Abramoff "Just As Close to Blunt"

While our esteemed 7th District Congressman, Roy Blunt, is trying desperately to downplay his cozy relationship with indicted lobbyist/swindler Jack Abramoff, it appears that the Abramoff stain just won't wash out.

We ran across a November 2002 feel-good piece by John Bresnahan in Washington Business Forward that introduces mover-and-shaker Jack Abramoff as the lobbyist who is taking Washington by storm. The article begins:

"Greenberg Traurig’s Jack Abramoff is the most unlikely establishment Washington lobbyist: he made his bones producing a Dolph Lundgren movie, working with Indian casinos and doing a riverboat gambling deal that turned messy. Now Abramoff has emerged as an insider’s insider, with close ties to top Republicans and a hefty book of business. But even with his ally Tom DeLay poised to become House Majority Leader, Abramoff’s still found time to go into the restaurant business. Don’t bet against him."

The piece is pure fluff, with lines like: "It’s classic Abramoff: He’s a master at making money while pushing his conservative, free-market ideals." But there's an interesting quote near the end of Breshahan's little promotional that flies in the face of Blunt's earnest denials that he and Abramoff were fundraising pals for several years running. In this interview, Abramoff made an effort to downplay his close relationship with Tom DeLay by naming other associates who were dear to his heart and pocketbook.

“The DeLay thing is played up a lot in terms of our relationship. The fact is when I pitch a client, I never mention Tom DeLay. I never say I know Tom DeLay.” Abramoff says he’s just as close to other Republicans, like Reps. Roy Blunt (MO), Christopher Cox (CA), John Doolittle (CA), Phil Crane (IL) and Dana Rohrabacher (CA)."

The Washington Business Forward piece closes with this ironic little bit of smarm . . .

"Beyond the political world, it’s Abramoff himself who’s a bit unheard of, but that won’t last for long." I'll bet Ol' Roy is wishing he'd never heard of the guy.

Washington Post Links to Ozarks Angel

This probably isn't all that newsworthy, but I thought it was pretty cool that the Washington Post online edition printed a lead from the "Blunt, Inc." piece I posted here last night. It was one of several blogs in a "Who's Blogging About This Article" they feature each day.

I watched Matt Blunt trying to deliver a rousing State of the State speech tonight on public television. He did mention his 65% solution for fixing public education, but I don't think it's going to be high on his agenda this session - too much criticism of his little trial balloon last month.

Daddy Roy was on the tube as well during the evening news, trying to persuade folks that he didn't really know Jack Abramoff and that he'd already returned the measly $8,500 he'd received "over a six year period". Gimmee a break, Roy. This is the same Congressman who was on a short list of VIP customers treated to free meals at Abramoff's swank restaurant in D. C. And the "$8,500 over six years" is just laughable - maybe that was all the money that came directly from Abramoff, but this guy was a master at shuffling donations from one PAC or bogus charitable organization to another. My guess is that a careful look at the tortuous money trails these guys put together would reveal considerably more than $8,500 of tainted money resting in ROYB's political coffers. You can bet on one thing - the more air time the Abramoff scandal receives, the less likely it is that Blunt assumes his much-coveted Majority Leader spot.

Blunt, Inc.

Thomas B. Edsall, of the Washington Post, wrote an interesting piece last May on the rapid rise of Roy Blunt and the incredibly vast network of lobbyists and corporate donors that have made him one of the most well-financed representatives on the hill. The story, entitled House Majority Whip Exerts Influence by Way of K Street, outlines how Roy, his new lobbyist wife Abigail and sons Matt and Andrew have benefited greatly since Roy took office as our 7th District Representative in 1997 and began schmoozing around with big money interests.

Blunt's corporate and K Street connections have grown at an uncanny rate over the past eight years - to the point that his own financial holdings through PACs and re-election committees rival, or even surpass those of his mentor, Tom DeLay. In short, Blunt has become the GOP's "key liaison to lobbyists . . . who direct the flow of individual and political action committee contributions from the 1,600 corporations and 1,200 trade associations with PACs." Hence the moniker Blunt, Inc.

"Here in Washington, Blunt has converted what had been an informal and ad hoc relationship between congressional leaders and the Washington corporate and trade community into a formal, institutionalized alliance. Lobbyists are now an integral part of the Republican whip operation on par with the network of lawmakers who serve as assistant whips."

So, according to the Washington Post, at least, we can thank our boy Roy for helping to create the lobbyist feeding frenzy that has overtaken D. C. during the Bush years - a climate that has helped breed the likes of our favorite fedora-wearing shyster, Jack Abramoff.

Blunt's campaign committee has raised some $8.58 million since 1997, including $3.35 million to his (not one, but two) Rely On Your Belief funds (ROYB) from 2000 to 2002. Altria, SBC Communications, Union Pacific, Burlington Northern, Verizon, United Parcel Service and BellSouth are major corporate contributors.

Roy Blunt: Man of the People.

Within the next three weeks or so, House Republicans are going to elect a new slate of leaders in the wake of the DeLay indictment and the looming Abramoff scandal. One wonders if they have the will to really make some meaningful changes. If the GOP has any inkling of making true reforms in their party operations in Congress, they might want push ethically challenged fundraiser types like Blunt to the background and place some people with higher ideals in positions of leadership. I wonder, what's the likelihood of that happening?

Roy Blunt - Ethically Challenged

It will be interesting to see if the mainstream media will ever reveal what so many people in Washington, D. C. already know about Roy Blunt's trail of ethical missteps during his climb to Majority Whip and interim Majority Leader. Here are a few questionable activities that the good folks here in God's Country probably don't want to hear about:

*Blunt divorced Roseanne Blunt, his wife of 31 years, in 2003 to marry Abigail Perlman, a lobbyist with Philip Morris tobacco, now owned by Altria.

*Altria is the largest single contributor to Blunt's Political Action Committee (PAC), Rely on Your Beliefs (ROYB), giving some $270,000 to his personal PAC.

*Just hours after taking the role of Majority Whip (Blunt was hand-picked by his mentor, slimeball Majority Leader Tom DeLay), and before anyone knew of his association with Ms. Perlman, Blunt attempted to secretly insert a last-minute provision to Homeland Security legislation that would have benefited Philip Morris at the expense of their competitors. Exactly how this was to further protect the homeland has yet to be explained. An aide to House Speaker Dennis Hastert discovered the stealth insertion and Hastert immediately had it deleted from the bill. Blunt's bold move to aid a big campaign contributor without notifying House leadership surprised many in Washington, but little was said in the media.

*Altria also contributed $24,000 to Matt Blunt's gubernatorial campaign.

*Blunt's younger son, Andrew, landed a sweet lobbyist position with Altria in Missouri just a few years out of college. He is also a lobbyist for UPS in Missouri. Both UPS and Altria are major contributors to ROYB.

