NETWORK

They Say So Much

In the midst of March Madness, I can't help but to look out and see the issues in our world.  Earthquakes are natural disasters but what about the famine in the families, the corruption in our government, calamity in our school systems, inflation in gas, the ability to rule the world financially by just killing off your own people.  These issues should not be ignored, the inability to have substance on the radio but the full access of your own people to promote sex and drugs to our youth.  This is not what you want to hear right now but I'm going to say.  The parents who have so much to complain about but never attend a PTSA meeting.  The brother who loves to borrow money but when he has it to spend he never wants to donate.  Talking about the fathers who say they got children but they ate three hot meals today and have new Polo on, but their babies are struggling at home with their bitter mother.  Why?  Well maybe its because of that young girl who was raised by a single mother and never knew what love really was because her real father was absent in her life and the only man that she respected was a janitor at the high school who really wanted to only have sex  with her.  Maybe its that female who is looking for love in all the wrong places and tends to be mad at everybody except the person she sees in the mirror every morning. 
Perhaps I am wrong because I have an opinion and feel it should be valued as well.  Or maybe disturbed the mentality of Southern republicans who crucify our president yet we got some many complaints right while the Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi promised a long war.  Your freedom is argued every day, because you don't feel like going to work, yet I got family and friends out here risking their life so that you can debate on what outfit you going to work to the club. 
People in Haiti still haven't recovered from the Earthquake, yet their country has an opportunity to chose a new leader and hopefully reclaim some type of recovery.  After reports of over 230,000 people killed and over $9 billion in damage, how many years do you think it will take for them to recover.  See, our country has suffered economic loses but more due to misappropiation of funds, poor leaders, and the disassembling of some big spending drug cartels.  Did I just say that?  Yes, think about it, if some of the Drug leaders were still free think about how many retail stores would still be open. 
I wonder how many pre-teens, teenagers, and their parents know who is the wealthiest man/person in the world.  Do you?  I asked a class the other day "How many future doctors do I have in the room?"  I had one girl and one boy, then the boy decided that he was just stretching.  The little girl wanted to be a pediatrician.  This was a room of 30 seventh graders.  I know they are young now, but I honestly feel the exposure to real substance and believeable characters rather than a dope boi, pusherman, rapping, robbing image is so fictional in this storybook lifestyle of the poor leading the blind that I am about to start pushing harder towards leadership groups and pushing harder on these young men 25 and older that I refer to as OG's because technically and sadly we are.  So many young men are losing their life at a young age including prison sentences that we are the survival kits to the new generation. 
Schools are suffering because of lack of funds, almost having to place every old school under probation because of lack of funds and poor test results.  Thoughts of doign away with the trades/elective style classes because leaders feel that it is a waste of money and time.  As if the students don't need a break.  Majority of the adults have low attention span so how you expect the chidren not to act up or out when they are forced to stay in a classroom all day.  We are paying superintendents in Georgia roughly about $250,000 on average this includes salary, bonuses, car and phone stipends.  A quarter of a million dollars to one person.  I'm pausing because I know some that are reading this don't know.  Yet we are in the hole as a state in budget, oh, but we do have enough money to build new schools each year.  Schools may I add that have to be maintained yet are million dollar facilities.  Who said you don't need Algebra we you become an adult?  What's x + y(z) = ?  Don't worry I'll wait, for those who pay taxes every year and have children check your W2 and YTD start putting 2 and 2 together.  Better ask more questions start being more involved.  Your parents didn't raise you to be just like them, you were designed to be better.

Normally, people go on blogs and facebook and begin to flex and flaunt about what they got or wish they had. I'm the type to talk about real life.  I had a lil' boi come to me the other day and say he was from Thomasville, well my family is from Thomasville too sir, but you're young enough to be my child so what you remember about Thomasville might not be the real.

I wanna say I love my full Family, Earleys (Thomasville), Minters (Mechancsville & spreaded out throughout the U.S.), Rowe (Fairburn & the Southside/Westside), Sneeze (Custer Ave & the Westside). 

Understand I'm a YOUNG HEART & OLD SOUL. 

Selfish or Stupid?

