On the eve of the President’s press conference to buck up America with regards to Iraq, the pollsters are busy trying to set the table for their spin. First, we have this from CNN/USA Today:
As Bush prepares to address the nation Tuesday to defend his Iraq policy, just 40 percent of those responding to the poll said they approved of his handling of the war; 58 percent said they disapproved. . .
The lone bright spot for the president in the poll was his handling of terrorism, which scored a 55 percent approval rating, compared to just 41 percent who disapproved.
Then, we have this from ABC/Washington Post:
As President Bush prepares to address the nation about Iraq tonight, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds that most Americans do not believe the administration’s claims that impressive gains are being made against the insurgency, but a clear majority is willing to keep U.S. forces there for an extended time to stabilize the country.
The survey found that only one in eight Americans currently favors an immediate pullout of U.S. forces, while a solid majority continues to agree with Bush that the United States must remain in Iraq until civil order is restored — a goal that most of those surveyed acknowledge is, at best, several years away.
Further, ABC/WaPo continues that
So far, continuing spasms of violence in Iraq are competing with regular declarations of progress in Washington. Few people agree with Vice President Cheney’s recent claim that the insurgency is in its “last throes.” The survey found that 22 percent of Americans — barely one in five — say they believe that the insurgency is getting weaker, while 24 percent believe it is strengthening. More than half — 53 percent — say resistance to U.S. and Iraqi government forces has not changed, a view that matches the assessment offered last week in congressional testimony by the U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. John P. Abizaid.
But Chrenkoff, the erstwhile updater of the “hidden” news going on in Iraq, makes the point that
Putting aside the discussion whether the insurgency in Iraq is getting worse, or better, or has stayed pretty much the same, the problem with those sorts of questions is that they contrast the opinion of Administration officials who have access to a broad range of detailed, and sometimes classified information, with the opinion of the average Joe and Joanne, formed from reading newspapers and watching TV. And if just about the only news coming out of Iraq in the mainstream media are suicide bombings and more American bodybags – as opposed to security successes – it will be very difficult for the majority to ever have a positive feeling about the situation in Iraq.
For contrast, he points to Col. Brad MacNealy, whose actually been to Iraq, in the rubble, on the streets, not holed up in some hotel in Baghdad.
There are a lot of good and positive things going on there that the national news media just won’t tell you about, so I’m here to tell you what’s really going on over there and not what you hear on the television or read in the newspapers. They’re not putting the true picture out there, so don’t believe everything you see on TV.
So, setting the reality vs. the media portrayal aside (you know, perception is reality…), what explains the seeming difference in the two aforementioned polls? Here’s a theoretical comment from a theoretical person on the street: “Well, in an ideal world in which ideal wars are fought, in which it is possible to make no or few mistakes, President Bush has fallen short and I disapprove (CNN/USA Today) of his handling of things and don’t have a lot of confidence in his plans because he hasn’t told me of any (or at least, I haven’t heard them much). Nonetheless, we are now in Iraq and we have to see it through. Again, I’m not as optimistic as the Administration seems to be–after all, our men and women are dying every day–but we can’t cut and run and give our enemies a victory.” In short, yes it’s tough, but we’re Americans, we don’t quit. If only our politicians would be so unbending.
[Cross-posted at Ocean State Blogger.]
The State House passed the budget last night:
By an overwhelming majority, the House last night passed a new $6.35-billion state budget which cuts pension benefits, lowers the car tax and drastically increases the fee developers pay to receive historic tax credits.
In stark contrast to last year, the debate in the House was generally orderly and civil, leading to a 71-to-2 vote in support of a new budget for the year starting Friday.
With Republican Governor Carcieri backing the budget for the first time in his three years in office — and calling it a “great win for our citizens” — all 15 House Republicans voted yea.
“Obviously I think it was a good night,” Carcieri said shortly after the 8:22 p.m. vote. “I mean, everybody came together.”
While he said the 6.5-percent increase in spending “is still too high,” Carcieri applauded the pension changes, tax-relief efforts and aid package for cities and towns.