*In April, Blunt successfully inserted, once again without debate or Congressional review, a provision to a Senate bill that benefited UPS and FedEx shipping companies. The bill blocked expansion of a foreign shipping competitor. UPS and FedEx have contributed a combined $120,000 to Blunt since 2001.

*Blunt is the largest single contributor ($20,000) to the legal defense fund of Jack Abramoff's good buddy, Tom DeLay.

*Jack Abramoff's phony U. S. Family Network received $500,000 from the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), which was later fined $280,000 for this under-the-table transaction. Blunt's future wife, Abigail Perlman, was the finance director for NRCC at the time.

*Blunt's ROYB fund operated out of the same townhouse suite with Abramoff's U. S. Family Network and, for a time, was run by Tom DeLay's buddy, Jim Ellis, who now faces indictment.

Oh what a tangled web this is . . . and our boy Roy seems to be right in the thick of it all. It's no wonder that he's been listed as one of the thirteen most corrupt members of Congress by Beyond DeLay.

Missouri GOP's Dirty Money Trail

The coming months will be uncomfortable ones for many GOP politicians, including our own 7th District representative and acting house majority leader, Roy Blunt. I saw Roy's picture on the evening news tonight - it was right next to a shot of the nefarious Tom DeLay and beleaguered Ohio congressman, Bob Ney. Looks like good old Roy really has made it big this time.

Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff's guilty plea to three felony counts of conspiracy, mail fraud and tax evasion opens pandora's box to one of the worst cases of Washington, D. C. corruption in a couple of generations. So far, GOP leaders have been relatively quiet - perhaps waiting for another natural disaster to take the headlines - but they have managed to utter a few weak defenses, such as . . . "He gave money to Democrats, too."

Well, I checked into that, and here's a list of recipients of Abramoff donations since 2000 as compiled by the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics:

Tom DeLay (R-Texas). John Ashcroft (R-Mo.). Frank A. LoBiondo (R-NJ). Eric Cantor (R-Va.). Arlen Specter (R-Pa.). John Ensign (R-Nev.). Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.). Charles H. Taylor (R-NC). Chris Cannon (R-Utah). Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). Mark Foley (R-Fla.). Richard Pombo (R-Calif.). Christopher S. "Kit" Bond (R-Mo.). Curt Weldon (R-Pa.). Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.). Doug Ose (R-Calif.). Ernest J. Istook (R-Okla.). George R. Nethercutt Jr. (R-Wash.). Jim Bunning (R-Ky.). Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.). Tom Feeney (R-Fla.). Dan Burton (R-Ind.). Eric Cantor (R-Va.). Suzanne Terrell (R-La.). Rob Simmons (R-Conn.). Charles W. "Chip" Pickering Jr. (R-Miss.). Connie Morella (R-Md.). Gordon H. Smith (R-Ore.). James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.). James M. Talent (R-Mo.). John T. Doolittle (R-Calif.). John Thune (R-SD). Tim Hutchinson (R-Ark.). Bob Smith (R-Fla.). Bob Ney (R-Ohio). CL. "Butch" Otter (R-Idaho). Carolyn W. Grant (R-NC). Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.). Elizabeth Dole (R-NC). Heather Wilson (R-NM). J. Randy Forbes (R-Va.). Jack Kingston (R-Ga.). James V. Hansen (R-Utah). John Cornyn (R-Texas). Kimo Kaloi (R-Hawaii). Marilyn Musgrave (R-Colo.). Mike Ferguson (R-NJ). Mike Simpson (R-Idaho). Ralph Regula (R-Ohio). Ric Keller (R-Fla.). Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.). Ted Stevens (R-Alaska). Thad Cochran (R-Miss.). Dave Camp (R-Mich.). Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.). Tom Young (R-Ala.). Bill Janklow (R-SD). Craig Thomas (R-Wyo.). Spencer Abraham (R-Mich.). William L. Gormley (R-NJ). Bill McCollum (R-Fla.). Bill Redmond (R-NM). Bob Riley (R-Ala.). Claude B. Hutchison Jr. (R-Calif.). Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.). Francis E. Flotron (R-Mo.). George Allen (R-Va.). Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.). Walter B. Jones Jr. (R-NC). Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). Bob Smith (R-Fla.). Joe Pitts (R-PA). Charles H. Taylor (R-NC). Bob Ehrlich (R-Md.). Charles R. Gerow (R-Pa.). Ed Royce (R-Calif.). Elia Vincent Pirozzi (R-Calif.). Jerry Weller (R-Ill.). Mark Emerson (R-Utah). Tom Davis (R-Va.). Van Hilleary (R-Tenn.).

Notice the "R" in each case. But where is Roy?

One of Abramoff's money laundering setups was a PAC called, cynically enough, the "U. S. Family Network", which was basically one employee manning a phone and computer in the backroom of a D. C. townhouse. Millions in illicit funds swindled from Indian tribes and shady Russian gas and oil magnates came through this office. And guess whose own personal PAC shared office space with the Abramoff front? None other that our own Roy Blunt's "Rely On Your Beliefs" (clever acronym - ROYB).

There's an interesting article in the New Republic about how warm and fuzzy Roy and Tom DeLay have become over the past five years - and how this association may eventually lead to our golden boy's fall from grace.

DeLay was instrumental in boosting Blunt's rise to power in Congress, but Blunt (and his lobbyist wife) also became involved in DeLay's fundraising network, which led him into the great political fundraising arena with none other than the master of slime, Jack Abramoff.

Abramoff also reportedly gave the Bush campaign $100,000 of his ill-gotten gains. The White House, of course, denies this.

Ah, don't ya just love the GOP with their high moral stand and Family Values? One can only hope that this scandal will be the beginning of the end of their nauseating brand of "Christian" ethics in government. Almost makes you wistful for the good old days when the Dems were in power, when we dealt with simpler transgressions like questionable book deals and using congressional postage meters for campaign mail.

Interested in finding out more about who contributes to candidates? Visit a new local blog called Granny Geek. Interesting stuff.

The 2005 Ozarks Angel

I started this blog back in May when I had a couple of days off from work due to a swollen nut. That healed up nicely, in case you were wondering, but I'm still paying the $800 bill. Gotta love our healthcare system - oh, and my wonderful school health insurance covered a whopping $82. Anyway, that was an unlikely topic to start a blog, but there it is. Now, some 3,400 clicks later, we're still plugging away. Here's a review of the year 2005 sifted through some of the Ozarks Angel posts.

