirds vote.

House Speaker Chuck “the Eunuch” Kleckley (R-Lake Charles) and state attorney Jimmy Faircloth maintain there was no fiscal impact, thus allowing for passage by a simple majority of members present and voting. For the full 105-member House, 53 votes are required for a simple majority. A two-thirds majority would require 70 of 105 votes.

The Legislative Fiscal Office, which is charged with reviewing legislative bills for fiscal impact, disagreed, saying there was a fiscal impact, which reinforced plaintiffs’ arguments.

The resolution passed 51-49, a simple majority of the 100 members present and voting. Sixty-seven votes would have been needed for a two-thirds vote.

There are a couple of interesting twists in the voucher lawsuit in state district court. Faircloth, who is representing the state, contributed $1,000 on Oct. 24 to Judge Kelley’s unsuccessful campaign for the State Supreme Court.

Kelley, meanwhile, is married to Angele Davis, who served as Jindal’s commissioner of administration for the first two and one-half years of his administration.

All of which brings us back to our conspiracy involving the state of Michigan specifically and any number of states in general that either have implemented or are attempting to implement similar programs.

Rob Glass, Superintendent of Bloomfield Hills Schools, it not waiting for the axe to fall; he has issued a call to action to fight pending legislation that would put into place programs strikingly similar to those currently the subject of litigation here in Louisiana.

The legislative proposals in Michigan have prompted critics to ask if that state’s EAA is establishing “a statewide school reform district on the fast track?” That same question is now being raised in Louisiana but unlike Michigan, it is being asked here in hindsight.

The observation Glass made to LouisianaVoice on Thursday is even more to the point: “There is no question in my mind that this is all part of the ALEC game plan. What we’re seeing in Michigan either has been played out or is being played out in other states and the proposals in all the states are identical,” he said.

The demographic profile of Bloomfield Hills is in stark contrast to that of New Orleans and most of Louisiana.

Bloomfield Hills is a city located in the heart of metro Detroit’s affluent northern suburbs in Oakland County. Located 20 miles northwest of downtown Detroit, the city, with a population of less than 4,000, has consistently ranked as one of the five wealthiest cities in the U.S. with comparable populations. Its median family income in excess of $200,000 per year is the highest of any city outside California, Florida or Virginia.

“If we do not take immediate action, I believe great damage will be done to public education, including our school system,” Glass said in his Nov. 28 call to action. “We have just three weeks to take action before it’s too late,” he said of four bills pending in the current legislative session in Michigan.

The bills are:

• House Bill 6004 and Senate Bill 1358 would expand the EAA, presently consisting of 15 Detroit schools, to a statewide system overseen by a chancellor appointed by the governor and which would function outside the authority of the State Board of Education of state school superintendent. “These schools are exempt from the same laws and quality measures of community-governed public schools,” Glass said. “The EAA can seize unused school buildings (built and financed by local taxpayers) and force sale or lease to charter, non-public or EAA schools.”

• House Bill 5923 would create several new forms of charter and online schools with no limit on the number, many of which would be created by EAA. “Public schools are not allowed to create these new schools unless they charter them,” Glass said. “Selective enrollment/dis-enrollment policies will likely lead to greater segregation in our public schools. This bill creates new schools without changing the overall funding available, further diluting resources for community-governed public schools.”

• Senate Bill 620 known as the “Parent Trigger” bill, this would allow the lowest-achieving 5 percent of schools to be converted to a charter school while allowing parents or teachers to petition for the desired reform model. “This bill…disenfranchises voters, ends their local control and unconstitutionally hands taxpayer-owned property over to for-profit companies,” he said. “Characterized as parent-empowerment, this bill does little to develop deep, community-wide parent engagement and organization.”

Glass said he has never considered himself a conspiracy theorist—until now. “This package of bills is the latest in a year-long barrage of ideologically-driven bills designed to weaken and defund locally-controlled public education, handing scarce taxpayer dollars over to for-profit entities operating under a different set of rules,” he said. “I believe this is fundamentally wrong.”

He said that he, State School Superintendent Mike Flanagan and State Board of Education President John Austin, along with the Detroit Free Press, have expressed various concerns about the bills.

“This is not a laissez faire plea to defend the status quo (a favorite accusation leveled at educators by Jindal). This is about making sure this tidal wave of untested legislation does not sweep away the valued programs our local community has proudly built into its cherished school system,” Glass said.

