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Well, wishes for Arafat’s death have so far gone unfulfilled tonight. The bugger has a pretty good record of surviving (all these old murderers do, don’t they?).
Regardless, I’ll get to see him die someday soon. And he’ll be outlived by the state of Israel — and by millions of Israelis who will live in peace and never give in to his pseudo-nation of murdering scumbags.
At least we know he’s suffering.
The Chicago Tribune has to call back papers with an article titled “You c_nt say that” — Use your imagination — about a certain word used to describe a certain part of the female/hermaphrodite anatomy.
Funny stuff, reported by The Wall Street Journal.
And, last New York City teachers contract item, I swear, Bloomberg may come to regret this statement, about caving on the contract, reported in the Times:
Look, we are not going to sacrifice reform for political expediency. I can’t imagine anybody that knows me after all the three years in office that thinks that I would ever do that.
Well, I really hope and pray that he’s telling the truth. And, if he is, I’ll be the first one to praise him for letting talks break down or for getting some significant concessions.
However, nothing I’m hearing from sources close to the talks leads me to believe he’s telling the truth. So, I’m just going to file this little nugget away until it’s time to have some fun with it.
Eduwonk also takes note of the Bloomberg-Klein split:
A lot of buzz about a Klein - Bloomberg split over this issue. All sides denying publicly, but those in the know say this marriage has hit a rough patch.
Watch this.
The debate over the teachers contract in New York City remains hot. Here’s my column from Wednesday’s Post, asking why Clinton’s former antitrust chief, Joel Klein, would want to stick around the Big Apple if the mayor who hired him to clean up the schools sells him out by signing a no-good contract:
Eva Moskowitz, the chair woman of the City Council’s Education Committee, yesterday released a warning to Mayor Bloomberg. His drive to reform New York City’s public schools, she wrote, will veer off course if he agrees to a teachers contract that maintains the status quo — something he seems set to do any day now.
Schools Chancellor Joel Klein has made reforming the contract his signature issue for more than two years. If Bloomberg cuts the legs out from under him, why would the former trustbuster want to stick around?
Klein’s office, naturally, denies there is any mayor-chancellor rift over the contract. But if Bloomberg is determined to placate Randi Weingarten and the United Federation of Teachers before his run for reelection next year, his goals are simply not compatible with Klein’s mission of gaining better control over the school system.
Moskowitz, as I’ve said before, deserves a lot of credit for taking this stand. Bloomberg and Weingarten are beating up on her, but, if nothing else, she’s made sure that the two don’t cut a backroom deal that benefits them and nobody else — least of all the children.
Or, should I say, she’s made sure that they can’t do so without anyone noticing.
Here, the Eduwonk implicitly accepts the nonsensical argument that somehow we should care about how “schools” do, as opposed to children:
From an urban teacher, identity withheld:
[My district] sent out letters to all parents that we are now in program improvement. Unfortunately, no one told the teachers. Oops. I had to answer parents today with, “What letter?”
With such disorganization, it’s not really a mystery why we’re in this situation.
Now I’m asked to write the bit about school choice for the letter from the school to be sent home to parents tomorrow (far too late, in my opinion). A moral dilemma for me… I know that we are improving and I know that many kids are successful at our school. I also believe that it weakens the school community when anyone decides to leave, especially to be bussed to a school where they may be overcrowding someone else’s classroom or where the teacher may not be prepared to meet their unique needs.
But if I were a parent, I would jump on the opportunity and I don’t know that I can discourage parents from doing something that may be a huge benefit for their kids. Even if the impact on the school as a whole may be negative.
Isn’t this also a microcosm of part of the Democratic dilemma on vouchers?
Well, yes, it is a microcosm of the Democratic dilemma on vouchers. And, as such, it’s a microcosm of the collectivist attitude that tells people that individual students and families should be sacrificed to maintain this holy entity, “public education.”
Let’s be clear: There is nothing inherently worth preserving in public education. The only thing that’s even remotely important about public education is the concept of universality — that every child be given an education, at public expense if necessary.
Voucher proponents do not propose to do away with universality. They just propose to fulfill it by giving kids a chance to go to private school if the government-run schools are failing.
Will taking some kids out of public schools and letting them go to private schools hurt the public schools? Possibly. But, do you know what? I don’t care. Because we’re not trying to save the schools — which really just means the teachers and the principals and the public district administrators. This isn’t about the adults, it’s about the kids.
Moreover, I don’t actually think it will hurt the public schools. First of all, they don’t actually lose much money when a kid goes to a private school or a charter school, for the simple reason that the district gives far less money per-pupil to choice schools. So, on net, the public schools have more money to spend on fewer kids when it loses students to choice. And, the public schools are forced to compete, which, data shows so far, makes them clean up their acts a little bit.
Everyone wins. There’s no dilemma. Just backward thinking.
To put Al-Qaqaa in a broader context, however, there’s this story from Wednesday’s New York Sun, which points to the larger problem with “monitoring” Saddam’s weapons:
Nine years ago, U.N. weapons inspectors urgently called on the International Atomic Energy Agency to demolish powerful plastic explosives in a facility that Iraq’s interim government said this month was looted due to poor security.
The chief American weapons inspector, Charles Duelfer, told The New York Sun yesterday that in 1995, when he was a member of the U.N. inspections team in Iraq, he urged the United Nations’ atomic watchdog to remove tons of explosives that have since been declared missing.
Mr. Duelfer said he was rebuffed at the time by the Vienna-based agency because its officials were not convinced the presence of the HMX, RDX, and PETN explosives was directly related to Saddam Hussein’s programs to amass weapons of mass destruction.
So, the IAEA could have demolished these weapons in the mid-1990s, but it’s the Bush administration’s fault that they were swiped in 2003?
Right.
Well, this report in The Washington Times is very plausible, as to what may have happened with the explosives at Al-Qaqaa:
Russian special forces troops moved many of Saddam Hussein’s weapons and related goods out of Iraq and into Syria in the weeks before the March 2003 U.S. military operation, The Washington Times has learned.
John A. Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, said in an interview that he believes the Russian troops, working with Iraqi intelligence, “almost certainly” removed the high-explosive material that went missing from the Al-Qaqaa facility, south of Baghdad.
“The Russians brought in, just before the war got started, a whole series of military units,” Mr. Shaw said. “Their main job was to shred all evidence of any of the contractual arrangements they had with the Iraqis. The others were transportation units.”
The more that comes out about this story, the more it seems implausible that “looters” took the explosives. The tonnage — the whole hook to the story — it’s just too big, it doesn’t fit. Whoever moved these weapons had significant logistical capabilities.
How we missed the Russians or anyone else transporting this material (before or after the invasion) still strikes me as of concern, though. I mean, if the Bush administration’s working theory is that WMDs could have been moved to Syria or elsewhere before the invasion, well, shouldn’t we have been monitoring all of this pretty closely?
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