Of course, the really huge story that christened this crazy year of 2005 was the slow discovery of the devastation incurred by the killer tsunami that swept away some quarter of a million lives in Asia. Here at home, president Bush was characteristically distant and, despite daily briefings, seemingly uninformed about the magnitude of this disaster - a foreshadowing of his lackadaisical response to the Katrina disaster seven months later. It seems Bush can only get himself worked up if there's evil afoot. These natural disasters just don't move him much, whether foreign or in the "homeland". There's no bad guy involved. It does seem odd, though, that a man who feels called of God to fight tyranny (at least in oil-rich parts of the world) can be so indifferent to cataclysmic acts of God that dwarf his man-made crusade in Iraq.

By March of 2005, the American public and media, which we now can confirm suffers from acute Attention Deficit Disorder, had turned its attention to the plight of Terri Schiavo, whose feeding tube was finally yanked after numerous judicial appeals and a great gnashing of teeth from the Christian right - but not before a special session of Congress was called by Republican leadership as they sought to keep her brain-dead body alive for still more court appeals. President Bush, at the urging of his handlers, leaped to action this time and cut his vacation short in order to get the federal courts to deter Ms. Schiavo's natural departure from this life. Talk about skewed priorities. The Ozarks Angel spoke briefly to this issue when we reviewed an article from an Assemblies of God. Strange, we don't get mail from A/G anymore.

Pope John Paul II died in April - like Schiavo, another case of a person living too long. Not to be disrespectful, but this once vital and energetic man, who will be regarded as one of the greatest popes of modern times for helping to bring down the Soviet empire, was reduced in his final days to muttering unintelligible homilies and waving at pigeons from his balcony. Some of my best friends are Catholic, but I've never understood the appeal of this religion. I see Catholicism, from my vantage point here in the hills, as a male-dominated, authoritarian, superstition-filled holdover from medieval times. I don't think the new pope is going to do much to alter that view, but we mentioned back in July how folks here in God's Country seem to like Pope Benedict, particularly for his stand against homosexuality.

In May, we wrote about how the Springfield police had busted Mayor Carlson's son and fast-tracked the lab work in order to beat the mayoral election. Chief Rowe brought in a buddy from Miami, Florida, of all places, to oversee the internal investigation. This intense search for the facts, of course, turned up no misdeeds whatsoever by SPD. Was anybody shocked? The story was basically buried, and Carlson's son pleaded guilty a few weeks ago.

In Middle School Mind, we see a teacher trying to explain the Iraq invasion to a class of inquisitive adolescents. Some seven months later, the concluding statement still stands true.
"So, based on the newspaper day discussion in Exploratory class, one could conclude that we are at war in Iraq more out of ignorance than duty and that our busy lives won't allow us the time nor the inclination to find the truth behind the spin."
Some of the Bush spin on Iraq has come unraveled a bit since then, but even the most obvious truths become a hard sell when lies and half-truths are so persuasively marketed by those in power. Here in God's Country, Bush still gets high marks for his handling of the war - but Vlad the Impaler would get high marks around here if he was a Republican.

Probably the most frequently downloaded image from Ozarks Angel is the Hammons Field photo from May 30. I still maintain the return of real minor league baseball was the most significant event in Springfield in the last fifty years.


Another very popular download (even though I stole it from another website) is the photo of Washington girl-about-town, Jessica Cutler, whose between-the-sheets blog, The Washingtonienne, revealed the secret sex lives of certain anonymous diplomats. My favorite line: "Oh my god, I'm fucking six different men, ew." Ms. Cutler has a new blog called Jessica Cutler Online.

In July, I found myself whining about the mainstream media and wondered if the Valerie Plame scandal might finally get some people looking at the unethical and unconstitutional activities of the Bush administration. I speculated that Cheney and Rove were behind the whole thing, and that has turned out to be accurate. It looks as though Rove lied to the grand jury, and Cheney's little toady, Scooter Libby, was chosen as the one to fall on his sword to protect our stealth president from indictment.

In mid-July, we featured a story criticizing Bush's war on terror, pointing out how he and his neocon pals ignored advice from nearly every quarter in pressing for war in Iraq. One of our dictator allies in the Middle East, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, who "won" re-election in a fixed vote this fall, was one of many world leaders who tried to dissuade Bush & Co. from invading Iraq. He warned that such an invasion would create 100 Bin Ladens and turn even moderate Arabs against the U. S. His warning proved to be true - the invasion of Iraq has inspired tens of thousands of young Islamic men to join the jihad against the infidel invaders from America. Our own military, however, is having trouble meeting recruitment quotas.

In late July and August we started posting some cartoons from the springfieldian, a little underground newspaper that circulated around town during the early 90's. These turned out to be some of the most frequently downloaded images from Ozarks Angel, especially SPD Blues and cartoon parodies of Charlie Brown and Garfield that had a local twist.

Another frequently visited story was the strange and twisted tale of the "Self-Abduction of Tim Carpenter", the James River Assembly associate pastor who chose to fake his own abduction rather than face up to his wife, family and church that he was carrying on with a Jezebel in Memphis. It would be funny if it weren't so sad.

In mid-August, right before the first day of school, our brilliant school board chose to roll back a much sought after tax levy, which sent all kinds of wrong signals to the community and to R-12 teachers. It was an awful start for new superintendent, Norm Ridder, but there will be much more on the education front in Ozarks Angel this year. Among other things, there's a new quality initiative being pushed by Dr. Ridder that could lead to some real changes at the administrative level and in the classroom. I'm hopeful but skeptical.

By September, we were talking about the Drowning of New Orleans and how warnings of impending disaster had been ignored for years. Of course, nothing was going to happen on that front during the Bush administration. Yer doin' a great job Bushie!

If hurricane Katrina exposed the administration's indifference to the poor, the nomination of Harriet Miers exposed Bush's blatant arrogance and ignorance when it came to high-stakes judicial appointments. Our Girl Harriet generated the most heated comments from readers - mainly because of my description of Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas as an Uncle Tom. It's never helpful to bring race into the discussion, but I've always felt it was a very cynical appointment by daddy Bush. The Miers appointment surprised everybody - and the fact that conservatives were the most vocal critics sure surprised me. She would have done anything they wanted - but the nomination seemed so cavalier and disrespectful to the court, even the faithful stepped back from this one. The emperor's clothes were starting to unravel a bit.

In October we wrote about the Community Safety Initiative that would have funded a new crime lab and, more importantly, a program aimed at providing education services to poor children in a cooperative effort with the school system. The local citizenry were predictably wary of this "big government" approach to helping poor kids. "Let the parents take care of this," they wrote in letters to the editor. "It's big government taking over the family". The sad truth is, a growing number of parents aren't taking care of their children - it's a huge problem that nobody wants to talk about. Early childhood development is simply not a major concern here in God's country. We simply invest in bigger and better prisons to later house the large segment of under-educated poor folks who end up turning to drugs and criminal behavior to get by. Who will take up the slack and help the growing number of children born into poverty? Apparently nobody. Where do we look for help in dealing with poverty-related issues like this? Jefferson City? D. C.? Nothing there but cutbacks and vaccuous rhetoric. Maybe Jesus will come and save the children, you suppose? This local initiative was relatively small, but it had the potential to pay huge dividends in lowering crime and providing early basic education for poor children in our community. I was one of the minority of Springfieldians who were willing to invest an additional penny for every four dollars spent on this plan. The CSI initiative was, of course, summarily squashed by local voters in November.

