The Skeptic hits one of my favorite topics: money in the movement to get the money out of politics.
Archive for December, 2005
You know things have gotten desperate at Gawker when they link to posts about the New York City teachers contract.
I’m glad someone else noticed this in The Post.
No comment from this Post staffer.
When Eva Moskowitz did her hearings in late 2003 on the teachers contract (and the principals and custodians contracts) and how labor agreements destroy our public schools, her staff prepared a CliffsNotes-like series on the topic.
For copyright reasons, presumably, the name had to be changed to "Council Notes," which is lamer, but less litigation-inducing.
Anyway, here are the Council Notes for each contract:
This should be illuminating to New Yorkers and non-New Yorkers as to just how poisonous organized labor is in the context of public education. It’s hard enough for the government to get anything right. But when the guiding principle is to not run afoul of a bunch of Teamster-minded teachers and their War-and-Peace-sized rulebook…
Well, you get NYC’s public schools.
This Fox News column speculates that the vitriol directed at "Munich" is simply based on Spielberg fatigue.
I’m thinking it has more to do with Jew-bashing fatigue and the director’s ignorant, moral-equivalence-promoting worldview.
But, hey. "War of the Worlds" was pretty lame, too.
Eva Moves On
Published by December 10th, 2005 in Misc. Education and Misc. Self Promotion. 0 CommentsAfter four years of chairing the New York City Council’s Education Committee, Eva Moskowitz is moving on. It turns out that her next gig will be as a charter-school head.
In my latest Post column, I mourn what her loss on the Education Committee means for the city:
The UFT has tried to peg her as an enemy of
teachers, mainly because she held a series of hearing in the fall of
2003 on how the teachers contract gets in the way of education and
prevents principals from doing their jobs.But the truth is Moskowitz has been tough not just on the
union but on the city’s education bureaucracy, which has been forced
routinely to send down officials to be flayed and filleted as witnesses
before her committee. Accountability, a concept sorely missing from
most of public education, has been her watchword.With Moskowitz gone, who will be left to ask the questions
she’s been asking — to spot the accountability-dodging and
blame-shifting and simple incompetence that define the fights over
education policy in New York City?Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like her successor will be up to that particular job.
Council Member Robert Jackson, the committee member who’s
expected to take over its leadership, could hardly be tied more closely
to organized labor. Prior to his election to the City Council in 2001,
he was an operative for the New York State Public Employees Federation.He’s also a charter member of the
money-is-the-answer-to-everything crowd. In 1991, he co-founded the
Campaign for Fiscal Equity, which sued the state for billion of dollars
in extra education funding.Call the Education Committee a watchdog silenced. The only
question now is the extent to which it will be transformed into an
attack dog for the UFT.
It will be quite something to see how Eva takes on the role of charter-school leader. There’s some irony here with Moskowitz and her arch nemesis, Randi Weingarten, now both in charge of charter schools.
The movement’s all about accountability, after all.
A truly horrifying story of a guy who was sleeping in his apartment, had his door busted down in the middle of the night and then shot the intruder. It turned out the intruder was a cop — busting into the wrong house on a drug raid — and now the guy is sentenced to death.
Oh, and the cop was white (and the son of the police chief) and the guy who’s going to be executed is black.
How about instead of "Tookie," celebrities take up the cause of Cory Maye?
…cool.
I’ve already mentioned it, but I want to throw some love its way explicitly: Scott Adams’ Dilbert Blog.
It reads like any of his non-cartoon books, which are really his best work. Already, he’s sparked a massive Intelligent Design debate and given away his six-element humor formula.
Great stuff.
My latest column for TCS:
The anniversary of the Gingrich Revolution last year brought on a spate of misty-eyed remembrances among conservatives, reflections on what was and what could have been when the Republican Party took over Congress 10 years ago. A year later, however, we have arrived at the true marking point. This November, December and January mark 10 years since the GOP shut down the federal government not once but twice and, in doing so, brought their own revolution to a dispiriting denouement.
