Blogger and GOP activist Sheila Kihne has Luke Hellier and other GOP disinformation artists all atwitter over the fact she was unable to verify the employment of Mark Dayton by New York City public schools 40 years ago.
It took me a couple minutes, and within the afternoon while multi-tasking I made the confirmation.
Earlier, Dayton released a copy of his New York state teacher's license. Ms. Kihne and others weren't impressed.
It’s very, very odd that they have no record for Senator Dayton- I myself was very surprised when I got the letter back from the attorney at the schools.
If the NYC Schools has no record, then it’s up to Mr. Dayton to fix that….don’t you think? He should do what your friend had to do to get her records.
If I applied for a job, and the company wasn’t able to verify my employment, it would be a problem. That’s a simple fact.
Well, no, it isn't. But simple facts have never been the strong suit of the GOP and its minions.
The license went to Dayton at his employer's address. I tracked down the founder of The Teacher's, Inc., an organization founded by Dr. Roger Landrum as a kind of "Peace Corps" for inner city schools. Here's what Dr. Landrum, now President and Co-Founder of Youth Services International, had to say about Dayton.
I can indeed verify that Mark Dayton was a teacher in the New York City public schools for two years, and a member of The Teachers Inc., which was the predecessor of Teach for America.
I was one of the first Peace Corps Volunteers (1961-1963). Following that experience I created The Teachers Inc. as a kind of "peace corps" for American inner-city schools. Unlike the Peace Corps the organization itself was a private non-profit that recruited, trained and placed outstanding and highly-motivated young people in urban school districts. We operated by contract with school districts in New York City, Philadelphia, Washington DC, and Atlanta.
Mark taught on the Lower East Side where my headquarters were located. He was one of the first to come into the program, along with a number of recent Yale graduates, and I knew him quite well. He did a very good job and the conditions were in some ways more demanding than the Peace Corps.
It is indeed contemptible that anyone would attempt to claim that Mark did not teach in the New York City public schools or deny his youthful idealism.
You may recall other instances of this-less-than-meets-the-nose nonsense related to signatures on deliveries to Al Franken's condo, Keith Ellison's college writings and supposedly missing pages from Dayton's divorce records. If you don't remember, lucky you. You didn't miss anything.
These people do just enough "research" to create a question in the public arena — but never enough to actually answer the question they pose.
It's slimy behavior and it has plenty of enablers who let them get away with it.
I have no connection to the Dayton campaign and did this in my spare time, folks. It's not that hard to tell the truth, but for people of this ilk, it's profitable to deal in untruth.
