THE OTHER SHOE DROPS: Updates To Previous Posts
† Talk Is Cheap: Obama’s Actions Don’t Match His Rhetoric: Being well-off and socially prominent, the Obamas had the luxury of opting out of public school, sending their two daughters to the University of Chicago Laboratory School, where the tuition runs $21,000 a year for each child. Now that they’re movin’ on up to the White House, their kids will be transferred to another private school, Sidwell Friends School, which charges $30,000 in tuition. “Washington's public schools are among the worst in America,” The Wall Street Journal notes, adding:
Most D.C. parents would also love to be able to choose a better school for their child, but they lack the financial means to do so. The Washington Opportunity Scholarship Program each year offers up to $7,500 to some 1,900 kids to attend private schools, but Democrats in Congress want to kill it. Average family income for kids in the voucher program is about $22,000.
Mr. Obama says he opposes such vouchers, because "although it might benefit some kids at the top, what you're going to do is leave a lot of kids at the bottom." The example of his own children refutes that: The current system offers plenty of choice to kids "at the top" while abandoning those at the bottom.
Hope for change in the quality of public school education springs eternal, but may be mugged by the reality that the Dems are beholden to the teachers’ unions, writes Hoover Institution senior fellow Terry Moe in an op-ed published in The Journal:
Democrats are fervent supporters of public education, and the party genuinely wants to help disadvantaged kids stuck in bad schools. But it resists bold action. It is immobilized. Impotent. The explanation lies in its longstanding alliance with the teachers' unions - which, with more than three million members, tons of money and legions of activists, are among the most powerful groups in American politics. The Democrats benefit enormously from all this firepower, and they know what they need to do to keep it. They need to stay inside the box.
And they have done just that. Democrats favor educational "change" - as long as it doesn't affect anyone's job, reallocate resources, or otherwise threaten the occupational interests of the adults running the system. …
Barack Obama … has hinted at a willingness to break with the teachers' unions, and his massive success at decentralized fund raising and recruiting volunteers may enable him to do that. He talks - vaguely - about removing mediocre teachers, holding educators accountable, basing pay on performance, and expanding school choice. But his positions on these scores are hedged with qualifications, and his education agenda as a whole is mainly (not entirely) a laundry list of typical Democratic ideas.
Moe cites Newark mayor Cory Booker, NYC Department of Education Chancellor Joel Klein, D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee and Rev. Al Sharpton, who are calling for the party to buck the teacher’s unions and push for “real accountability … more school choice … [an end to] restrictive work rules” and wonders whether Obama will “have the courage to unite with the rebels inside his party, champion the interests of children over the interests of adults, and be a true leader who really means it when he talks about change?”
Why should he? He needs union muscle to get re-elected, and his daughters won’t have to endure public school education, where math teachers are not certified in the subject and are only one textbook chapter ahead of their students. For Obama, the status quo is win-win.
† BYOB?: After struggling for five days to get the urine processor to work, astronauts refurbishing the International Space Station ran a successful test on the equipment that makes wastewater potable, reports The Associated Press. NASA had extended the Endeavour's mission to a 16th day to so astronauts could keep fiddling with the gizmo. Endeavour is now scheduled to undock Friday and land in FL on Sunday. Test samples will be checked on Earth to determine whether the recycled water is drinkable.
† Depends What The Meaning Of “Torture” Is: Fort Lupton (CO) Municipal Judge Paul Sacco forces noise ordinance violators to listen to music they don't like for one hour, reports The Associated Press, discouraging repeat offenders. Sacco likes to mix up his mix tape from Hell, which includes Barry Manilow's “I Write the Songs,” The Platters' “Only You,” and the “Barney Song” (“I love you, you love me …). The idea is to make them see what it’s like to have music you don’t like inflicted on you.
Editorial Note: The Stiletto’s upstairs neighbor used to play doo-wop every morning at 6 a.m. For some reason, she now plays “Me And Mrs. Jones” over and over and over again. The Stiletto retaliates by cranking up a Led Zep or Robert Palmer CD at full blast until she gets the hint and lowers the volume. Works every time.
† It’s Hard Out There For A Saudi Rapper: The New York Times profiles The AccoLade, Saudi Arabia’s first all-girl rock band, who “cannot perform in public … [or] pose for album cover photographs” and must hold their jam sessions in secret, even though “this country’s harsh code of public morals has slowly thawed” :
The band’s first single, “Pinocchio,” has become an underground hit here, with hundreds of young Saudis downloading the song from the group’s Web site. Now, the pioneering foursome, all of them college students, want to start playing regular gigs — inside private compounds, of course - and recording an album. …
In a country where women are not allowed to drive and rarely appear in public without their faces covered … [t]he prospect of female rockers clutching guitars and belting out angry lyrics about a failed relationship - the theme of “Pinocchio” - would once have been unimaginable here.
Today, there is a growing rock scene with dozens of bands, some of them even selling tickets to their performances. Hip-hop is also popular. The religious police … have largely retreated from the streets of Jidda and are somewhat less aggressive even in the kingdom’s desert heartland. …
Yet rock and roll itself is suspect in Saudi Arabia in part because of its association with decadent lifestyles. Most of the bands here play heavy metal, which has only added to the stigma because of the way some Western heavy metal bands use images linked to satanism or witchcraft. In Saudi Arabia, people are sometimes imprisoned and even executed on charges of practicing witchcraft.
† Updates To Previous Posts (fifth item, What’s Next For Spitzer): In part because of the decision by federal prosecutors not to bring criminal charges against Eliot Spitzer (AKA Client 9), Judge Deborah A. Batts sentenced Tanya Hollander, an Emperors Club VIP call girl booker, to one year probation, reports The Associated Press. The first defendant to be sentenced in the case, Hollander could have gotten a year in prison.
Comments