Stop Jindal's Backdoor Voucher Plan

If citizens do not call and write their state reps, the privatizers will have this one done before you can say dirty scumsucker. Good reporting from the Times-Picauyne:

BATON ROUGE -- Gov. Bobby Jindal will launch the second special legislative session of his 8-week-old administration today aimed at spending a $1.1 billion surplus left over from last year's budget and pursuing a widely popular effort to eliminate three taxes on business.

But during the narrow window of time for the session, Jindal is also proposing a surprise initiative that signals a significant shift in state policy by offering government support for private school tuition expenses.

Following a path that only a few other states have taken, Jindal and his top allies in the Legislature want to give parents a state income tax deduction for 50 percent of their private school tuition up to $5,000, which generally would result in tax savings of $60 to $300 per pupil. It also would give a tax break for home schooling expenses.

Although the program's overall $20 million price tag is relatively minor compared to the billions of dollars in the state budget, the program crosses a line that Louisiana has long placed between public and private school support and would create a tax break tilted in favor of those with higher incomes.

"I'm pretty confident it's something that we have widespread support for," said Rep. Hunter Greene, R-Baton Rouge, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee that will consider the proposal.

Greene has reason to be confident. A similar initiative passed overwhelmingly last spring but was vetoed by Gov. Kathleen Blanco, who said she feared "that this legislation may subsidize private schools at the expense of public school children."

With Jindal as governor, a veto is practically out of the picture. But that fact may change the calculations for some lawmakers, and the House and Senate this year are composed of many new members.

"I think it's going to be one of those issues that's pretty hotly debated," said Rep. Don Trahan, R-Lafayette, chairman of the House Education Committee. . . .

The rest here.

Rhee's First Friday Afternoon Massacre

From WaPo:

By V. Dion Haynes and Sylvia Moreno
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, March 9, 2008; Page C07
D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee's decision to fire 98 central office employees Friday is generating a debate among workers and questions from D.C. Council members about the fairness of the process.

According to several people who lost their jobs, the firings affected numerous departments, including business operations, food service, budget and communications. But information technology appeared to be the hardest hit, losing about 40 of its 50 employees. Former workers in that unit said Rhee has decided that the functions will be absorbed by the city's IT department.

Rhee's spokeswoman said yesterday that she could not specify the departments affected by the firings or provide information about the people who lost their jobs. She also could not determine how much money the firings would save.

The former employees said they are angry that they were let go despite years of good service. The legislation gives Rhee the right to dismiss them whether they are good or bad performers. They also said they thought the system treated them shabbily in giving them a phone number to call to get information about final pay. Some said they are seeking legal advice. The terminated workers refused to be quoted by name because they officially remain on the school system's payroll for two weeks. . . .

Virginia's NCLB Pullout Now in Hands of State BOE

From the Virginan-Pilot:

The General Assembly won't recommend the state try to pull out of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, under a compromise measure agreed to by the House of Delegates on Friday.

Instead, the governor will likely get a bill that leaves it to the Virginia Board of Education to recommend what to do if federal officials don't grant the state waivers from the landmark education law. HB1425 and SB490 originally said that if the waivers weren't granted, the state board would develop a plan to withdraw from NCLB by July 2009.

Senators kept removing the language, and Gov. Timothy M. Kaine has frowned on withdrawing. Del. Steve Landes, R-Weyers Cave, said he ceded to the tamped-down measure in an effort to get a bill passed. Both the House and Senate version were amended Friday and passed by the House. The Senate is expected to pass them as well.

"Even though this is a scaled-back version of the original bill," Landes said, "it definitely keeps the issue out there."

Gordon Hickey, a spokesman for Kaine, said the amended bill appears to be more palatable. Hickey added that Kaine "supports the concept. He is opposed to withdrawing from NCLB."