The trouble began almost the second the Republicans took over, when the presumptive speaker-elect began referring to the night’s victory as a "revolution." Gingrich’s jubilation could be forgiven. He had been working since the late 1970s to bring about Republican control of the House of Representatives — slaving away when others considered such a dream a delusion — but the rhetorical excesses would come back to haunt him.
It’s the shutdowns, far more than the 1994 takeover, that have shaped the last 10 years.
Over at Hit & Run, Jacob Sullum quotes a choice little selection by Robert Bork (from the National Review 50th anniversary issue) on how to "increase liberty" in America:
"Liberty in America can be enhanced by reinstating, legislatively,
restraints upon the direction of our culture and morality," writes the
former appeals court judge, now a resident scholar at the American
Enterprise Institute. "Censorship as an enhancement of our liberty may
seem paradoxical. Yet it should be obvious, to all but the most
dogmatic First Amendment absolutists, that people forced to live in an
increasingly brutalized culture are, in a very real sense, not wholly
free." Bork goes on to complain that "relations between the sexes are
debased by pornography"; that "large parts of television are
unwatchable"; that "motion pictures rely upon sex, gore, and
pyrotechnics for the edification of the target audience of
14-year-olds"; and that "popular music hardly deserves the name of
music."
Got that? Freedom is slavery. This isn’t complicated. Bork is practicing textbook Orwellian language manipulation.
And just who on the right thinks it’s a tragedy that this man isn’t on the Supreme Court?
From the NYT:
Mia Houtermans, a 29-year-old anthropology student who has been
studying the rights of sex workers, perused anatomically suggestive
magenta soap, "Sluts Unite" T-shirts and vintage postcards of lesbians.
So, what did it suggest? An earlobe? An elbow? Little help, Times editors!
I know Tim Noah doesn’t like Bush, but if anyone can explain to me why he thinks the press has a responsibility to mention Karla Faye Tucker when writing about Gov. Arnold and Stanley "Tookie" "the Tookster" "the Unrepentant Murderer" Williams, I’d love to hear it.
The problem with blogging is that you eventually blog about your colonoscopy.
You’re literally crawling up your own ass hole.
Scott Adams, on the worst job in the world:
There are a lot of jobs that I wouldn’t want, and “third highest ranking al-Qaida leader” is right at the top.
These guys do seem to have some rotten luck. Read the whole thing.
I haven’t heard this disc yet, Wilco’s Kicking Television: Live in Chicago, but if it’s anything like the show they played on New Year’s Eve in Madison Square Garden, it will rock. Hard. Especially "Spiders (Kidsmoke)."
That show was also the first listen I ever got to Sleater-Kinney’s The Woods. It’s the best album they’ve ever recorded, in my outside-the-lesbian-indie-mainstream opinion. Three-woman indie-rock group meets Led Zeppelin. Pretty hot.
Though, if you’re looking for chicks rocking, I must continue to recommend everything by Palomar. Particularly Palomar III: Revenge of Palomar.
Infectious. Like the bird flu.
The Promiscuous Octopus, Part 1 Billion
Published by December 4th, 2005 in Misc. Miscellany. 0 CommentsFrom the comments, a much more typical view of Wal-Mart expansion:
FINALLY, it lists one going into Chicago. I’ve been begging for this so I can stop heading out to the ‘burbs all the time.
Normal people, who just want to be able to get cheap stuff, tend to have a much different view than blinkered ideologues and union members.
In fact, nothing could be more in the Republican Party’s interests than the Democrats jumping on the anti-Wal-Mart bandwagon. You want to talk about losing middle-class and working-class voters on "values" and "cultural" issues? Then mess with people’s Wal-Marts.
This really strikes me as a crusade that appeals almost wholly to the Naderite, Green Party, MoveOn.org wing of the Democratic Party, and thus — like Nader, the Green Party and MoveOn.org — actually ends up hurting the left when election time rolls around.
As far as I can tell from my own observations and e-mail from columns I’ve done on this topic in New York (admittedly, not a scientific survey), the anti-Wal-Mart campaign has accomplished nothing more than to make Wal-Mart set up a PR war room. Your average American just doesn’t care and will continue to shop there.
As well Mr. and Mrs. Average American should.