A familiar and ominous ring indeed…

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Defunct Abramson sister school continues operations; Kenilworth exec solicits funds with old business card

Posted in BESE, Charters, Education, Ethics, Governor's Office, Privatization, Recovery School District, Transparency, Uncategorized, Vouchers on October 14, 2012| 6 Comments »

LouisianaVoice has learned that despite serious deficiencies that included widespread cheating that closed the Abramson Science & Technology Charter School in New Orleans last year, its sister school in Baton Rouge continues to operate with the blessings of the Louisiana Department of Education (DOE).

At the same time Abramson’s problems were surfacing more than a year ago, reports of wrongful firing of teachers and student mistreatment at Kenilworth Science & Technology School in Baton Rouge finally came to light when it was learned that DOE had launched an investigation of Abramson.

Both schools are run by a Texas company affiliated with the Gulen movement, a Turkish offshoot of the Islamic faith.

The problems at Abramson were first reported by state education employee Folwell Dunbar. Dunbar and his supervisor, Jacob Landry, who was director of the DOE charter office, were promptly fired after reporting the abuses that included sexual misconduct, neglect and missing files.

In a cover-up that has become indicative of the manner in which DOE is run under the Piyush Jindal-John White administration, a 72-page report on an investigation conducted by DOE was generated. That report included a five-page cover letter by then-acting Superintendent of Education Ollie Tyler to Board of Elementary and Secondary Education President Penny Dastugue that claimed DOE first learned of the allegations surrounding Abramson on July 14, 2011, even though Dunbar and Landry had warned of problems at the school more than a year before.

To be fair, the report was compiled and released prior to White’s being named superintendent but he has taken no apparent steps to alter the situation at Kenilworth subsequent to his takeover of the department.

The claim that the department had no knowledge of wrongdoing at the school only served to discredit the entire report.

Dunbar, in a memo to department colleagues in 2010, said that Inci Akpinar, vice president of Atlas Texas Construction & Trading, the Texas company with ties to the Gulen movement, told Dunbar during a discussion of the school’s problems, “I have $25,000 to fix this problem: $20,000 for you and five for me.

A state audit conducted well in advance of the report’s publication also cited the school for having classrooms without instructors for weeks or even months at a time and of students who claimed their science fair projects had been done by their teachers.

Abramson’s charter was subsequently revoked but Kenilworth has continued to operate and last week, the school’ superintendent was calling on businesses in Baton Rouge in an attempt to raise funds for a science fair at the school.

Dr. Tevfik Eski, chief executive officer of Pelican Education Foundation in New Orleans which ran Abramson until its charter was revoked, was handing out business cards that contained the names of both Abramson and Kenilworth Science & Technology Charter Schools, only the word “Abramson” had been scratched through with blue ink and the letters “CMO” scribbled in over the word “Technology.”

CMO stands for “Charter Management Organization” and Pelican Education Foundation contracts with Cosmos Foundation, the CMO that runs the Harmony School Network in Texas, with which Abramson and Kenilworth were affiliated through Atlas Construction.

Click on image to enlarge:

If all that sounds terribly convoluted, it’s for a reason. Because of its organizational structure the Texas Education Authority (TEA) reported last year it had no knowledge of the problems with Abramson and Kenilworth even though the Cosmos Foundation operates more than 30 such schools in Texas.

In addition to his Baton Rouge address, Eski’s business card also contained the telephone and fax numbers of Pelican Education Foundation, his email address at Kenilworth and the web address of Pelican Education Foundation. In addition, he had written (also in blue ink) his Baton Rouge cell number.

One would think that a year after Abramson had its charter yanked, Eski would spring for new business cards but give him points for austerity.

In addition to the deficiencies already mentioned, the 72-page report by DOE also noted that Abramson students who were failing in English and math and who would not graduate from Abramson on time were being accepted en masse to North American College in Houston.

Then-Abramson principal Cuneyt Dokmen cited the acceptances as proof that Abramson was successful but the DOE report noted that Dokmen was scheduled to work at North American College in the fall of 2011.

North American College is a private, non-profit, four-year institution founded in 2010 that offers only three bachelor degree programs—education, computer science and business administration.

So what we have here is a dysfunctional DOE that shoots the messenger when it hears bad news from its own, generates lengthy investigative reports that deny knowledge of information that in fact the department had for more than a year, and allows one of the charter schools to continue operations with no accountability required.

Bottom line: can we believe anything that comes out of the Louisiana Department of Education’s administrative offices?

No wonder John White thinks he needs that $144,000 public relations mouthpiece.

The inmates are truly running the asylum.

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