House Speaker William J. Murphy, D-West Warwick, said “all parties involved realized that we were working for the best interests of the people of Rhode Island,” even those who didn’t support him as speaker and tried to kill last year’s budget…
The Senate Finance Committee expects to consider, and approve, the budget at a 3 p.m. hearing today, with the goal of a floor vote by the full Senate tomorrow. Murphy says he hopes to finish this session by Thursday…
One of the most important budget items was the changes in state pension rules:
After close to two hours of debate, the House approved a “pension reform” package aimed at shaving $44 million off the spiralling cost of public employee pensions. The final vote was 60 to 12.
For those hired after July 1 and those not yet vested, the new pension rules will establish a minimum retirement age for the first time since 1984; place new curbs on the 3-percent, compounded cost-of-living increases state retirees get now; and reduce the pension-dollar value of each year of work in such a way that the maximum benefit goes from 80 percent after 35 years, to 75 percent after 38.
While today’s state employees and public school teachers can retire at any age, and begin collecting a pension immediately, after 28 years of work, new and non-vested workers will have to wait until age 59 to get a pension, after at least 29 years of work, or age 65 after 10 years of work….
You will never guess who was whining about these changes:
Angry union leaders papered the State House earlier in the day with fliers decrying the moves and questioning both their legality and fairness.
Rhode Island Federation of Teachers President Marcia Reback went another step to try to dispel the notion that she and other unions leaders did not attempt to negotiate or offer a counterproposal until it was too late.
Reback said union leaders thought they were still in negotiations — up until the final hours — of how to eke out enough savings elsewhere in the budget to blunt the blow of the proposed changes. She said they came up with $3 million and asked if that would do — but never got a response.
“The leadership let us down,” she said.
But Senate Finance Committee Chairman Stephen Alves, D-West Warwick, said at an afternoon budget briefing for colleagues that House and Senate leaders had wanted to extend the COLA changes to all employees, regardless of service.
But, Alves said, “the unions rejected that proposal,” and union leaders said they would have gone to court.
Union leaders watched, from the House gallery, as the lawmakers beat back one effort after another by Representatives Peter Wasylyk, D-Providence, and Arthur Handy, D-Cranston, to loosen the new age-and-work requirements, leave the retiree COLAs untouched, reduce employee contributions and insulate pension benefits from future tinkering by making them a “contractual right.”
Opponents of the pension cuts said they would unfairly penalize today’s workers for “sins of the past,” and make them pay first-class employee-contribution rates for second-class benefits.
But Rep. Joseph Trillo, R-Warwick, argued: “This is still the greatest deal. . . . You and I should have such a deal, but we don’t.”
After the final vote, the union leaders said they would try again next year. “It’s unfair, inequitable,” said Larry Purtill, president of the NEA-RI. “Seven thousandteachers and 4,000 state employees are going to be paying for past sins.”…
They just don’t quit complaining, do they?
There were additional issues in the area of education funding:
[Open full post]…The House approved what some lawmakers — including the president of the Providence teachers’ union, Rep. Steven Smith — decried as an inadequate $19.3-million increase in school aid.
Smith, D-Providence, demanded to know why school districts were being forced to lay off staff while the state Department of Education was getting more money for new jobs for “political friends and relatives.” Whatever message House budget writers meant to send about “fiscal responsibility,” he said, the message he heard was: “We don’t care about the conditions in your building[s].”
Republicans also objected to a change in the formula of what cities and towns qualify as a “distressed community.” Under the new formula, North Providence will again become eligible for aid in the coming year.
Rep. Nicholas Gorham, R-Coventry, said he hadn’t heard “one scintilla of data” as to why the qualifying line should be moved…
H. Philip West, Jr., Executive Director of Common Cause in Rhode Island, has written an important editorial:
If you think that citizens have a right to know about campaign contributions and lobbyist payments to public officials, here’s some scary news from the Rhode Island House of Representatives. In the final hours of the 2005 legislative session, two dangerous bills are being rushed toward passage. Each would sabotage the public’s ability to follow the money that sometimes drives government decision making.