Four Auburn football players arrested


In the above link you can read more about the story on ajc.com courtesy of Kristi E. Swartz, but ladies and gentlemen, we boast and brag about the talent in Atlanta but why our talented young athletes keep flushing our credibility down the porcelain.  This young man in the above picture was a great Georgia talent, I coached against him as well as witness his blazing speed on a track.  The only question I have is....Is the financial woes of the college athletes this discouraging or are they being very selfish towards the people who have to go and pay for their education.  I just don't understand.  My coach told us when we were in high school that it only takes 0.2 seconds to make a STUPID decision.  I am not convicting or accusing Antonio of anything but I want him to know that the choices you make as an athlete can easily hunt you for the rest of your life.  Use this experience to be humble and ask for understanding that EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON!

State: Atlanta schools protect those who would intimidate whistleblowers | ajc.com

State: Atlanta schools protect those who would intimidate whistleblowers | ajc.com

State investigators have uncovered what they call a pattern of “intimidating, threatening and retaliating” against Atlanta Public Schools employees who report cheating or other improprieties.

In a piercing letter Wednesday to the school system demanding a stop to obstructive practices, investigators suggested the district has acted “to protect those in its ranks who engage in intimidation of potential witnesses to cheating.”

The investigators said they found evidence the district has engaged in such practices for years. But even during the state’s current criminal inquiry into cheating on standardized tests, the investigators said, school officials have allowed principals under suspicion to stand just outside rooms where witnesses were giving statements, “with the obvious intent to make their presence known and to put a chilling effect on the staff member being interviewed.”

The investigators also complained that the district waited two months to reassign a high-level official accused of advising principals to not cooperate with the inquiry and instructing them to write “go to hell” memos to state agents. The delay, investigators said, gave the official time to retaliate against at least one subordinate. And the district suppressed information about its own inquiry into the official’s actions, investigators Mike Bowers, Bob Wilson and Richard Hyde said.

The investigators’ letter — first reported Thursday by Channel 2 Action News — stops barely short of accusing district officials of criminal violation of a state law that prohibits threatening witnesses.

Nevertheless, the letter raises the stakes in an already tense conflict between the district and the state investigators whose inquiry is casting doubts on the schools’ claims of long-term academic achievement.

The investigators told the district to drop plans, announced Monday, to look into excessive wrong-to-right erasures on the 2010 Criterion-Referenced Competency Test in 16 schools. The state investigation began last summer after then-Gov. Sonny Perdue and other state officials questioned the diligence of the district’s examination of suspicious erasures on the 2009 CRCT in 58 Atlanta elementary and middle schools.

“Any investigation by APS into alleged cheating on the 2010 CRCT, wrong-to-right erasures, possible test tampering and any related issues must cease and desist immediately,” Bowers, Wilson and Hyde wrote. “As we previously warned you, any such investigation by APS will invariably interfere with and impede the governor’s special investigation into possible test tampering. ...Any attempt by APS to interfere with our investigation or to conduct its own investigation would be seen as obstruction, an attempt to influence witnesses and tampering with evidence.”

Superintendent Beverly Hall, in a letter to a state education official Wednesday, denied the district plans to investigate the 2010 erasures but will only be “conducting an analysis.”

The state investigators did not respond to messages Thursday seeking interviews.

A school district spokesman, Keith Bromery, said in an e-mail: “We intend to continue to fully cooperate with the special investigation to get to the bottom of any wrongdoing. We have received the letter from the special investigators and are reviewing it and will provide them with a response.”

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported last month that the school district often punishes teachers and other employees who report wrongdoing while rewarding those who keep quiet. Some teachers have themselves been investigated after reporting that colleagues or supervisors cheated. Others have been subjected to questions about their mental health. Some have lost their jobs.

In Wednesday’s letter, state investigators suggested the district’s internal inquiries would get in their way by involving the same witnesses and the same documents. Further, the investigators wrote, the district might take disciplinary action against witnesses in a criminal case — which, they said, “could clearly result in the threatening of witnesses in an official proceeding.”

Under state law, they said, illegal threats involve not only those of physical harm, but of economic damage — such as the loss of a job or a demotion. Their concerns, the investigators wrote, “are not unwarranted.”

They said they found evidence that, at least since the early 2000s, the district engaged in “a pattern and practice” of punishing employees who reported cheating or questioned how administrators handled the CRCT. At least one principal had his lawyer ask teachers what they told state agents and whether they received immunity from prosecution, the investigators said.

The investigators also said they received information about Tamara Cotman, an area superintendent, who “intimidated” principals by having them write “go to hell” letters to state agents during a meeting. The AJC reported on the episode Sunday.

“Although Ms. Cotman’s conduct was reported directly to APS, APS took no action against Ms. Cotman for nearly two months, and then only after one of the attendees apparently went public with the story to the AJC,” the investigators wrote.

