One recent development I failed to cover during my last hiatus is the announcement of the "Lightworker's" choice for Secretary of Education--you know--to oversee the federal government's Constitutionally enumerated power to regulate education (what's that you say--nowhere in the Constitution is the federal government granted that power? An issue for another day). Obama's choice is the CEO of the Chicago Public School system, Arne Duncan.
Readers can be forgiven for wondering why, in a blog ostensibly dedicated to gun rights, I am talking about the next Secretary of Education. It's actually not as off-topic as it may seem. This is, in fact, not the first appearance of Arne Duncan's name on this blog. Duncan has a pretty extensive history of using his position as head of the CPS to push for ever more draconian forcible citizen disarmament laws. This, despite the fact that his area of operations has been Chicago, where private citizens are outright prohibited from purchasing handguns and most semi-automatic rifles.
Back in October, in fact, Illinois' chief citizen disarmament group, the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence presented him with an award for his efforts to disarm peaceable Illinoisans, although he theatrically declined the award, because Illinoisans are not yet disarmed enough for him to think his work on this task is finished.
In refusing the Lincoln Award -- a statue of a hand holding a gun broken into pieces -- Duncan asked the crowd of dignitaries to renew their commitment to reducing gun violence.About that "lobbying against handguns in Springfield"--Duncan refused to content himself with doing his own lobbying--he also repeatedly bused CPS students down to Springfield to do that.
"I won't accept this award today, but I will accept your hand in partnership -- and our commitment to keep on fighting to end the violence,'' said Duncan, who had been selected for his anti-violence efforts at CPS, including encouraging kids to text-message police with tips, and his lobbying against handguns in Springfield.
I imagine busing all those students all the way from Chicago to Springfield and back was pretty expensive--I'm glad the CPS is apparently rich enough to afford that--with state and federal budgets in such disarray, it's encouraging that Chicago will apparently not need help on the monetary front.
I guess it's not a concern that all these field trips to Springfield eat into classroom time--and why should it be a concern? After all, the CPS boasts a whopping 51% graduation rate.
That's the kind of leadership I want brought to the entire nation's education system.
Stumble it!
3 comments:
The crackpot administration is about to take office. The D-Team.
I didn't send my kids to public school.
I figure that we'll see Obama go from "Lightworker" to "Blightworker" as soon as he takes his oath of office.
The last I heard, it had a 52.2% dropout rate.
This isn't working. Why don't we trying something new, such as permanently eliminating the federal education department, and the whole layer of top management of Chicago schools? Okay, I don't have a say in the second one, but the first exists solely for the purpose of distributing touch-money. You know, touch-money: "you touch our money, you do what we tell you."
Next time someone complains about the lack of funding for education, you might want to point out that there is an organization that sucks up about 40 percent of the GDP, then pays its own employees generous salaries so they can give back a portion of the money to public schools--with strings attached.
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