More Sweepings from Tamara's Kitchen



Home • Latest • Archive • Search

by Tamara Baker

Monday, December 6, 1999 -- ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA (APJNS) -- Each passing day gives us yet another reason why the Bush Family must not be allowed near the Presidency ever again.

The latest reason is connected the Bushes' intent to kill public schools.

This stance has been known among the politically aware for well over a decade. While President, George Herbert Walker "Poppy" Bush suppressed the Sandia Labs report on education, a study he himself had commissioned, because it dared to refute the conservative-PC code which states that public schools are inferior to private ones!

His son Jeb, the current governor of Florida (pray tell, why are the Bushes of Kennebunkport and New Haven allowed to carpetbag, but Hillary gets slammed for doing so?), has rammed a voucher program down the state's gullet that many Floridians, including noted Internet commentator Jeff Berry (of the "Creative Loafing" website), consider a victory for segregationists.

Poppy's other son, Dubya, has been pushing the charter school movement in Texas, the state of which he happens to be governor. Charter schools are supposed to be so much better than regular old public schools: more efficient, and better at educating.

The only problem is that they have a tough time staying open, which brings me to the aforementioned topic

In an AP article this week, it was stated that yet another Texas independent charter school has closed suddenly, causing some lawmakers in the Lone Star State to wonder whether they should tighten regulations over the operations.

It seems that the Academy of Austin, a public charter school that opened in August with more than 200 kindergarten through sixth grade pupils, abruptly closed last Wednesday. According to the AP article:

Scores of unaware parents and pupils were stranded when they arrived at the school, which had been stripped of its desks, computers and other furniture. 'I got up to drive my child to school, and there was no school,' said Donna Mercer, whose daughter attended first grade.

This is not a problem one generally encounters with public schools. No matter how underfunded the school is, the students and parents can count on it being there every morning.

The article continues:

Officials at the Southfield, Michigan, company that ran the school faxed a letter to the Texas Education Agency on Tuesday, saying the school would "go inactive" on Dec. 31 because of facility problems, TEA spokesman Joey Lozano told the Austin American-Statesman. The letter from Charter School Administrative Services did not specify the problems.
Contacted by the Associated Press on Thursday, a receptionist at the company said the official who could comment was ill. The receptionist refused to release the names of company officials.
The state was investigating the company, which has changed its name several times since applying for charters in Texas.

And Dubya wants to be the "education president"?

The Internet is a wonderful creation.

I was reading a Salon article last Thursday about the WTO meeting in Seattle when I spotted a link to a very pro-WTO article in the conservative British business magazine The Economist.

Ten years ago, I would have been reading the Salon article on a non-interactive piece of newsprint. Chances are good that I would never have bothered to satisfy my mild curiosity about the Economist article referenced therein, and I would have gone on to other things.

But this is 1999, so I was able to follow the Economist link to the Economist website, where I found this paragraph near the end of the referenced article (after several paragraphs wherein all of the anti-WTO protesters, from the tens of thousands of peaceful marchers to the couple dozen rock throwers, are politely yet firmly tarred as misinformed neo-Luddites standing in the way of greater openness between societies):

Whatever happens, negotiations are unlikely to go far before America's presidential election next year. Without American leadership, crucial in all previous rounds, other countries' reluctance to liberalise, most notably the European Union's obduracy over agriculture, is unlikely to be overcome. But despite America's recent deal on Chinese accession to the WTO, Bill Clinton is unlikely to provide that lead. He is shackled by his wish to appease trade unions to boost Al Gore's presidential hopes. And Congress is in no mood to give the administration the "fast-track" negotiating authority which it needs to strike a WTO deal. With luck, though, this will not last. Bill Bradley, Mr Gore's Democratic rival, and George W. Bush, the Republican front-runner, are free-traders. By 2001 a new Congress may turn out to be more open to granting fast-track to a new president.

Did you catch the last few sentences of that paragraph?

According to the Economist, a magazine that is probably not read by nearly as many US liberals as it is by conservatives, Bill Bradley, the guy who is billed in the US press as being allegedly more "liberal" than Bill Clinton or Al Gore, is a free-trader, and much more of one than either Clinton or Gore.

For those who have followed Mr. Bradley's career, this is not as surprising as it looks.

The allegedly "more liberal than Gore" Bill Bradley:

voted for both Reaganomics and Iran-Contra (as we were reminded by the Consortium earlier this year),
left the Senate just as the Democrats needed every warm body they could muster to stave off or at least ameliorate Newt Gingrich's draconian Contract on America,
toyed with the idea of leaving the Democratic Party and running as an "independent" in 1996.

No wonder all the conservative pundits love him.

Meanwhile, Kenneth Winston Starr, having realized that no law firm in the nation, much less his former friends back at Kirkland and Ellis, will ever again hire him, is trolling again for a slot on the Supreme Court.

In a conservative smoochathon last week, Starr pushed all the Clinton-haters' buttons. He even brought up the Hickey-Broaddrick matter, saying that he found her claims "credible".

Oh, really? Then how come you didn't investigate them, Kenny? How come you spent so much time browbeating poor Monica Lewinsky over consensual sex, instead?

Face it, Kenny: You're done. Give it up.