On June 7, the House Finance Committee, with Democrats and Republicans unanimously voting together, approved legislation that would gut new lobbyist-disclosure requirements enacted only last year, in the wake of the scandals that brought down two state Senate leaders…
Common Cause drafted and lobbied for the legislation that now forces such payments into the open. The 2004 Lobbyist Disclosure Law required lobbyists and those who employ them to file public reports of “all money and anything of value” worth more than $250 that they pay to “any major state decision maker” in a calendar year.
The underlying goal was simple disclosure: Those who lobby for legislation or other government decisions must report payments to major state decision makers in the legislative, executive, or judicial branches of state government. Whether or not payments are technically for lobbying, lobbyists and those who hire them must file annual public reports.
Nothing in the new law limits or bans such payments. It simply requires disclosure…
Common Cause offered simple, straightforward language to address [concerns highlighted in the full editorial], but nothing satisfied the House Finance Committee…
With negotiations stalled, this year’s amended bill (05-H 5477SubA, filed by House Majority Leader Gordon Fox [D.-Providence]) may yet surface on the House floor in the final hours of the legislative session. Its passage would nullify the lobbyist-disclosure requirements, which Mr. Fox sponsored only last year.
More ominously, last Thursday the state Senate rammed through a campaign-finance amendment that would dismantle a 2001 law — also enacted in the wake of scandal — that requires electronic filing and disclosure of campaign-finance reports.
The goal of that 2001 law was to let journalists and ordinary citizens analyze pertinent information via computer about who contributes to political candidates’ coffers. Its passage put Rhode Island in the good company of 13 other states that now mandate electronic filing for campaigns that raise or spend specified threshold amounts.
Under the Rhode Island law, any campaign that raises or spends more than $5,000 in a year must file electronically. Thousands of Rhode Island campaign contributions are thus already available for public review…
As approved by the full Senate on Thursday, the legislation (05-S 1123SubA, filed by Sen. Roger Badeau [D.-Woonsocket]) guts the requirement that candidates, political parties, and political-action committees “commence filing campaign-finance reports electronically.” Instead, it says that they “may commence” filing electronically. Beyond making electronic data merely optional, it also entirely deletes a back-up filing requirement for campaigns that raise or spend more than $5,000 a year.
If enacted, this change would carry Rhode Island back to the bad old days when campaigns printed out thousands of pages of campaign documents from their computers and submitted them to the Board of Elections. Journalists and other citizens who sought to analyze those data were forced to spend hundreds of hours keypunching the numbers into their computers before they could start to connect the dots…
Both 5477SubA and 1123SubA appear to offer only minor amendments, yet each would scuttle open-government requirements born of scandal. Each bill would slam the door on public access to vital information about money that flows from deep pockets to powerful public officials.
Only forceful calls to every member of Rhode Island’s General Assembly will persuade lawmakers to protect tools that allow voters to follow the money. Amid the haste and heat of these final legislative days, only vocal constituents will persuade lawmakers to kill these bad bills.
What will it take for these people in the State House to wake up and realize the citizens of Rhode Island want a government that is responsible to its citizens?
These bills deserve to be defeated. If they are not, then we will add some new names to the Hall of Shame. It should be quite a list by the time we reach the 2006 elections.
I rarely agree with Froma Harrop’s politics but she has a very perceptive editorial on what makes long-term marriages happen:
You know the quip: A wife is asked on her silver anniversary whether she has ever contemplated divorce. “Divorce, never,” she replies. “Murder, frequently.”
That sums up the truth about long-term marriages. Their success doesn’t rely on everybody’s being compatible or happy or a champ in the sack. The people who stay married are the people who won’t consider divorce.
This sounds circular, I know, but it’s the case…For the moment that divorce becomes a card on the table, there will be a temptation to play it…
…when a spouse blows up with rage — and the best of us do — true commitment is the only glue that can hold things together…
Several states have passed laws letting couples opt for a stricter kind of union, called a covenant marriage…
But what can withstand the modern love of freedom? An unhappy partner can get out of covenant marriage quicker than Houdini could pick the lock on a piggy bank…
Marriage counseling, meanwhile, can do only so much. By the time the angry couple decides to hire a therapist, it’s usually too late…
And in going through the reasons for discontent, therapists often unwittingly add fuel to the fire…Therapy can take lots of little stuff and roll it into one big unhappy ending…
But for the person truly dedicated to staying married, the answer is somewhat different. It is “I don’t want to spend the next 30 years living like this, but I’m going to do it anyway.”