State investigators’ earlier warnings about internal inquiries should have been clear to the district’s administration, said Yolanda Johnson, a member of the Atlanta Board of Education. She said she was speaking as an individual, not on the board’s behalf.

Johnson had not seen the investigators’ letter. But after hearing the section detailing retaliation against employees, she said: “Wow. Obviously, that’s unacceptable.”

Fall For Your Type

I have been very critical of my past,
growing, living life hard, blowing money fast,
Big tipper heavy spender burning cash
So easy when I get a large sum of money to run like a 40 yard dash.

Having expensive taste with big dreams and low income
Metro area of Atlanta is where I come from,
where we spend more than we make
Can barely keep our phone on but out with a plate of steak.

Lately I've been feeling like the single mother magnet
Attracting strong black women that if you don't call they have a fit,
Those who have a past, but are trying not to make the same mistake twice
Not realizing every decision that you make from then to now always has a price.

I always wondered what it would feel like to fall in love with a human,
or should I say woman that's not my blood is what I'm doing,
Trying not to break hearts I just want to give her what she never had
She keeps calling me "daddy" but I swear I just saw her dad.

As I exercise my right to better myself,
I tend to get excited by not the riches but the wealth,
HE intended for us to have someone in life to share this with
You have to believe me when I say this is just a gift.

I'm a fool for you, needing that same attention that you gave me from the beginning,
Loving you, hugging you, kissing you, again and again.
The only thing is can we share this love that we have inside,
Til death do us part, you will be my RIDE or DIE!
 

Your Self-Worth

Each day we are blessed with the opportunity to grace a day is because of LOVE.  Love shared by a being that is greatly argued as the greatest power known to the world.  A Heavenly power, that is possessed that no man can fathom yet can be pursued.  And if this is truly the case, why we have so many people in the world who walk around mad at the world and themselves to the point where they would rather hurt or harm themselves.  I wanted to share my thoughts about pushing forward because no matter what you may think, there is someone out here at least one person out here that presents LOVE.

Love unconditionally, no matter what you may say, no matter what you may do, there is someone that Loves you.  But if you do not love yourself how can you ever love someone.  People would not like what I'm about to say but I see so often women who have relationship problems and decide they want to get pregnant.  They think that getting pregnant will provide that void they have been missing.  If you think you need to give birth in order to be loved then you never loved yourself in the beginning.

So often there is a sensitivity issue where you have people who are mad at the world and think that everybody is against them.  Yet, they keep surrounding themselves around people who mean them no good.  Well if you no these people are no good why keep coming around them.  "Misery LOVES company."  Wow, if Misery Loves why can't you love yourself?  I have experienced people pushing away good people just because those who were most familiar with them knew how to bring them down and that was what they were accustomed to.

These spirits are liars, anybody who can blatantly tell you that you will be nothing or you should not try to better yourself is a liar.  That's not LOVE, that is the total opposite and those types of evil spirits need to be by themselves.  I sometimes laugh at people who hate spending time by themselves.  If you can't enjoy the likes of your own company what makes you think people truly want to enjoy your company.  Now, miserable people do enjoy miserable people.  No matter what the situation may be, they will go out their way to make sure being caught in a web of mess or drama is attainable.

I said all this to tell you this, please recognize your self-worth and what you have to offer.  Never downgrade your worth and value because everyday you wake, that means you are here for a purpose.  Its time to start recognizing it and let your LIGHT shine.  If you don't have HATERS that means you were never doing your job in the first place.

Never get tired of doing the RIGHT thing, but stop making people a PRIORITY when you're just an OPTION...You can do BAD by yourself.

by Quavo

Move Please

In the midst of your troubles you tend to have a wonderful sense of what you have gone through.  Of course, HE has the power to reveal to you and pull the wool over your eyes.  Listen whomever is in your circle you can regulate, just by opening up your eyes.  When blessings come your way, just listen, listen at the reactions that you have or the body language of your circle.  Don't be paranoid by their behaviors just be aware.  This sense will give you the strength to let some people go.  Because if you don't do that, they will be JUST IN THE WAY!  This is not sports, you shouldn't create a playoff bracket for who pleases you the most, who strokes your EGO, or who can GAS you up the most.  No, respect should be earned and appreciated.  Due process is considerable but when its all said and done, when your blessings arrive, who will still be the same person providing the same TRUTH to you in the events of your BLESSINGS.  Just listen, and for those who are creating negative vibes for you, just tell them MOVE PLEASE.....I have to keep it moving.