Merry Christmas, Yada, Yada

I gave all my classes a test on the last day before Christmas break. Humbug! One kid asked why I was such a Scrooge, and my answer went something like this:

The original cause for celebration was suppose to be the birth of a spiritual being whose life and teachings changed the entire world and inspired countless millions of followers to love their neighbors as themselves, pursue peace over war and violence, protect the innocent, take care of the poor and sick and to spread love and understanding among all people, regardless of their social standing.

And what do we now do to celebrate this spiritual being's birth? We get out our credit cards and shop like madmen . . . we measure the season's success by keeping a close eye on consumer spending, credit card debt and whether or not massive department stores match their earnings estimates. We erect quaint little prop-up manger scenes outside fast food restaurants - I saw one manger scene in front of a Baptist church that had Santa Claus kneeling with the wise men. Aww, how precious.

It took generations to bastardize the Christmas season into this blind orgy of mass consumerism, but here we are, lining up like lemmings trying to get in the mall, deluding ourselves into thinking this is a spiritual holiday.

The best thing I can say about the holiday season is that, for better or worse, it brings families together. True, we dutifully buy gifts for people we don't care about much, but we also take time to give of ourselves to those we love immeasurably, and that is no small thing to remember. It helps get me through it all.

Oral Arguments for Impeachment

from Lady Bunny Blog

No Surprise From Gov. Blunt

As if on cue, the morning after yesterday's Ozarks Angel post about how a Washington, D. C. political action group is supplying talking points for Republican politicians on education "reform", our esteemed boy-governor Blunt stepped right up and submits a News-Leader guest editorial that parrots virtually every point we wrote about last night. How wonderful it must be to have other people do your thinking for you.

As predicted, Blunt spoke of supplying 65% of funding "directly to the classrooms", and then went to bat for raising teacher salaries, which he called, presumably with a straight face, "the most important part of any school district's budget". Blunt then went on to describe how appalled he was that Missouri teacher salaries are ranked 44th in the U. S.. (If you can find a Republican governor or legislator who has called for teacher salary increases in the last 25 years, I'll buy you lunch.)

Last night I wrote that this 65% solution aims to pit teachers against administrators and teacher organizations. Blunt obligingly says "as pay for teachers lags, pay increases for administrators have been nothing short of massive . . . the average Missouri superintendent has received three times the additional compensation that has been found for teachers . . . I certainly value the work of superintendents," Blunt writes, "but I value teachers more."

You can see that the governor is going directly to the voter with these arguments and is likely to get little, if any, support from school boards and administrators.

Let me again excerpt a memo from the Washington, D. C. political action group (First Class Education) that is pushing this proposal:

"With the First Class Education issue on the ballot, Republicans will have a viable answer to 'in the classroom improvement of education' without the need to call for a tax increase, offsetting budget cuts in other popular programs or gimmick accounting and deficit spending." The memo also states that there are other "tangential political advantages," such as pitting teachers and administrators against each other and building support for school vouchers."

Blunt has chosen to call this push "Putting Our Students First". He estimates that cuts in administration, libraries, counseling, bus transportation, janitorial services, cooks and other jobs and services will net over $270 million for the classroom (books, technology, resources and teacher salaries).

And all this without one dollar of additional taxes . . . that's the part that will play well to the GOP faithful here in the 7th district.

There was an excellent editorial rebuttal to Blunt's piece by former Nixa superintendent Terry Reid.

65% Solution Media Blitz Coming Soon

Be prepared for the next big thing in politically-motivated, GOP-backed bullshit regarding public education - the much-heralded and very controversial "65% Solution". It's coming to you via our esteemed boy-governor, Matt Blunt, in the form of a statewide referendum which is tentatively schedule for next November. I can almost hear the television commercials already.

This new educational shell game comes to us by way of a Washington, D. C. lobbying group called "First Class Education"(FCE) - an organization founded by millionaire entrepreneur Patrick M. Byrne, president of online shopping spot Overstock.com. Byrne, who is into martial arts and is a former boxer, fashions himself as the Robin Hood of public education. The 65% plan would supposedly improve classroom instruction by guaranteeing that 65% of all education revenue be directly targeted to teachers and students in the classroom. Sounds simple enough. This should play well here in God's country.

The idea is that educational bureaucracy promotes the mispending of education revenue on needless administrative fluff that is not directly related to the classroom. This sounds great on the surface. I've been one of the many teachers who believe there is a great deal of waste at the administrative level - not to mention some ridiculously high salaries. (The raise given Springfield's own superintendent last year represented 150% of my annual salary.)

Columnist George Will describes Byrne and his plan in an April Op-Ed piece in the Washington Post:

"Patrick Byrne, a 42-year-old bear of a man who bristles with ideas that have made him rich and restless, has an idea that can provide a new desktop computer for every student in America without costing taxpayers a new nickel. Or it could provide 300,000 new $40,000-a-year teachers without any increase in taxes. His idea -- call it the 65 Percent Solution -- is politically delicious because it unites parents, taxpayers and teachers while, he hopes, sowing dissension in the ranks of the teachers unions, which he considers the principal institutional impediment to improving primary and secondary education."

Politically delicious - yes indeed. This is why so many Republican governors are salivating at the idea of presenting this highly-marketable idea to the voting public. But is a referendum even necessary? Why not just present a bill and get it passed? Robert Leger, editorial page editor for our own News-Leader, questions Boy Blunt's motivation in his November 27 editorial. Leger wonders:

"So why a statewide vote? The top race on the November ballot will be the hotly contested campaign between Sen. Jim Talent and his Democratic challenger, Auditor Claire McCaskill. The issue conceivably helps the Republican.
Blunt, who has his own challenge from Attorney General Jay Nixon looming in 2008, would likely be featured in television ads supporting classroom teachers. That could help boost the image of a governor saddled with some of the lowest approval ratings in the nation."

Leger also mentions a memo emanating from the D. C. headquarters of "First Class Education which states:

"With the First Class Education issue on the ballot, Republicans will have a viable answer to 'in the classroom improvement of education' without the need to call for a tax increase, offsetting budget cuts in other popular programs or gimmick accounting and deficit spending.

The memo also lists other "tangential political advantages," such as pitting teachers and administrators against each other and building support for school vouchers."