People marry for different reasons now than they did two generations ago, which helps account for today’s higher divorce rates. Marriage used to be about economics and child rearing, according to David Popenoe, co-director of the National Marriage Project, at Rutgers University. Now it’s a love-based decision….
Finding money for new wallpaper is not impossible. But re-creating That Old Black Magic month after month is. After a while, the flame of passion dims into an occasional spark, if the couple is lucky. And restoring it is beyond the powers of Shakespeare, Dr. Phil or Barry White.
…according to Popenoe…[h]is studies show that marriages today are, if anything, a bit less happy than they were 20 or 30 years ago. Work stress is a big reason.
But this is not necessarily bad news for couples struggling to stay together. Sometimes it helps knowing that one is not supposed to be happy all the time.
Two dear friends recently marked their 55th anniversary. I asked the husband whether they ever wanted to strangle one another. He said, “Yes, like last night.” But they’re married for life, and that’s it.
The couple that stays together is the couple that stays together.
Food for thought, isn’t it?
[Open full post]Robert Gordon, a former education policy advisor to John Kerry, has written a provocative article in The New Republic magazine about the Democratic Party’s actions on educational matters.
Ed Achorn has recently commented on the article here, noting:
…Mr. Gordon contends that Democrats should stop letting Republicans eat their lunch on education. Democrats, given their traditional support of a vigorous government and their historic allegiance to the belief that America should be a country “where birth doesn’t dictate destiny,” should be strong advocates of education reform. They should be carrying the flag especially for minority children in poor school districts.
Instead, Mr. Gordon notes, they too often march in lockstep with the teachers’ unions, chanting their mantra of “money, money, money” while mounting “unprincipled attacks” against reform. Even if Democratic politicians (including Mr. Kerry) support reform in theory, Mr. Gordon observes, their principles “wither in the heat of Democratic politics.”
As a result, Republicans have been leading the charge on education reform — and voters are noticing…
There seems to be a lesson here for many Rhode Island Democrats, too, who may be turning off parents and taxpayers with their apparent lack of compassion for children in public schools, and their slavish devotion to the state’s very powerful and often arrogant teachers’ unions.
The state has among the nation’s highest per-pupil costs, fueling skyrocketing property taxes — and the absolute highest per-pupil costs devoted to teacher compensation — but its students, on average, perform poorly on tests. Rhode Island’s young are being poorly prepared to compete in a world where brainpower will be essential.
…Experience confirms what common sense would argue: Accountability, high standards and excellent teachers are the key. Mr. Gordon cites a study by the Education Trust that had found that “good teachers are the single most important factor in good schools — affecting student achievement more than race, poverty, or parental education.”
Unfortunately, teachers’ unions have become an impediment to such achievement, because they fiercely defend a culture of mediocrity over merit. “Onerous hiring procedures discourage able candidates, while the lockstep pay scale rewards seniority and accumulated degrees, not success,” Mr. Gordon writes. Tenure makes it almost impossible to fire bad teachers…
Mr. Gordon offers rational reforms for Democrats to embrace:Change the pay system to stop rewarding mediocrity and start rewarding effort and merit. The “usual liberal solution — across-the-board pay hikes — perpetuates the maldistribution of good teachers and reinforces the irrelevance of achievement.”
Use bonuses to attract good teachers to poor schools.
Attract better people to the profession with promises of higher pay for better results.
Develop methods for evaluating teachers fairly, so that they are not punished arbitrarily or for political reasons — then reward the best performers and weed out the worst. With peer and principals’ involvement, teacher evaluations could be at least as fair as those “in other professions where performance pay is the norm.”Why should Democrats tackle this problem? Because their traditional values argue for helping children — especially the poor — get a better education, and have a fairer shot at the American dream…
Voters — and one hears this constantly in Rhode Island, certainly — are coming to the conclusion that throwing more money at the schools is useless if the money simply goes for lavish adult entitlements, mediocre performance and a tax-them-into-the-stone-age political machine.