"Everybody wants some money, and nobody wants to get left behind"

Jennifer Medina does such a good job on the City Schools beat that she has surely earned a ticket out of the journalistic purgatory of big city education coverage. I'll be sorry to see her go.

She had three stories the past week that should be put in a time capsule labeled NYC Schools Sad But True, 2000-2010.

One deals with the possibility of limiting the powers for Mayor Gradgrind and Chancellor McChoakumchild (could Council be questioning the wisdom of their monarchical appointment?);

The harshest criticism came from Councilman John C. Liu, who suggested that several of the mayor's education-policy changes had been politically motivated.

"Mayoral control was not meant to be martial law," Mr. Liu said.

The words provoked a terse response from Mr. Walcott, who said that policy changes were not politically motivated and added, "I totally disagree with you."

and one on Gradgrind's failure to follow state law governing the teaching of the arts (he will make those scumbag teachers pay for this);

"We are moving in the right direction," he [Gradgrind] said. "We will hold them accountable for teaching the arts just as we have established holding them accountable for English and math."

and a third piece on the City's transformation of school learning into the lowest-paying kind of dead end production work (a guy from Harvard was hired to come up this shameful scam):

Would it be better to get the money as college scholarships? Shouts of "No way!" echoed through the room. "We might not all go to college," one student protested.

Read them all. Nice job, Ms. Medina.

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Trucks are considered a large size vehicle, with 65% of the size being the open truck bed

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The press corps plays Chicken Little about a drop in state tax revenue.

Whenever the economy starts to slide southward, the press starts sprouting horror stories spout about how "tax revenue shortfalls" are starving state governments. Today's (March 31) Washington Post Page One piece—"States Are Hit Hard by Economic Downturn: Many Cutbacks Felt by Most Needy"—repeats so many of the genre's clichés that the writers could have assembled the piece from memory.

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Hillary's Rev. Wright, Part 2.

Romance continues to blossom between Hillary Clinton and her once-mortal enemy, Richard Mellon "Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy" Scaife. In the March 31 issue of his crackpot newspaper, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, which loses somewhere between $20 million and $30 million a year, Scaife praises Hillary's self-assurance, the depth of her knowledge on foreign and domestic issues, and her confidence. "Her meeting and her remarks during it changed my mind about her," Scaife gushes—affirming, perhaps, Woody Allen's famous maxim that 80 percent of success is showing up:

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Nipple rings vs. metal detectors.

Gloria Allred, who represents victims of harassment, discrimination, and wrongful termination, is "the most famous woman attorney practicing law in the nation today," according to her own Web site. That immodest judgment would be hard to dispute. In her storied career, Allred has filed an amicus brief in Paula Corbin Jones v. William Jefferson Clinton; represented Amber Frey, Scott Peterson's mistress, during Peterson's 2004 double-murder trial; and, recently, took on Heather Mills as a client after the activist/fashion model divorced Paul McCartney. At a packed press conference last week, Allred announced her latest cause: the alleged harassment of a graphic artist named Mandi Hamlin by officials of the Transportation Security Administration at the Lubbock, Texas airport. At issue is whether the TSA followed a humane protocol for women who wear nipple rings.

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The real harm Hillary Clinton inflicted on Bosnia.

The punishment visited on Sen. Hillary Clinton for her flagrant, hysterical, repetitive, pathological lying about her visit to Bosnia should be much heavier than it has yet been and should be exacted for much more than just the lying itself. There are two kinds of deliberate and premeditated deceit, commonly known as suggestio falsi and suppressio veri. (Neither of them is covered by the additionally lying claim of having "misspoken.") The first involves what seems to be most obvious in the present case: the putting forward of a bogus or misleading account of events. But the second, and often the more serious, means that the liar in question has also attempted to bury or to obscure something that actually is true. Let us examine how Sen. Clinton has managed to commit both of these offenses to veracity and decency and how in doing so she has rivaled, if not indeed surpassed, the disbarred and perjured hack who is her husband and tutor.

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