Aha! The Trojan Horse has been exposed! This big initiative begins to look and sound very much like a Republican marketing plan to undo public education. How clever - plus, as an added bonus, it could also place teachers at odds with their own professional organizations like the NEA. FCE founder Byrne does little to hide his disdain for the nation's largest teacher's union. He once said that if he had one silver bullet he would use it to eliminate the NEA, an organization he views as a haven for "educrats". My experience, however, has been that the NEA has fought administrative over-spending and fluff in order to put more money into the classroom and increase teacher salaries, which is precisely what the "65% Solution" purports to do.

It's all very interesting. And I have to admit, even as an active NEA member, that the idea of cutting our top-heavy administrative positions and salaries in order to increase teacher pay and reduce class size makes perfect sense.

You can see how this will be marketed, and you can be sure the debate over this 'solution' will be loud and rancorous. Missouri NEA president, Greg Jung, has already issued a pointed rebuttal to the proposal, calling it "the 65% deception." Most opponents point to what they believe will be huge cuts in school libraries and counseling services, just for starters.

Though there are aspects of this 'solution' that appeal to me, I don't trust the GOP to back anything regarding public education because I strongly suspect their underlying long-term effort aims to promote a voucher system that will further stratify our society. On the other hand, I've been calling for education reform, particularly in the form of administrative cuts, for as long as I can remember.

Governor Blunt's little trial balloon on this issue sailed into town a couple of weeks ago, and it was routinely punctured by local school board officials, who criticized it as a "one size fits all" measure that imposed statewide standards indiscriminantly on diverse school systems - and diminishes local control. We'll be hearing more on this, you can bet on it.

Busch Stadium Going Down

I was in St. Louis a couple of weeks ago for a conference. I hadn't been to any such event in a long while - not since library days. Now that's a whole 'nother story, partying librarians. More on that later.

I shared a room with another teacher from a school across town. We got along just fine except for the fact that I had trouble sleeping both nights - probably due to the fact that it was just a strange place, and I'm a light sleeper.

Anyway, I was wide awake both mornings at the crack of dawn, and proceeded to explore downtown St. Louis before the city was awake. It was surprising how few cars and pedestrians were out and about at 6:00 a.m. I swear I saw a coyote walking around down by the arch, and several rabbits hopping around the hotel grounds.

No matter what direction I walked, I was always drawn toward Busch Stadium. Crews were working around the clock wrecking the historic landmark. Though I have never been a big Cardinals fan, I have spent many an hour watching some great baseball at Busch. The arch was a glistening backdrop to perfect symmetry of stadium roof. The pictures don't do it justice.

Next door to old Busch is the new Busch - a stadium built on the model of Camden Yard, a brand new vintage-style baseball field that looks older than the one it replaces. I guess it's a sign of the times that the new stadium will actually seat fewer baseball fans, but stadium revenue is expected to increase due to the construction of larger corporate clubs and boxes. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Missouri taxpayers footed a good deal of the bill for this demolition/construction - but fewer of them will be able to buy tickets to watch a game.

So, here are the early morning pics of the old space-aged Busch coming down. The wrecking ball was banging away, crushing concrete into dust clouds.

CIA Provided Bush Accurate Intel on 9/21/01

On September 21, 2001 - ten days after the 9/11 attacks - president Bush received a highly classified report from the CIA regarding possible links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. I read about this interesting bit of pre-war intelligence in a piece written by Murray Waas for the National Journal.

While the CIA and FBI took a lot of heat for not doing a better job of tracking the 9/11 terrorists before the attack, the CIA did provide what turned out to be very accurate information regarding the absence of a Saddam/Al Qaeda conspiracy leading up to the 9/11 attack.

It is becoming clear that the Bush administration was intent on cherry-picking their intelligence reports to back up their call for war. When the largest intelligence organization in the world didn't give them what they wanted, Cheney and Co. took their sources from wherever they could. Their groping around for threads from foreign spy networks led them to base some important pieces of their pro-war propaganda campaign on forged documents that somehow circumvented CIA inspection and were sent directly to the White House from some shady Italian spy-for-hire. The document was suppose to confirm that Saddam Hussein was trying to purchase yellow-cake uranium from a contact in Niger. This was the basis from Bush's dramatic "mushroom cloud" warning in his state of the union address (and the beginnings of Plamegate).

Another source was an Iraqi citizen who was interviewed and given a lie detector test by the CIA (more on this in a interesting Rolling Stone piece). This individual, code-named Curveball, supposedly had worked in the Iraqi chemical industry and was desperately trying to obtain a German visa. In his efforts to ingratiate himself with American and German authorities, he gave them what turned out to be totally fabricated information about Saddam's mobile chemical labs and plans to stockpile chemical weapons. Some of this guy's tall tale found its way into Colin Powell's speech before the United Nations - a speech he now regretably describes as "a real low point".

Here's another interesting snippet from the National Journal piece:

"One of the more intriguing things that Bush was told during the briefing was that the few credible reports of contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda involved attempts by Saddam Hussein to monitor the terrorist group. Saddam viewed Al Qaeda as well as other theocratic radical Islamist organizations as a potential threat to his secular regime. At one point, analysts believed, Saddam considered infiltrating the ranks of Al Qaeda with Iraqi nationals or even Iraqi intelligence operatives to learn more about its inner workings, according to records and sources."

According to the CIA, not only was Saddam not working with Al Qaeda, he was trying to figure out ways to keep militant religious fanaticism out of Iraq. The irony is thick when we now see how George Bush and Co. toppled Saddam's secular (albeit unfriendly) regime only to inspire the movement of thousands of Al Qaeda recruits onto Iraqi soil - and for his effort, Iraq is now the terrorist capital of the world.

(For more thoughts on selective intelligence - how the Bush Admin. sliced and diced intelligence leading up to the invasion of Iraq - take a look The Misleaders from Slate.)

Words of Wisdom from Jimmy Carter

I remember when this guy was president. He was basically run out of town by his own party when he tried to buck party traditions - sort of backfired on the dems when Ronald Reagan swept to power in 1980. Carter came to Springfield on that election day, and I went to see him at the airport. Not many people showed up, of course. Everybody knew he was going to lose, including Carter himself.

I've always respected old Jimmy. He was a knowledgeable and thoughtful man - an honest man. He was ridiculed for his beliefs at a time when politicians didn't wear their religion on their sleeve. Now, he is starting to speak out about the mixing of religion and politics and the lack of moral and ethical leadership from the GOP and the Bush administration. Here's a link to his editorial in the L. A. Times entitled: This Isn't the Real America.