To make changes, Democratic politicians will have to put the interests of children ahead of the demands of one of the most important and powerful elements of the Democrats’ political base. “But there has to be a distinction between supporting the rights of unions and supporting their every demand,” Mr. Gordon notes…
…If [progressives] give up on that philosophy to serve the greed of a powerful interest group, they will continue to lose their once-dominant edge as the party of education…
I would encourage you to read the entire Gordon article.
For further information on the magnitude of the performance problems in American education, go here.
Let’s focus on the one thing that matters most: Providing a quality education to all children in America so each of them gets a fair shot at living the American Dream.
A previous posting provided a substantive introduction to ongoing FEC regulation risks facing the blogging community.
Win Myers at the Democracy Project continues his good work on this subject with these two recent postings here and here.
It is in the blogging community’s self-interest as lovers of freedom to stay informed about FEC developments and all the surrounding politics – and ensure the debate is visible to the American people. Read closely and stay alert.
After all, if the government can take away our private property with ease, why should we assume they wouldn’t take away our free speech with similar ease?
Why is it even necessary to have these concerns in America? Sad and worrisome, isn’t it?
Respected defense analyst and journalist Bill Gertz writes:
China is building its military forces faster than U.S. intelligence and military analysts expected, prompting fears that Beijing will attack Taiwan in the next two years, according to Pentagon officials.
U.S. defense and intelligence officials say all the signs point in one troubling direction: Beijing then will be forced to go to war with the United States, which has vowed to defend Taiwan against a Chinese attack.
China’s military buildup includes an array of new high-technology weapons, such as warships, submarines, missiles and a maneuverable warhead designed to defeat U.S. missile defenses. Recent intelligence reports also show that China has stepped up military exercises involving amphibious assaults, viewed as another sign that it is preparing for an attack on Taiwan…
China’s economy has been growing at a rate of at least 10 percent for each of the past 10 years, providing the country’s military with the needed funds for modernization.
The combination of a vibrant centralized economy, growing military and increasingly fervent nationalism has transformed China into what many defense officials view as a fascist state.
“We may be seeing in China the first true fascist society on the model of Nazi Germany, where you have this incredible resource base in a commercial economy with strong nationalism, which the military was able to reach into and ramp up incredible production,” a senior defense official said…
The release of an official Chinese government report in December called the situation on the Taiwan Strait “grim” and said the country’s military could “crush” Taiwan.
Earlier this year, Beijing passed an anti-secession law, a unilateral measure that upset the fragile political status quo across the Taiwan Strait. The law gives Chinese leaders a legal basis they previously did not have to conduct a military attack on Taiwan, U.S. officials said…
The advances give the Chinese military “the ability … to reach out and touch parts of the United States — Guam, Hawaii and the mainland of the United States,” he said…
China’s rulers have adopted what is known as the “two-island chain” strategy of extending control over large areas of the Pacific, covering inner and outer chains of islands stretching from Japan to Indonesia…
The official said China’s buildup goes beyond what would be needed to fight a war against Taiwan.
The conclusion of this official is that China wants a “blue-water” navy capable of projecting power far beyond the two island chains.
“If you look at the technical capabilities of the weapons platforms that they’re fielding, the sea-keeping capabilities, the size, sensors and weapons fit, this capability transcends the baseline that is required to deal with a Taiwan situation militarily,” the intelligence official said…
…A recent Japanese government defense report called China a strategic national security concern. It was the first time China was named specifically in a Japanese defense report.
For China, Taiwan is not the only issue behind the buildup of military forces. Beijing also is facing a major energy shortage that, according to one Pentagon study, could lead it to use military force to seize territory with oil and gas resources.
The report produced for the Office of Net Assessment, which conducts assessments of future threats, was made public in January and warned that China’s need for oil, gas and other energy resources is driving the country toward becoming an expansionist power…
The report also highlighted the vulnerability of China’s oil and gas infrastructure to a crippling U.S. attack.
