A Small Step towards Education Reform

The New York City Department of Education is taking a small step towards reform.  As reported by Ryan Sager, in the future the standard process will: 

Require principals from now on to actually recommend teachers for tenure.

 Up to now, 99 percent of probationary teachers got tenure after three years.  Now the system will take a tiny step to change this.

1. Principals must sign a form positively recommending teachers for tenure
2. Principals will be educated “as to their existing right to refuse to grant tenure.”
3. Start using hard data, like student test scores, in tenure evaluations.

Well maybe.  It could make a little difference.  But don’t expect the principals to change that much.  After all, it’s no money out of their pockets.

The reason that people go to work for the government is that they want the tenure.  They want, after the first probationary months and years, to have absolute job security.

After they get job security then they decide that they should have the money too.

Maybe they should have that right.  Some people are very risk-averse, and they have a right to be.  But not with our kids. And not for hourly wage rates that are equivalent to that earned by technical professionals with no tenure.

Generally, in the real world you must pay for security, especially job security.  It is like insurance.  You pay a premium for the right to allocate risk to the insurance company.

There is a word for a world in which people that have complete job security earn as much or more than people exposed to the full risk of the modern global economy.  Unjust. 

Why Isn't The President Fighting For His Plan?

Radio talk-show host Hugh Hewitt is fit to be tied about the lackluster media offensive for the president’s plan for a “surge” in Iraq.  The president sent Tony Snow out to talk to the bloggers and the talk-radio shows, he gave his speech, appeared on 60 Minutes, and sent folks out on the weekend talk shows, he notes.

And that was it.

Media offensive over.

 Why aren’t the president and his administration fighting and getting their message out?

If, as the president has argued, and as I believe, the war—in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Somalia and across the globe—is the central calling of our time, then the men and women in charge of winning it need to embrace the very difficult task of persuading a public bombarded every day with a contrary argument.

Every day. In many places. With passion.

So the question is: Are they tired, worn out by five years of brutal opposition?  Or do they judge that the Democrats aren’t going to stop the surge, so why bother?

Or is the fix in?  Are Democrats privately saying: “Go for It, Mr. President,” even as they butter up their anti-war base with withering criticism and non-binding resolutions?

Maybe the Bushies feel that there is no political will to do anything about the War on Terror until the American people get riled up by another atrocity on American soil.

Or maybe they think they are doing fine, and that the media opposition is just a sideshow.

The truth is that we just don’t know.  All we do know is that the Bush administration is not working hard to build public support for the war.

In Defeat: Defiance or Renewal?

WWinston Churchill famously advised: “In victory: magnanimity; in defeat: defiance.”  But in recent history defeat for liberals has usually led to denial, and for the American conservative movement, defeat has often led to renewal, as Rich Lowry writes:

The recent history of conservatism is that in disaster there is renewal. Barry Goldwater’s shellacking in 1964 paved the way for the conservative transformation of the Republican party. Jimmy Carter’s 1976 victory paved the way for Reagan. And Clinton paved the way for Gingrich. Will Nancy Pelosi pave the way for something positive, and if so, whom or what?

And this weekend National Review Institute is hosting a conservative summit,  with lead-off speaker Newt Gingrich.  There will be policy analysis and also late-night partying, er, make that night owl sessions. 

Friday night is ladies night, featuring Mona Charen, Laura Ingraham, Kate O'Beirne, Michelle Malkin, and Kathryn Lopez.”

Saturday night is for the guys, with Mark [Steyn], Jonah Goldberg, and Rob Long.”

Yes.  In 2007, conservatives know how to have fun, even in the depths of defeat.

French Lefties Dodging Wealth Tax

You feel a bit guilty about it.  After all, we conservatives shouldn’t be indulging in German vices like Schadenfreude.  But when the Great Left Hope of France, Segolene Royal, gets in trouble for dodging the French wealth tax by the very capitalist device of incorporating herself and her husband into a real-estate company,  well, it couldn’t have happened to a nicer couple.

Here’s what Sego did, as reported by Peter Allen.

Not only does she part-own three impressive homes with her boyfriend, François Hollande, the Socialist Party chairman, but the couple have set up a real estate company to manage the properties.

This has enabled them to reduce the amount they pay in l’impôt de solidarité sur la fortune (ISF), a notoriously high tax imposed on anyone with assets of more than €500,000.

I know what you are wondering.  What is the French for “limousine liberal?”  Thank you for asking.  It is “gauche caviar.”

Pretty cute, eh?  Lefty with caviar taste. 