State of the Union

A friend at work who happens to be a Republican said an odd thing to me the other day.
"I guess you're feeling pretty good about all the trouble Bush is in right now," he said. I felt a little insulted, since he was attributing what I consider a Republican character trait to me - petty political vindictiveness. It always seemed to me that the GOP was the party that would stop at nothing to destroy political opponents - ala Bill Clinton, whose own "scandals" (Whitewater - in which he was accused of losing several thousand dollars in a screwed up land deal; Travelgate, where Clinton appointed friends to White House travel office positions, gasp!); somehow evolved, through the office of special prosecutor Kenneth Starr via office gossip Linda Tripp, to a case that eventually had the leader of the free world lying about blow jobs in the Oval Office. The result: for only the second time in American history, a president was impeached. Over what? Tell me again how many lives were lost in all these terrible "scandals"?

I remember the frothing indignation that reigned supreme in the halls of Congress during Clinton's second term. The GOP literally put their own political agenda ahead of national security during those years. I blame them for distracting an entire nation over petty political vindictiveness - and all this while Osama bin Laden was building a terror network centered in Afghanistan.

Then, after the Supreme Court awarded the presidency to George Bush (even though he lost the popular vote by more than 500,000 votes), we see an opportunistic group of shadowy right-wing foreign policy wonks take control of an administration and set about to knowingly dupe Congress and the American public, utilizing trumped up fear-mongering and forged intelligence documents, into an unprecedented pre-emptive war against a third world dictatorship that posed no threat whatsoever to this country (but did possess huge oil reserves).

This could only happen under the weak and blissfully arrogant "leadership" of a man like George W. Bush - a man who, according to the chief of staff of his own State Department was "not well versed in international relations and not too much interested in them either".

Even before 9/11, Cheney, Rumsfeld and their little cadre of neoconmen were hard at work planning the Iraqi invasion. They sold the idea to our clueless leader with remarkable ease ("He tried to kill my dad"), and the die was cast. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who was later fired for not towing the party line, was astounded by how, just ten days after the inauguration, discussion of regime change in Iraq monopolized the first cabinet meeting. "For me, the notion of pre-emption, that the U.S. has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do, is a really huge leap," O'Neill later told an interviewer.

As the Bush administration ignored urgent warnings from counter-terrorist expert Richard Clarke and Arab leaders like Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Cheney and Rumsfeld and their neocon buddies remained steadfast in their push to invade Iraq. They were confident, given past marketing successes, that the case for war against Iraq would be easy enough to sell. The war machine that they helped assemble during the Reagan/Bush years would easily and swiftly crush the Iraqi army, no problem there (Shock and Awe/Mission Accomplished, right?) - and the Iraqi people will welcome us with open arms. The problem was, the CIA was not able to produce any definitive evidence of immediate threats posed by Iraq.

What to do . . .

And then came 9/11 - the day that changed everything. A shocked nation looked to their president for leadership, and he filled this role well in the first few months. The invasion of Afghanistan made sense - this was the center of the terrorist universe, and the U.S. was universally supported in this military action. The Taliban was quickly defeated, terrorist bases were destroyed and Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants were on the run - and somebody in the Bush "braintrust" realized the window of opportunity had flown open. Would there ever be a better time to launch the assault on Baghdad? Many Democrats and even a few Republicans in Congress (not to mention Bush's own Secretary of State, Colin Powell) were instinctively against such a potentially disastrous foray into the heart of the Middle East, but only a few had the balls to speak up - many, like John Kerrey, chose to back the war out of political expediency, fearing their objections would be seen as unpatriotic.

Now, years later, we see the truth beginning to filter out, as it always does in time. No, I don't gain any satisfaction whatsoever that Bush is in trouble. I wish he had never gained high political office. He's a weak man who has always been bailed out when things didn't work out for him. This time, however, the stakes are just a bit higher. It just saddens and scares me that the American public can be so malleable, so easily duped, so easily led astray by a bunch of political ideologues linked to a very effective GOP propaganda machine. The end justifies the means with these people. They now openly condone torture, operate secret prisons, arrest and hold suspects without charging them - and think nothing of slaughtering politically anyone gets in their way. This is precisely how police states are manufactured, how tyrants gain power. I now know, without a doubt, that it can happen here. No, I couldn't care less what happens to George Bush. I worry about the world my kids will inherit.

Exxon Profits At Unprecedented High

Still more evidence that it pays to have friends in high places . . . the Associated Press reported today that oil giant Exxon's third-quarter profits were a new record for any company ever. Third quarter profits were almost 75% higher than a year ago - up to $9.92 billion - and their $100 billion in total quarterly sales was also an all-time record for any company in history.

I really don't have much more to say about this . . . it's distressing but not surprising. I guess my conservative friends out there would argue that the free market is working its magic on the American public once again. So, the American public should just smile and get out the KY-Jelly, which is another fine petroleum derivative - while oil execs shop for more multi-million dollar homes and corporate tax shelters.

I'm wondering why such a huge, profitable industry couldn't invest some of their vast profits into some research and development toward creating more efficient ways to fuel our mobile society - or at the very least build a new refinery now and then so that gas prices wouldn't fluctuate wildly everytime a hurricane blows in or a middle eastern potentate gets pissed at us. There hasn't been a new refinery built in the U.S. since the early 1970's.

Seems to me that cutting corporate profits to give the American consumer a little break would almost be a patriotic act at this point. Wonder what's the likelihood of that happening? It's enough to make a person entertain thoughts of socialism - a government takeover of the energy industry. Things have a way of going full circle, you know.

County Commissioners and Nov. 8 Election

I attended a teacher meeting this week in which two of the three County Commissioners and the Springfield police chief spoke about an upcoming November 8 ballot issue called the Community Safety Initiative (CSI). County Commissioners Dave Coonrod and Harold Bengsch and SPD chief Lynn Rowe took turns talking about why they support the proposed 1/4 cent sales tax.

The proposed tax would ante up about a nickel on a $20 purchase and would raise about $10 million in year one for various crime prevention and law enforcement programs.

Did I hear a yawn? I know. This is usually the kind of thing that I have trouble supporting - yes, they want to build a new crime lab and provide funding for more police officers, blah, blah. But the part that caught my attention, and the primary reason they were pitching this to a group of school teachers, was the $3 million that was to be spent on a proactive early childhood program that was linked to 50 elementary schools in Springfield. It would also create a one-stop center for early childhood services such as WIC, Parents As Teachers and medical and behavioral health care.

Unlike the unfunded federal feel-good mandate known as No Child Left Behind, this program supports and funds an early childhood program that is aimed at breaking the cycle of illiteracy and under-education that breeds all kinds of social problems in the community. Yes, it's on a small scale, but it's a move in the right direction - and I don't think we'll be getting much help from the state or federal government anytime soon - not with the current leadership we have in Jeff City and D.C.

I was pleasantly surprised to hear Coonrod and Bengsch speak to this issue with no small amount of conviction. Hit the link above to read more about it.