“The U.S. military could severely cripple Chinese resistance [during a conflict over Taiwan] by blocking its energy supply, whereas the [People’s Liberation Army navy] poses little threat to United States’ energy security,” it said…
The report stated that China will resort “to extreme, offensive and mercantilist measures when other strategies fail, to mitigate its vulnerabilities, such as seizing control of energy resources in neighboring states.”
U.S. officials have said two likely targets for China are the Russian Far East, which has vast oil and gas deposits, and Southeast Asia, which also has oil and gas resources…
Richard Fisher, vice president of the International Assessment and Strategy Center, said that in 10 years, the Chinese army has shifted from a defensive force to an advanced military soon capable of operations ranging from space warfare to global non-nuclear cruise-missile strikes.
“Let’s all wake up. The post-Cold War peace is over,” Mr. Fisher said. “We are now in an arms race with a new superpower whose goal is to contain and overtake the United States.”
Here is Gertz’ second article entitled Thefts of U.S. technology boost China’s weaponry.
Here is an additional article by Gertz entitled Beijing devoted to weakening ‘enemy’ U.S., defector says.
Related topics can be found in previous postings entitled Sobering Possibilities and The Geopoliticization of World’s Oil & Gas Industry.
Five years ago, fighting the Rhode Island educational establishment of bureaucrats and teachers’ unions reminded me of Sisyphus, who mythology says was condemned to constantly pushing the rock up the hill – only to have it slide back down so he would have to repeat the senseless effort again and again.
But the winds of change are blowing…
For example, consider the union response to pension reform. After years of actively resisting any change, they weighed in last week with a late-to-the-game attempt to modify the pension reform train that had already left the station. It came across as an act of desperation.
Now there is another example of how the winds of change are blowing. A recent ProJo article carries an interesting message to the educational establishment in Rhode Island:
The powerful House Finance Committee stuck with Governor Carcieri’s proposal to boost school financing by just 2.2 percent, allocating $666 million to education in next year’s budget being hammered out in the General Assembly.
For the second year in a row, it mirrored the governor’s spending plan for schools. In previous years, the General Assembly has broken with the governor to give cities and towns more school aid than he sought.
“The message we are trying to send to school districts is no more business as usual,” said Rep. Paul W. Crowley, D-Newport, who is deputy chairman of the finance committee.
Lawmakers have become frustrated, according to Crowley. They feel that the state’s investment in schools has been so broad that lawmakers have been unable to see tangible results, Crowley says.
“There’s a concern about where the money is going,” he said. “Is it just going into health-care and retirement benefits for teachers, or is it going to services for students?”
Crowley says Rhode Island needs to negotiate a single state contract with teachers or set some standards for benefit packages.
“We aren’t going to keep investing in a system we have no control over,” he said.
This perspective angers school superintendents such as Catherine M. Ciarlo, who runs the Cranston school system and says she has been counting on additional state aid for next year…
The problem with public education in Rhode Island can be summarized easily: We over-pay for under-performance.
We spend roughly 25% more than the national average on a per-pupil basis. Depending on the survey, we have the 7th-to-9th highest highest paid teachers.
And what do we get for that investment: Based on various NAEP test results, RI schools rank between 34th-to-38th among the 50 states. And don’t forget that the average student performance in the United States is average-to-below-average among students in the industrialized world.
How could this be? There are two major reasons: Outrageously generous financial terms and extraordinarily restrictive management rights terms in the teachers’ union contracts.
With respect to financial terms: Handing out 8-14% annual salary increases to all but the top job step. Providing for little or no health insurance premium co-payment. Offering cash buybacks when health insurance is not used. Longevity bonuses. Rich pension benefits. And the list goes on.
With respect to management rights: The Education Partnership’s report is an effective way to learn how the union contract decimates effective decision making in our schools.
There is indeed concern about where the education money is going. As Warwick and East Greenwich negotiations have shown, the unions are relentlessly pushing their non-stop attempts to legally extort the residents of each town with no focus on how their demands impact programs and resources that are needed by our children.
But, the word is out about the games played by the educational establishment at the expense of our children. There is no turning back. And, in time, the educational establishment will either change radically to become a high performance operation or become extinct.
