The biggest lie has always been to keep quiet; and the best life-enhancer is to provoke, unsettle, rile – in short, to make people face the truth.
Gore Vidal
Heavens, I think you are on to some very vile stuff be this true. I had heard the story about Candy’s getting her daughter excused for a DUI in some underhanded way. Is this the woman she got the job for, Christine Butler? And does her light sentence come from her connection with Candy, whose spouse is judge?
Sleeping with a student? Where was the Professional Standards crew that tortures teachers for peccadilloes? Doesn’t sleeping with a student register on Professional Standards Richter scale? No wonder these people don’t want people to blog about the school board.
I am going to send that Texas blogger a fan letter for holding the line against that Texas school system’s trying to shut down her First Amendment rights. She deserves a “Well done.”
Tom Gallagher would be perfectly willing to cooperate with this board’s shutting down free speech if it could. I have seen enough of his disrespect for the First Amendment in the board room to know he would be in there pitching for the board or administration to try to sue somebody to shut down his or her blog.
We must hold the line with these thugs. Lee
From: Anonymous [mailto:noreply-comment@blogger.com] Sent: Thursday, December 11, 2008 6:48 PM To: tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com Subject: [Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch] New comment on Off with His Head! Everything We Feared Is True Ab....
Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Off with His Head! Everything We Feared Is True Ab...":
These criminals have a vested interest in shutting down the blogs. They don't want their hankypanky to come to light.
Didn't someone post on this blog that Candy Olson got Christina Butler her job in order to cover up her daughter's alleged DUI? Where is that poster? What does he or she think of Christina Butler getting off as today's paper says. She slept with a student many times and will not serve any jail time. I wonder if the poster who posted about the Candy Olson connection knows if this light sentence is because Candy Olson knows Butler. Olson's husband is a judge. Maybe he knows the judge who sentenced Butler. You never know.
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Posted by Anonymous to Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch at 3:47 PM
The Wall blog publisher from her undisclosed location alerted me to your post on free speech and the school board.
You analyzed the bizarre request of Hillsborough County school board member Jennifer Falliero that the Times monitor round the clock and control the blogs that have reported on, among other things, the adultery initiated by her with Board Public Affairs head Marc Hart that ended his marriage, psychologically and financially savaged his two young children, and caused the panicked board and administration to fire Hart on the cooked-up charge of alcoholism.
Hart had a drinking problem for years; if the administration were enforcing alcoholism standards, its quidnuncs would have fired Hart long before. This is standard blind-leading-the-blind administration Keystone Cops protocol: logic gets short shrift in any decision it makes. That’s what comes of having a preponderance of C and D students on the administration rolls with Romper-room degrees from third-tier colleges.
I believe the Smith woman who was principal of Alafia may have been an Elia patronage appointment since I read in the Alafia blog that Elia and her hefty spouse are friends with Smith and her spouse. These patronage networks are a sine qua non for the Hillsborough County administration.
I doubt the two board operatives Falliero and Griffin gave a damn about the Alafia school, its students, and its parents. This board and administration are all for one and one for all if it’s the board and administration are concerned. They don’t want the public to catch on to the racket they are running on the public dime.
I shall request a public-information copy of Ms. Falliero’s email to you—I refer to her as Pole Girl in memory of her floozy seduction of poor chump Marc Hart—and perhaps I shall need an state attorney-general opinion to get a copy of her working draft that she took, I am sure, to the Public Affairs office for redaction since she is I judge functionally illiterate except in making grocery lists and notes to herself about meeting some guy at such and such trysting bar.
I believe it should be of some concern to Brandon citizens that Ms. Falliero can’t write the English language without a coach and yet wants to be their school-board representative. She allegedly got a degree from USF, which confirms my belief that the university is not top of the line, a concern of mine since two of my dear grandsons attend there. I may in the end need to write Dr. Genshaft to question how the university can ever get the Phi Beta Kappa chapter that it has begged for long time if it graduates specimens like Pole Girl Falliero without the ability to write a simple letter to the editor without tax-paid help.