***Also, thanks to those readers who inquired about the most recent dispatch from the fields of education. It was deleted because I was worried that the teacher featured in that story would suffer some kind of retribution from a vengeful administrator or demented parent. Given the fact that she still works with those people on a daily basis, I felt it was wise to avoid any risk of making things worse. I did save the story and will re-post it after things cool down a bit.

Still More Evidence of Cronyism in Bushland

I was trying to find a link to one of my favorite news shows when I ran across this article posted on Media Matters for America. The New York Times article explores how Harriet Miers worked a dual role after being appointed by Bush to head the Texas Lottery Commission, which was supposedly suspected of shady dealings. It looks as though some of the questionable activity centered around an employee who had information about Bush's own shady National Guard experience. Here's a clip:

"Allegations about political favors playing a role in Bush's National Guard career first arose in the midst of a lawsuit filed by Lawrence Littwin, the former executive director of the lottery commission who was both hired and fired during Miers's tenure. Littwin had reportedly been investigating what he considered improper political contributions made by Gtech, a company which had a contract to run the Texas lottery. In his lawsuit, Littwin claimed that Gtech pressured the commission to fire him by threatening to reveal that the company had paid lobbyist Ben Barnes $23 million to keep Barnes from publicly claiming that he pulled strings in order to get Bush into the Guard.

In her capacity at the commission, Miers was directly involved with Littwin's dismissal in October 1997. Littwin's lawsuit claimed that after he began looking into financial ties between the company and Texas lawmakers, Gtech pushed Miers to fire him [Houston Chronicle, January 6, 2001]. After a federal judge in Texas ruled that Miers did not have to testify in Littwin's lawsuit to provide an explanation for why Littwin was fired, Gtech settled Littwin's lawsuit for $300,000.

Subsequently -- and while still serving on the commission -- Miers was paid $19,000 by Bush's re-election campaign to investigate his National Guard record in order to "identify potential vulnerabilities early on and deflect any charges that Bush got favorable treatment," according to a July 17, 2000, Newsweek article. Newsweek reported that Barnes's allegations were a key part of Miers's investigation. That would mean that the Miers investigation -- and therefore Bush himself -- potentially benefited from Miers's knowledge of and involvement in the lottery commission."

Everybody knows Bush had preferential treatment with his National Guard stint. First, to get in at all - and later to cover the fact that he was AWOL while out campaigning for his dad. Harriet Miers appears to be a Bush loyalist first and foremost. No wonder he trusts her so much.

Conservative pundits like Bill Kristol, editor of the conservative rag The Weekly Standard characterized Miers' nomination to the high court 'at best an error, at worst a disaster' which should be reconsidered. 'He (Bush) has put up an unknown and undistinguished figure for an opening that conservatives worked for a generation to see filled with a jurist of high distinction.'

George Will, with whom I hardly ever agree (except for our shared love of baseball and the Cubs) called for the Miers nomination to be turned down by the Senate. Here's a clip from his Op-Ed piece in the Washington Post:

It is important that Miers not be confirmed unless, in her 61st year, she suddenly and unexpectedly is found to have hitherto undisclosed interests and talents pertinent to the court's role. Otherwise the sound principle of substantial deference to a president's choice of judicial nominees will dissolve into a rationalization for senatorial abdication of the duty to hold presidents to some standards of seriousness that will prevent them from reducing the Supreme Court to a private plaything useful for fulfilling whims on behalf of friends.

Thank you, George, for your eloquence. But will GW listen? I doubt it - so we'll be subjected to an awful dissection of this poor woman at the hands of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Of course, the evangelicals will say she will have been persecuted for her beliefs. But, to be sure, this nomination should go down in flames due solely to the fact that she is nothing more than a political crony who is clearly not qualified to replace Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court.

Our Girl Harriet

President Bush managed to piss everybody off with this one. The Harriet Miers Supreme Court nomination has been roundly panned by pundits from virtually the entire political spectrum. I can almost see GW smirking after he and his trusty advisors came up with this one. This ought to throw everybody for a loop, yuk, yuk. One thing I've got to hand GW, he has shown an uncanny ability to top his daddy when it comes to boneheaded presidential moves. The elder Bush at least had the good sense to avoid a protracted war in Iraq after Desert Storm, while Boy George boldly ventures forth on a misguided crusade to build a democratic state in the heart of the Middle East. Is that conservative? Seems like I remember W criticizing the Clinton/Gore administration for their "nation building" in Bosnia. You don't hear much about Bosnia these days. I guess it depends on your point of view about this nation building concept - if a Democrat is doing it, it's nation building, if a Republican does it, it's fighting tyranny and spreading democracy. Of course, it also helps if the proposed construction site has a fair amount of oil under the surface and your administration is tight with big oil.

Daddy Bush appointed legal lightweight Clarence Thomas to the bench in what many regarded as a cold, cynical move that would force Democrats to oppose a black nominee. I wonder, has Thomas ever voted independently of ideologue Scalia? Ever written an intelligent opinion? He did serve a huge role in casting one of the votes that put Bush's son in the White House. So, the appointment did pay a quick dividend politically. Do you recall how Thomas characterized his contentious nomination process as a high-tech lynching? After viewing his service on the court so far, I guess it could be fair to similarly characterize his ideological obedience as good old-fashioned Uncle Tomism.

In George Bush we have the same man who asked us to trust him as he spread fear and loathing about Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq as a rationale for an unprovoked invasion. Turns out the intelligence was bad - wasn't his fault (never is). This is also the man who appointed a totally unqualified Michael "yer doin' a heckuva job" Brown to lead FEMA. (Brown had been commissioner of the Arabian Horse Association, which at least symbolically represents the abundance of horseshit GW has cast upon the American public.) And now . . . he gives us his girl Harriet, former White House secretary and personal legal council. She has virtually no record, no court experience, didn't appear on anybody's list of the top 100 (1,000?) candidates - but not to worry. Our fearless leader knows her heart. Trust him on this one. She'll never change, he assures us. Shew, what a relief. One thing we do know - she is a born again Christian, which, in political terms, is nothing more than a blatant signal to the GOP's conservative base that Miers would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade when the opportunity presents itsself. She will, of course, refuse to talk about that during the hearings.

In the five years that have passed since the Supreme Court awarded Bush the presidency, could anybody, even his harshest political enemies, have calculated how poorly he would have performed? I wonder how many years it will take to undo the damage this administration has done to the country and our standing in the world. But back to our girl Harriet. I doubt seriously that Bush will withdraw this ridiculous nomination. I just hope the Senate has the guts to vote it down. It'll be interesting to see who stands tall and who bends over.