Democrats Out Of Ideas

We’ve already looked at the agenda-less Democrats here at Road to the Middle Class, and tut-tutted here and here about the venality of just wanting to control Congress for the power.

We wondered if this could really be so.  Could Democrats really be that cynical?  Yes they could, reports Tony Blankley.   In an interview with the Washington Post’s David Ignatius, Clintonoid and now Congressman Rahm Emanuel said that Democrats would not be pushing any controversial or unpopular measures, like universal health care or Social Security reform in the new Congress.

"The secret for the Democrats, says Emanuel, is to remain the party of reform and change. The country is angry, and it will only get more so as the problems in Iraq deepen... It’s Bush’s war, and as it splinters the structure of GOP power, the Democrats are waiting to pick up the pieces."

Don’t get mad, conservatives; get even.  This is not bad news.  This is good news.  If the Democrats don’t feel that energized about passing important reform legislation, but prefer just to sit there talking about “reform and change” that means they are past their prime.

For sure they will get the presidency when it is  Buggins’ Turn, as the Brits say.  But when they get there Democrats will find that they don’t have a mandate to do anything.  And they will find, as they did after 1992, that if they take a sharp left turn the voters will deal with them just as decisively as they did in 1994.

Honesty is the best policy.  That’s what Mom said. 

Tell you what, Democrats.  Tell us what you stand for. 

Told that the American people didn’t agree with his proposals about tax cuts, Candidate George W. Bush responded that he’d just have to persuade them, and “move” the country.

You could do the same.  Try to persuade us.  It might work.

Michelle Malkin in Baghdad

A few weeks ago conservative columnist and blogger Michelle Malkin took out after the AP for relying on unreliable sources in Iraq.  The upshot was a visit to Baghdad.  Just back from the front, Malkin writes:

I came to Iraq a darkening pessimist about the war, due in large part to my doubts about the compatability of Islam and Western-style democracy, but also as a result of the steady, sensational diet of “grim milestone” and “daily IED count” media coverage that aids the insurgency.

I left Iraq with unexpected hope and resolve.

The question is whether US resolve to “bring security to Iraq, one neighborhood at a time” can bring peace to Iraq short of a real civil war in which the future of the nation is proved by a trial of strength.  Read the peripatetic Spengler as he recommends civil war to the Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas.

[C]ivil war is the sine qua non of nationhood. Permit me to try to sell you on the merits of having a civil war of your very own. Think of a civil war not as a luxury, but as an investment.

Real nations, as opposed to romantic visions of nations, have no room for irredentists and other rejectionists... Having a civil war is de rigeur. All the right people do it. It shows that the prospective nation has the grit to sort out its own problems.

The problem is that a civil war is much better when you can do it yourself with a minimum of interference from outside.  Outside interference (think Thirty Years War, Spanish Civil War) just makes the civil war longer and bloodier.

That’s what is really scary about the Iraq situation.  Everybody is muscling in—the US, the Saudis, the Iranians, the Syrians—when really the Iraqis should be getting on with it themselves.

But thanks to the courageous Michelle Malkin for going to Iraq and learning about that nation with boots on the ground.

Too Hot or Too Cold?

How should Congressional Republicans behave?  As pit-bulls or as lap-dogs?  That’s the hot political story today taken up by Rush Limbaugh. 

According to Christina Bellantoni:

Several Republicans confirmed privately that more than two-thirds of House Republicans are favoring a slow approach, while a minority of members think the attacks on Democrats should come rapid-fire.

Rush Limbaugh isn’t happy.  He was grumbling this morning about 40 more years in the wilderness if the Republicans don’t show a bit of backbone.

But Rush, let’s not put the cart before the horse.  Republicans should, of course they should, oppose the usual Democratic menu of privilege, subsidy, and government control—a welfare state that doesn’t care about welfare.

But until Republicans come up with a new agenda, good ideas that resonate with the American people, they’d be better keeping quiet. 

Anyway, the ugly truth about politics is that the voters get tired of the same old same old.  They are tired of Republicans just like they were in 1992.

But as I remember, it took just two years to upchuck the Democrats after the 1992 election.  The Year of the Woman was followed by the Year of the Angry White Male.  And no wonder.  The New Democrats of Bill Clinton turned out to the the same old San Francisco Democrats that Americans had repeatedly rejected.

Let’s not waste all our political bandwidth on opposition for the sake of opposition.  Let’s develop an agenda of reform so that, when Republicans are returned to power they can boast of a mandate from the voters.

And then implement it.