Ms. Falliero is concerned about the blogs, and so are other administration and board outfits around the country. My read is that the whole Hillsborough County School Board and administration would like to shut down the community’s school blogs so that they can continue behind the veil of faux executive privilege to run the schools for the board’s and administration’s power-lust and money benefit.
Here’s a piece below on the situation in Texas. The next time you write on this problem of board and administration hostility to free speech—and write you should since without Free Speech, you and the Times are out of business—you might include data on how the Texas case fares. These data might educate the local school boards on the fact that being elected to a school board does not convey the right to abrogate the Constitution.
The Hillsborough County board attorney, T. Gonzalez, Esquire, is not a lick of help on the First Amendment. He allowed Pole Girl Falliero to kick me out of the board room with escort Jolly Green Giant What’s His Name, the head of security, who menaced me with threats of incarceration as we exited, because I had used a person’s name in my address to the board.
I had to summon ACLU to speak up for the First Amendment to the board after this scene. Gonzalez, I intuited, remained unconvinced of the validity of free speech’s Constitutional protection in the badlands of Hillsborough County. The only thing Gonzalez has firm convictions on is that no-bid contracts are just hunky dory since his law firm has had one for 37 years with the board. I have repeatedly recommended his firing and filed a bar ethics charge against him for, among other deficiencies, abusing commas. But it’s hard to get the legal priesthood to repudiate one of its own. F. Lee Bailey died in good standing with the bar after a lifetime of disgracing the tenets of ethical lawyering. Gonzalez, I predict, will exit with full bar honors.
lee
BY TERRENCE O'BRIEN, POSTED NOV 7TH 2007 AT 5:26PM
As you may have noticed, one way to ruffle our feathers is to try and get down with that whole stifling free speech business. We're not big fans of censorship... in fact we can't think of too many people (outside of some fringe religious elements still fighting the culture wars) who are.
Unfortunately, attempting to quiet those whose speech offends you only often helps bring publicity and credibility to their cause, which is exactly what is happening with a certain case in Galveston, Texas.
The Galveston Independent School District (GISD) is attempting to sue Sandra Tetley, the mother of a student in the district, for defamation. Tetley runs the blog GISDWatch.com, which tracks and comments on the activities of the local school board.
The GISD is demanding that Tetley remove 16 postings from the blog, which the District's lawyers have identified as libelous. The postings in question throw around some hefty accusations, charging that Superintendent Lynne Cleveland, the board of trustees, and school administrators lied to the people of the Galveston. They are also being accused of falsifying budget numbers, using their positions for personal gain, and spying on employees, among other things.
Tetley has so far refused to take down any of the postings, citing her right to post her opinion.
In 2002, an appeals court ruled that school districts could not sue for defamation, so the GISD has had to change its strategy a bit. Instead of filing suit on behalf of the district, lawyers are suing on behalf of the individual members of the administration and board. The legal fees will still come out of the district's budget however, meaning the citizens of Galveston are now paying for several personal defamation suits.
We have a feeling this whole thing is going to come crashing down on their heads
From Slashdot and The Galveston County Daily News
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Posted By twinkobie to Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch at 12/11/2008 09:02:00 AM
nds of the Smiths. Apparently Les Griffin and Falliero went undercover to cajole Smith to quit. They wanted to get the board and administration off the hook for Elia’s
BY TERRENCE O'BRIEN, POSTED NOV 7TH 2007 AT 5:26PM
As you may have noticed, one way to ruffle our feathers is to try and get down with that whole stifling free speech business. We're not big fans of censorship... in fact we can't think of too many people (outside of some fringe religious elements still fighting the culture wars) who are.
Unfortunately, attempting to quiet those whose speech offends you only often helps bring publicity and credibility to their cause, which is exactly what is happening with a certain case in Galveston, Texas.
The Galveston Independent School District (GISD) is attempting to sue Sandra Tetley, the mother of a student in the district, for defamation. Tetley runs the blog GISDWatch.com, which tracks and comments on the activities of the local school board.
