watching it live
Posted Thursday, January 31st, 2008 at 6:51 pm
While Jen, Isa’s respite care provider, creates a ferocious giggle from Isa in tickling her, I’m closely watching the Democratic debate. So far, I’m scoring points to Obama on healthcare and the housing crisis, and to Clinton on immigration.
Obama scored browny points by making seperate references to a child with cerebral palsy and the deplorable educational reality of children in East Los Angeles.
More to come.
January 31st, 2008 at 8:20 pm
Democrats will continue to talk about education and its importance but will also continue to do nothing of substance to change it. Their issues will always be issues that fundamentally benefit the teachers union first, be it: more funding for education, smaller classrooms (ie. more teachers), more minority teachers, and various other issues that have no historical record of helping.
If you want real change in education, all the great ideas are on the right. Whether it be charter schools, vouchers, or something just as basic as researching how good inner city schools do it, it was all spearheaded by the right. I don’t mean to make a very important issue partisan, but on this it really is. Democrats are so controlled by the teachers union that I wouldn’t expect anything worthwhile from their side for a while.
It reminds me of this apt quote recently from the University Of Chicago the University of Chicago Richard Posner:
But there seems to be little political pressure for such reforms. The costs of the social disorders that afflict poor blacks are incurred mainly by poor blacks themselves, and poor blacks do not vote very much. Moreover, blacks support the Democratic Party so overwhelmingly that Democrat politicians have little incentive to expend their necessarily limited political capital on policies that might benefit blacks at the expense of groups that are in play between the two parties, such as public school teachers.