This is a moral crusade. Access to a quality education is the great equalizer in enabling all children to have a fair shot at living the American Dream. We cannot and will not continue to deny the most needy of our children what is their birthright as citizens of this great land.
Rhode Island Politics & Taxation, Part XXI: Blocking More Charter Schools Means Hurting Our Children
The latest news on charter schools in Rhode Island is bad news for our children, especially those who need our help the most:
The House Finance Committee’s decision to impose a two-year moratorium on new charter schools has derailed plans to open such a school in East Providence this fall.
Dennis Langley, chief executive officer of the Urban League of Rhode Island, said his organization had planned to open a school with 140 students in grades 8 through 11, but the moratorium, approved Tuesday, has put plans on hold.
“We’re very disappointed,” he said yesterday. “When you see so many youngsters wanting a choice and wanting to reach the unreachable, it’s very sad.”
The Academy of Science, Art and Technology would place a heavy emphasis on math and science instruction and would enroll students from Providence and East Providence, Langley said. The school would eventually grow to 300 students in grades 8 through 12.
If the General Assembly concurs with the House Finance Committee, it appears that Rhode Island would be the only state in the country whose legislature has imposed a moratorium on charter schools, according to the Center for Education Reform, a national reform organization.
(The education bill goes to the full House on Monday.)…
Charter schools are public schools paid for with public money. They tend to be small, innovative schools that are free of the bureaucracy that controls traditional schools. Rhode Island has 11 charter schools, four of them in Providence.
Yesterday, charter school leaders in Providence speculated about the fate of a movement that they say offers parents and children a valuable alternative to the traditional system.
Richard Landau, the outgoing CEO of the Textron Chamber of Commerce Academy, said, “It’s obvious that the battlelines have been drawn and that a tremendous number of people who are entrenched” are trying to stall the momentum of charter schools. Textron was the first charter school in Rhode Island.
“Education is a huge industry,” Landau said. “It’s their livelihood and these people are threatened by change. Well, we better wake up. While we’re feeling comfortable, all of these other countries are licking their chops. They’re going right by us.”…
Thompson thinks that charter schools are encountering resistance partly because of their success.
“Charters are a force to be reckoned with,” he said. “They are demonstrating that within their scope, kids can master skills that they haven’t been able to do in schools that are large and overcrowded.”…
The bill is here.
As one educational activist wrote me:
…I would love it if people would scream about this moratorium. The paper talked about thousands of dollars flowing out of the public schools, but charters ARE public schools and not one of them is low-performing. And I believe strongly in choice and with the unions having a stanglehold on schools, choice is one of the few ways to get some of these kids educated.
We should scream loudly. The resistance to educational reforms led by unions and the educational bureaucracy is hurting our children. That is indefensible and morally repugnant behavior.
[Open full post]Hugh Hewitt has written an important article entitled Real Religious Intolerance. In the article, he provides a speech by American Roman Catholic Archbishop Chaput that is worthy of reading in full:
[Open full post]The Los Angeles Weekly’s “The New Blacklist” is author Douglas Ireland’s attempt to equate consumer boycotts of gay-themed entertainment sponsors with McCarthyism.
That’s a stretch to begin with…
Ireland’s piece is full of over-the-top rhetoric, including repeated use of the term “Christers,” which many view as nakedly bigoted.
But Ireland is a proud radical atheist, as blogger-theologian Mark D. Roberts discovered as he began a lengthy assessment of Ireland’s piece…the harshest language in his article didn’t come from him, but from the associate dean of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Communication, Martin Kaplan. Kaplan, a long-time Democratic activist turned professor, called the trend among Christians refusing to buy products advertised on shows such as Will & Grace, “”theocratic oligopoly.” Dean Kaplan continued: “The drumbeat of religious fascism has never been as troubling as it is now in this country.”