The GISD is demanding that Tetley remove 16 postings from the blog, which the District's lawyers have identified as libelous. The postings in question throw around some hefty accusations, charging that Superintendent Lynne Cleveland, the board of trustees, and school administrators lied to the people of the Galveston. They are also being accused of falsifying budget numbers, using their positions for personal gain, and spying on employees, among other things.
Tetley has so far refused to take down any of the postings, citing her right to post her opinion.
In 2002, an appeals court ruled that school districts could not sue for defamation, so the GISD has had to change its strategy a bit. Instead of filing suit on behalf of the district, lawyers are suing on behalf of the individual members of the administration and board. The legal fees will still come out of the district's budget however, meaning the citizens of Galveston are now paying for several personal defamation suits.
We have a feeling this whole thing is going to come crashing down on their heads
From Slashdot and The Galveston County Daily News
Sent: Thursday, December 11, 2008 7:02 AM
To: lee de cesare
Subject: Hillsborough is probably compiling a list like this
Retaliation: California School Administrators Develop an "Enemies List"
The Association of California School Administrators (ACSA) represents over 14,000 California school administrators. This group surveyed their membership to identify groups and parents who had been critical of schools.
The School Administrators Association organized the survey responses into a secret Enemies List. This document included the name of the group, and names of parents who were identified with the groups, and name of superintendant. There was a section for comments about the parents' subversive activities - what actions they took that earned them a place on the Enemies List.
Someone leaked the Enemies List to the press.
The Association of California School Administrators was confronted with their Enemies List,. The Association said they were just trying to identify "disruptive" individuals and groups.
A copy that was circulated shows that the report is organized by district, with columns for the name of the superintendent, the name of the group, followed by names of the parents involved in the group. There was also a section for comments describing the activities of the groups and what they did to earn a place on the list.
Targeted parents were guilty of "disruptive" acts that included questioning special education placements, filing complaints with the Office of Civil Rights, and objecting to the way Parent Advisory Groups were set up.
"The existence of such a list confirms the worst fears of many parents - that schools single out parents who advocate for their children. It further suggests an adversarial and repressive attitude towards these parents - a precursor to the retaliation reported by many."
NOTE: If you have questions about the California School Administrator's enemies list, we do not have the list. We suggest that you contact the Sacramento chapter of the Learning Disabilities Association for more information.
Retaliation: A Primer, originally published in the The Observer, a newsletter published by the Sacramento LDA chapter, describes the "Retaliation Triangle" that progresses from Level I of using passive tactics to delay, Level II with the goal of frightening parents, to Level III with overt hostility with the goal of punishing parents.
I have had several blog readers write me that you curse out underlings in your office and use the “f” word lavishly during these sessions.
I have also had people tell me in person that this is your wont.
I would like to know if these reports of your verbally abusing employees in your charge during office discussions be true.
If so, stop it right now. No employee deserves to be berated with expletives during interviews with the school superintendent.
The breadth of the English language is sufficient for you to express your ire in standard English.
If I continue to hear that you are cursing at employees in your office with gutter expletives, I will bring this issue up in a public board meeting and demand that the board deal with it in the name of the public that the board members represent.
Lee Drury De Cesare
From: Anonymous [mailto:noreply-comment@blogger.com]
Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2008 12:46 PM
To: tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com
Subject: [Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch] New comment on This and That.
From: Anonymous [mailto:noreply-comment@blogger.com]
Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2008 9:47 PM
To: tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com
Subject: [Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch] New comment on The Beat Goes On.
Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "The Beat Goes On":
Many ROSSAC supervisors whisper about Elia's gutter mouth. She is as raunchy and foul mouthed as they come. Sailors would blush! Add to that her mullet hairstyle, and you've got total white trash.