Bad Boys, School Superintendents & Wal-Mart

Last night, I ran into two of my former students outside the movie store. Brandon and Ricky were always in trouble for one thing or another during their three years in middle school. Both of them flunked almost every class but were passed on year after year, as is the habit in most middle schools. Ricky had a violent streak and was finally placed in an alternative school for much of his 7th grade year. It was mostly 7th grade macho stuff that got him in trouble. Like so many other lost boys and girls we see in middle school halls every year, he had virtually zero parental supervision. Brandon's mom tried to become more involved, but her son was soft and lazy, a follower who seemed hell bent on being cool above all else. Brandon had a good sense of humor and was one of the few in my class who understood my jokes, but he hadn't learned much academically since the third or fourth grade.

They saw me first as I pulled into the parking lot. "Hey, Mr. Smith." It's always nice to see former students smiling when we meet. So often, my memories of scolding them and sending them to the office for some transgression are all I remember. Ironically, some of the worst discipline problems are the friendliest when we meet outside the confines of school. They seem to know that I really did like them - even the bad ones (sometimes especially the bad ones). The two bad boys sauntered up to the passenger side of the car as I pulled in, and we talked through the window. Ricky had his ball cap on crooked and wore an open baseball jersey, the uniform of adolescent rebellion.

"So how's high school going?" I asked.
"We're not in school," Brandon said, smiling.
"We're doing home school now," Ricky said with a straight face. Home schooling? I had to laugh.
"Are you kidding me?" Both of them smiled just a bit, not wanting to completely admit that they weren't doing anything remotely related to school work.
"So, who's teaching you?" I asked.
"My mom," says Brandon.
They knew I didn't buy it, but I didn't say anything more. We said our good-byes, and they drove away in Brandon's beat up Taurus with the bass vibrating a loose muffler. Poor lost boys.

I remembered one parent/teacher conference. Brandon's mom had broken down in tears, pleading for advice on how to persuade her academically-challenged son that doing well in school was important. "He's a good boy," she said over and over.

And now this poor woman was home schooling them? I wonder how she's holding up. Their situation seems hopeless now. I hate it that they have chosen to separate themselves from the one place where they might learn something outside their usual realm - where they could associate with adults who cared about them and had some insight into the real world. The sad thing is, Ricky and Brandon were both reasonably bright, funny kids - especially Ricky. There were times when I knew that I "had them" during particular lessons. There was definitely some hope there - they just weren't in class often enough for anything to stick. When he came to school for a stretch, Ricky actually contributed to class and truly enjoyed doing a little math now and then. He even passed a couple of tests. I can remember how he eagerly shot his hand up when he had the answer to a math problem. Now it seems their education is a lost cause, but I'll keep you posted if there are any future Brandon and Ricky sightings in the 'hood.

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Speaking of education, I met the new superintendent of schools the other day at an NEA meeting. He's an affable fellow, much more articulate than the last suit that flew into town to lead R-12 . . . and much funnier. All the principals like him, but I still haven't heard him say much other than "we must foster a culture of improvement", which seems pretty uninspired to me. Let's all agree to try to do better, okay?

This was his first meeting with Springfield NEA, and a couple of polite teachers lobbed softball questions. He was obliged to mention how awesome (a favorite adjective) the system was and how capable the staff was . . . but then somebody asked him what he thought about class size. Having just struggled through a year when my classes were jammed with 35-36 students every hour, I was interested in how he'd handle this one. It seems amazing to me that a big system like R-12 refuses to hire enough teachers to have optimum class sizes.

Dr. Ridder smiled and apologetically explained that he always gets a little "political" when talking about class size . . . He rubbed his hands together and said, "I've seen teachers do a terrific job with classes of forty and a poor job with classes of fifteen." And then he smiled and nodded as if to acknowledge that what he had just uttered was total bullshit. Exactly the kind of bobbing and weaving we've come to expect from administrative types. I was disappointed but not surprised. He has a nice personality at least. He's coming back in a few months, and I have already promised myself to ask him about the tax rollback. Should inspire a good soft-shoe.

One last thing while on the topic of home schooling and public education. Did you know that the world's largest and richest corporation, besides busting unions and offering low-wage, low-benefit jobs to the working poor, has been funneling all kinds of money to political action committees that are opposed to public education? Here are a few facts from an NEA article:

The Walton family dedicates the bulk of its philanthropy to pushing vouchers, tuition tax credits and charter schools, giving at least $250 million to such efforts over the past six years. (USA Today, 3/11/04)
Since 1998, the Walton Family Foundation has given more than $100 million to private organizations that finance vouchers to private schools, undermine support for public education, and are intended to increase political pressure for publicly funded vouchers. (Mediatransparency.org)
The late John Walton was the biggest paycheck in the anti-public education movement, providing tens of millions of dollars of his own money to support anti-public education ballot initiatives and organizations and sitting on the boards of the major pro-voucher organizations.

What can you do? My little family is boycotting Wal-Mart in favor of companies like Target and Staples, who generously support public schools across the country. In spite of all the problems in schools today, I sincerely believe that public education is the glue that holds our society together, as tenuous as that hold may be. For every Ricky and Brandon that drop out, there are also kids that are rescued from terrible situations and benefit greatly from their time in public schools.

Where's the Love?

The following is in response to Kevin Elmer's commentary in the News-Leader.

Kevin Elmer's one-sided and utterly simplistic commentary in Sunday's paper left me wondering when so-called "conservative Christians" will ever cut the rhetoric, take off the blinders and view the world around them.

Elmer builds a flimsy argument that Islamic radicals love death over life, while we in the U.S. prefer the inverse - and then neatly concludes that this Islamic fatalism is the big difference between them and us. They love death; we love life.

I would argue that many Americans, even devout Christians like Rev. Pat Robbertson, are quite selective about their love of life. It depends on whose life it is - or the stage of development. From conception to birth, we're all about the sanctity of life - but for babies being born into abject poverty, like many of those left behind in New Orleans, well, they're on their own. We build bigger and better prisons to house those kinds of people. They aren't really part of the economy. They are expendable. Nixon advisor Henry Kissinger called them "eaters".

Mr. Elmer also states that 9/11 was the event that "ensured that (Al Qaida) would grow beyond a small group into an inspired movement." He might recall that the entire civilized world condemned the 9/11 attacks and rallied to support the U.S. No, it was the misguided U.S. invasion of Iraq that most certainly boosted the rolls of Islamic fanaticism - virtually every Mideast leader cautioned the Bush Administration on this.

I do agree that the victims of the 9/11 attacks "were not soldiers armed to protect . . . they were innocent." But are the 25,000 Iraqi civilians who have died since the U.S. invasion of their country any less innocent? When asked about civilian casualties, an American general said, "We don't do body counts." Where's the love?

It's always great to hear somebody cheerleading about how the U.S. is the greatest nation in the world. USA! USA ! But right now, after the veneer has been stripped away in New Orleans and with the continuing death and destruction in Iraq, I don't think we're gaining many converts worldwide.