Kaplan’s absurdity would have lacked the context to make it other than the silly excess of a tenured Trojan had the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe not just held a conference in Cordoba Spain on the rise of anti-Semitism and other forms of religious intolerance in Europe…an American delegation attended…Among the delegation was Denver’s Archbishop Charles Chaput. Archbishop Chaput’s remarks deserve widespread distribution…
Because Dean Kaplan’s bigotry and historical amnesia is not unique, we reprint the entire text of Bishop Chaput’s remarks here:For a few weeks two months ago, the City of Rome doubled in size. People from around Europe and the world came to the funeral of Pope John Paul II. Some 600,000 people viewed his coffin on the first day. More than 1.4 million paid their respects before his burial. That should remind us of two things.
First, Europe remains obviously religious–not simply in its nominal and active believers, but also in its culture and assumptions about the dignity of the human person.
What we know as “Europe” was shaped, in vital ways, by the Christian faith. Judaism and Islam also clearly made important contributions to the European experience. But the founders of the European unity movement were all professed Christians. Their commitment to the great project of Europe’s future came from their moral convictions, which in turn grew out of their religious identity and Christian heritage.
Second, John Paul II’s appeal to people of every faith–and no faith–did not come simply from his personality but from his actions. His devotion to human freedom and his role in liberating Eastern Europe were rooted completely in his Catholic faith. In one sense, he embodied the greatness of Europe. And he did it by being a son of Europe’s Christian imagination and history.
We know from the totalitarian regimes in Europe’s recent past that a determined minority can persecute other minorities, and oppress even a majority of a nation’s citizens. Discrimination and intolerance toward Christians and minority religious groups are rising in several areas of the world today. Europe, despite its heritage, is not immune. And unfortunately, other parts of the OSCE region show similar troubling signs.
Discrimination and intolerance take two forms: direct and indirect. Direct discrimination has the shape of legal restrictions, and often police harassment and legal barriers, designed to stamp out unauthorized or unpopular religious communities or to limit the legitimate exercise of their religious freedom. The intolerant behavior of some OSCE states continues to violate the basic human rights of belief and worship.
In several OSCE states, regimes discriminate against religious communities by creating structures of prejudicial treatment. High membership requirements prevent small congregations from obtaining legal status which, in contrast, is granted to other “traditional” religious communities. Lack of historical presence can block newer religious groups from qualifying for basic rights and privileges. Denial of legal standing has the very real consequence of either violating individual rights or stigmatizing entire groups. This is state-sponsored discrimination, and it violates OSCE commitments to promote religious freedom for all.
An equally dangerous trend now dominates other OSCE states, where public expressions of religious faith often seem to be ridiculed as fundamentalism. In the name of respecting all religions, a new form of secular intolerance is sometimes imposed. Out of fear of religious fundamentalism, a new kind of secular fundamentalism may be coerced on public institutions and political discourse.
At the same time, various media in the OSCE area now often allow symbols of Christian identity, Christian believers and their faith to be publicly abused. Programs like “How to cook a crucifix” and sacramental confessions recorded without the confessor’s knowledge are deeply contemptuous of Catholic believers. This is unworthy of Europe’s moral dignity and religious heritage. Furthermore, it stands in stark contrast to OSCE commitments to promote religious freedom.
Europe has given the whole world the seeds of democracy. Today’s growing anti-religious and often anti-Christian spirit undermines that witness.
As with anti-Semitism, the OSCE must employ its practical commitments on combating discrimination to also fight discrimination and intolerance against Christians and members of other religious communities. Moreover, the OSCE must carefully monitor their implementation.
OSCE participating states must strive to protect Christian communities and other religious groups from discrimination and intolerance. The media should be encouraged to offer truly balanced coverage of religious faith. Educational systems should teach the value of faith in people’s lives. The specific contribution given to public life by Christian communities and other religious groups should be remembered.
Democracy depends on people of conviction taking an active, visible part in public life; peacefully and respectfully, but vigorously. That includes Christians, Jews, Muslims and all religious believers, as well as non-believers. Public debate without a free and welcoming role for religious faith does not produce diversity or pluralism. It can easily do the opposite. It can create politics without morality, and public institutions without enduring ideals.
My hope is that OSCE participating states will do everything in their power to discourage all forms of religious intolerance – including any disrespect for Europe’s own Christian roots.”