If you hear something over and over again as I have this potty-mouth rumor, there must be something to it.If I get no response from Elia or the board by next board meeting, I will pose the question publicly.lee
Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "This and That":
Did you watch how Elia boohooed about how people can write whatever they want on blogs and it doesn't help the children at tonight's board meeting? As if she cares about the children. She just cares about getting good press. Children aren't reading blogs about the school district. They are reading more interesting things. She is just upset she can not find out who the anonymous posters are so she can punish them or get back at them. It is an irrational need to control everything.
Ms. Kurdell: Yesterday was my first time to see you chair a meeting. I commend your control of the agenda and your expeditious moving of it forward. I condemn your abuse of my First Amendment Rights and will protest anybody’s trying to shut up a citizen and evade his or her Constitutional right to criticize the government.
A homeless person pulled in off the street would do a better job than your immediate predecessor, Jennifer Falliero. This ditzy board member thinks that when she gets a gavel in her hand that she is the Annie Oakley of the podium and can gavel down or kick out anybody on or off the podium who displeases her.
I want you request that you watch that Dr. Lamb does not shut off debate of issues that embarrass the administration. As a veteran administration board toady, Dr. Lamb jumps in and calls the question to cut off debate inconvenient to the administration’s goal to cover up how the schools are misrun so that citizens won’t know what’s going on. You have shown a tendency to support this malignant practice as well.
After reading the boxes of Erwin court files in the Public Affairs office, I am sure board members used this cover-up maneuver in various ways during the Erwin outrage twenty years ago. Three that sat and let the administration crucify Mr. Erwin still reside on the board: you, Dr. Lamb, and Ms. Olson. You three should be ashamed of yourselves for participating with Dr. Lennard and his administrative thugs in the abuse of a school employee who wouldn’t shut up about the schools’ being robbed by their employees and perhaps some board members suborned by payoffs by greedy contractors who built shoddy new schools that leaked and had multiple substandard flaws but got top tax money anyway. The board then as now pretended not to know what was going on and stamped the contractors’ invoices.
Presently, Dr. Lamb cuts off debate to free the administration from scrutiny, and the chair has let him from ignorance of Roberts Rules, I infer, or from a desire to protect the administration's incompetence.
An expert on Roberts Rules says this on call-the-question matter:
This [call the question] is more a matter of parliamentary procedure than of correct English, but people are generally confused about what “calling the question” means. They often suppose that it means simply “let’s vote!” and some even imagine that it is necessary to call for the question before a vote may be taken. You even see deferential meeting chairs pleading, “Would someone like to call for the question?”
But “calling the question” when done properly should be a rare occurrence. If debate has dragged on longer than you feel is really warranted, you can “call the question,” at which time the chair has to immediately ask those assembled to vote to determine whether or not debate should be cut off or continue. The motion to call the question is itself not debatable. If two-thirds of those voting agree that the discussion should have died some time ago, they will support the call. Then, and only then, will the vote be taken on the question itself.
Potentially this parliamentary maneuver would be a great way to shut down windy speakers who insist on prolonging a discussion when a clear consensus has already been arrived at; but since so few people understand what it means, it rarely works as intended.
Chairs: when someone “calls the question,” explain what the phrase means and ask if that is what’s intended. Other folks: you’ll get further most of the time just saying “Let’s vote!”
I would also like to request that during your chair tenure that you discourage members from using the Roberts hillbilly locution of “I make a motion that….” The correct formula is “I move that….” If a board member needs help with Roberts Rules, he or she can query Mr. Gonzalez. If Mr. Gonzalez does not know Roberts Rules down cold, that is yet another reason to repeat my recommendation to fire him.
PaxVobiscum, Lee Drury De Cesare
Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Mr. Brooks, See Me in My Office After Class":
[You need one of those tough public-school teachers of the sort that teach in Hillsborough County while enduring the abuse of a thuggish administration and lackadaisical school board. This pedagogical stalwart of literacy would teach you grammar, punctuation, and how to write pellucid prose.]