This is apropos of nothing, but whenever I hear conservatives (especially our Dear Leader) talk about "activist judges," I just can’t help but flash back to March 27, 2002 (the day he signed McCain-Feingold into law):
However, the bill does have flaws. Certain provisions present serious constitutional concerns. In particular, H.R. 2356 goes farther than I originally proposed by preventing all
individuals, not just unions and corporations, from making donations to political parties in connection with Federal elections.I believe individual freedom to participate in elections should be expanded, not diminished; and when individual freedoms are restricted, questions arise under the First Amendment.
I also have reservations about the constitutionality of the broad ban on issue advertising, which restrains the speech of a wide variety of groups on issues of public import in the months closest to an
election. I expect that the courts will resolve these legitimate legal questions as appropriate under the law.
Leadership.
For years, I’ve heard various authorities deny the obvious link between being cold and getting a cold.
Now, sweet vindication.
Our friends at Wal-Mart Watch are on to a dastardly plot: Wal-Mart wants to open more stores!
How evil.
So, George Allen would stand for conservative principles like "less taxation, less litigation, greater energy independence"?
Taxes, great.
Litigation, not the biggest issue these days, but OK.
Greater energy independence, a totally bogus issue (oil is bought and sold on a world market, it would be great if we drilled more, but I doubt he’s talking about ANWR — probably wind power or some other BS).
Great. Some real stars we’ve got on the horizon in the GOP.
I just switched over to the Firefox Web browser. I must say, so far I’m pretty happy. It’s going to make blogging a lot easier, for one. Now I can use all the fancy stuff on Typepad.
Like strikethrough.
Or, I can even use fun colors.
I won’t, though.
But spellcheck is a HUGE releef.
Money for Nothing
Published by December 3rd, 2005 in Misc. Speech and Misc. Self Promotion. 0 CommentsHere’s my column from yesterday’s New York Post. In NYC, we pay lots of money to make our elections “more competitive.” Specifically, we give that money away to politicians.
Well, incumbents never lose — despite our generosity — and the people who get the public funds just pocket them by giving the money away to family members and other associates. Another big win from the idiots who’ve brought us “clean” government.
Later this month, New York City’s political pooh-bahs will get together to discuss ways of improving our public campaign-funding system.
Here’s an idea: Get rid of it.
In the 2005 election cycle, city taxpayers doled out more than $24 million to pay for political ads, consultants, get-out-the-vote-operations and mailings to voters. What did we get for all this expense?
According to The Campaign Finance Board’s Web site, we write politicians checks out of the public treasury to make our elections more “competitive” and to make sure that our leaders aren’t beholden to so-called “special interests.”
Judging by those criteria, we got shafted.
Out of 50-plus races this year — for City Council, mayor, public advocate, comptroller and the five borough presidencies — just one incumbent went down to defeat.
And that incumbent was City Council member Allan Jennings — whom the council had censured for sexually harassing two female subordinates. And he lost to the guy who’d had the seat before him — Thomas White Jr., who had the backing of the Queens Democratic machine. Chalk one up for “turnover.”
Of course, the politicians themselves would have to get rid of this ridiculous, corrupt system. And they have, shall we say, the wrong incentives in this situation.
Oh, They Hired a PR Firm, Right, I See … Very Evil
Published by December 2nd, 2005 in Misc. Miscellany. 0 CommentsThis, from a Reuters article on Wal-Mart, really bothers me:
Wal-Mart, which hired a team of public relations experts to help polish its image…
I’m sorry, but is there a major corporation somewhere that hasn’t hired a team of public relations experts to help polish its image?
So why mention it when the promiscuous octopus does it???
It’s a minor point, but not really. How about some attention to just how much the unions have invested in this ludicrous fight?
Squirrels kill a dog. Russian squirrels.
(via The Corner)
In my last TCS article, I said it wasn’t worth celebrating that the FEC had — in its infinite wisdom — deigned to grant the Web site Fired Up! the press exemption.
It seems that at least two FEC commissioners believe that everyone on the Internet should remain under the tightest level of suspicion. You never know when some unauthorized speech might slip through.
Allison Hayward has more.
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