The clause "that teach ..." modifies "sort". Period goes inside quotation marks. Sort Use quotation marks for a word used as a word. is singular. "Teachers" is the subject. "Of the sort" is an adjectival prepositional phrase that modifies "teachers." The adjective clause also modifies "teachers," so the verb of this subordinate clause agrees with "teachers."
Find yourself a pedagogical stalwart of literacy to teach you grammar. You are free to issue insults, but you must not copy mine. If you do, give me credit with attribution and quotation marks. Think up your own insults. This skill is a whole subgenre of the high exercise of satire.
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Posted by Anonymous to Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch at 7:44 PM
From: Anonymous [mailto:noreply-comment@blogger.com]
Sent: Tuesday, December 09, 2008 6:46 PM
To: tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com
Subject: [Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch] New comment on This and That.
Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "This and That":
I posted to you yesterday and told you that I had information that April had been part of securing a resolution on the issues with the Alafia Principal. Please check out the following link:
In some recent post you called me "codger." I can't be a codger. That's a guy. I can be a hag, a witch, or a bitch.
You have every right to hold April as your ideal. I think more on the lines of Madame Cure for the hero category. But you have no right to appear on my blog unless I allow you to. You must start writing better. If you want to insult me, you must be more artful. I won't publish any more clumsy, sophomoric insults. My blog has a standard to maintain. lee
I am not impressed. My understanding is that April and Pole Girl Falliero teamed up for some project that involved the Alafia situation.I think their work was more to get the administration and board off the hotseat with the parents and press than to help the parents rid the school of Smith.
I believe the Alafia parents were grateful for Smith’s resignation.But I don’t think April and Falliero were working for them and the children primarily.I think they were working for the board’s reputation and to protect the administration—especially in Jennifer’s case.She owes the administration for its support of her and the firing of MarcHart in the adultery saga she started with him on school property.
My assessment of the board is that its members are self-involved and chiefly want what’s good for them such as April’s off-schedule trip that violated the new trip rules that followed the public’sdiscovering that the board members had raped the budget to frolic aroundon tax money.I await April’s doing something for the teachers and students.lee
Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Mr. Brooks, See Me in My Office After Class":
[You need one of those tough public-school teachers of the sort that teach in Hillsborough County while enduring the abuse of a thuggish administration and lackadaisical school board. This pedagogical stalwart of literacy would teach you grammar, punctuation, and how to write pellucid prose.]
The clause "that teach ..." modifies "sort". Period goes inside quotation marks. Sort Use quotation marks for a word used as a word. is singular. "Teachers" is the subject. "Of the sort" is an adjectival prepositional phrase that modifies "teachers." The adjective clause also modifies "teachers," so the verb of this subordinate clause agrees with "teachers."
From: Anonymous [mailto:noreply-comment@blogger.com] Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2008 10:46 PM To: tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com Subject: [Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch] New comment on The Beat Goes On.
Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "The Beat Goes On":
["Of the sort" is an adjectival prepositional phrase that modifies "teachers." The adjective clause also modifies "teachers," so the verb of this subordinate clause agrees with "teachers."] You are right; “teachers” is not the subject but the object of the preposition “of.” The adjective clause modifies “teachers,” so the verb must agree with “teachers.”
If you're going to play that illogical game, look further Use "farther" to refer to distance. back. "Of those tough public-school teachers" modifies "one". A period goes inside quotation marks.
Why are you so splenetic about discussing grammar? I can see being riled up about injustice, but this is mere grammar. Besides, you need help from me or somebody in punctuation and in other areas. You don't know where to put end punctuation in sentences ending in quotation marks; and you don't know the use of quotation marks. You also have "farther" and "further" mixed up. You have found a grammar--moi-- expert on a blog that you can use to help you with your grammar-punctuation problems. I thought your insult showed a tired lack of wit. lee
You need one ... that teaches ...
["Teachers" is the subject.]
The hell it is! What is "teachers" doing in the sentence? What verb is "teachers" the subject of?
You want an original insult? You do for grammar what Yoko Ono did for the Beatles.
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Posted by Anonymous to Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch at 7:46 PM
