Installment number 171 of the Carnival of Ohio Politics is up, thanks to the author of The Boring Made Dull. As dismal as Ohio’s political trends may be, TBMD’s deft compilations of the Carnivals often make me laugh. He warns us that for the next Carnival that he writes after this one, he might “go off the reservation.” Well, if his Carnivals, heretofore, have been “on” the “reservation,” my sides might ache from too much laughter the next time around. Go ahead and click the link. You know you want to.
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What Others Say
Strickland, Redfern, Dimora, Kasich, and Coughlin
June 23, 2009 — buckeyerinoPolitics serves us flip-flops and broken campaign promises on a frequent basis. In the midst of petty political bickering, we have a fully stocked arsenal of such flip-flops and broken promises to go tit-for-tat with our opponents, no matter which candidate one champions. Such is the human condition.
But some political reversals are so shattering that using the word “flip-flop” in those instances would be trying to trivialize the seriousness of the offense. An example of what I’m talking about would be George Bush the elder, who served one term as president on the heels of Reagan. Bush said, “Read my lips! No new taxes!” That was an outright lie. He didn’t get re-elected.
Ted Strickland’s abandonment of his stance against slots shows that he is a liar. Whatever he said in opposition to gambling to get co-endorsed (with Ken Blackwell) by the Ohio Roundtable in the 2006 gubernatorial race was an outright lie. Read the rest of this entry »
For Ohio’s sake, move county commissioner races
June 20, 2009 — buckeyerino“Along the rust belt that hugs Lake Erie’s shores, Democrats have long enjoyed a near monopoly on municipal and county governments.”
I began another Buckeye RINO post with those words, titled “Democrats control everything.”
If you are a Cuyahoga County voter, you probably think that’s a pretty cool thing that Democrats control everything. Nirvana has been achieved, right?
Oh. Except for the corruption. Funny thing, about that Cuyahoga County corruption . . . as I said before the last election, when I endorsed Annette Butler for Bill Mason’s County Prosecutor seat . . . “It has everything to do with the Democrat Party.”
Oh. Except for the economic woes of Ohio’s Rust Belt. But that has much to do with the corruption. Let Plain Dealer columnist Phillip Morris connect the dots for you, as he did in a column last Monday:
“When will we begin to aspire and agitate for honest and efficient government?
“When will we stop accepting the oversight of party hacks, interested more in preserving power and patronage than in advancing prosperity?
“When will we start to understand that our futures are being compromised by too many uninspired and uninspiring public officials who routinely exploit their offices for self-enrichment?
“When will we realize that we can never become a business incubator as long as we tolerate inefficient city and county government?
“When will we demand better for our children — and our industry — which continue to flee the area in droves?”
I know that everybody in Cleveland likes to blame George W. Bush for the tanking Rust Belt economy, but the former U.S. President has not been implicated in any of the corruption probes of Cuyahoga County officials. Let me just note that the “party hacks” referenced in the 2nd paragraph of that Phillip Morris column excerpt happen to be Democrat party hacks, since the Democrats are the ones who control all the legislative and executive branch offices of Cuyahoga County government.
Talk of a Cuyahoga County government reform package by way of home rule charter has died down.
Phillip Morris asks for voters to start pressuring Dennis Kucinich, Marcia Fudge, and Frank Jackson to present a new plan to reform the county. I think that’s looking to the wrong direction for reform.
The right direction for reforming county government is for voters looking in the mirror and putting pressure on themselves to learn more about election candidates than whether they are Democrat or not. They have to start voting for the person, and stop voting for the party. Jimmy Dimora does not fear any wrath from Cuyahoga County voters. He knows that they will always vote Democrat. Even if Dimora has to step down, he knows that he can always get a crony to replace him, since Democrats will surely always win. Unless Cuyahoga County voters demonstrate that they are capable of voting for a Republican instead of rubberstamping even the most corrupt of Democrats, reform will continue to be elusive.
How is it that even the most corrupt Democrats win county elections time after time after time? I think it’s mostly that they hide in the coattails of the top of the ticket. In presidential and gubernatorial years, the ODP looks to maximize voter turnout in Cuyahoga County to help the top of the ticket carry the state. A lot of the voters that come out of the woodwork for those elections only know about the presidential or gubernatorial candidates at the top of the ticket, but they vote in all the races, using the Democrat party affiliation as their guide in the races they know nothing about. It happens in more than just Cuyahoga County (an example from Lorain County here), and that’s how voters enable entrenched cronyism and corruption. The counties with the least government corruption are those with swing voters, where politicians fear that if they screw up, they’ll be voted out in very short order.
I do have a proposal, though, for cleaning up county governments, not just in the rust belt, but throughout Ohio, and it doesn’t require any home rule charters be implemented for restructuring governments:
Just move the election dates. Elect county commissioners in odd-numbered years.
If we are going to look to a Cleveland-area Democrat elected official to put pressure on to reform county government, let’s not start with Kucinich, Fudge, and Jackson, as Phillip Morris suggests. Let’s start with Ohio House Speaker Armond “I’m for sale!” Budish. Let’s see if Budish is willing to distance himself from the Dimoras, and Russos, et al, of Cuyahoga County. Let’s get action from the Ohio General Assembly to begin the process to amend our state constitution, to change the law, whatever it takes, to move the elections for county commissioners throughout Ohio to odd-numbered years.
Odd-numbered years, like this one, are low turnout years, because we vote for obscure offices like city government, village government, school boards, and township trustees. We ought to encourage more turnout for these local offices. We can do so by bringing a higher profile race to odd-numbered election years. So let’s hold elections for county commissioners in odd-numbered years.
County Commissioners wouldn’t be able to hide in the coattails of the top of the ticket. Instead, they’d be the top of the ticket. They wouldn’t be able to hide. They’d have to withstand more scrutiny. If Cuyahoga County commissioner candidates want to turn out Democrats who will vote straight tickets, they, themselves, will have to be the draw, not the presidential or the gubernatorial candidates.
We’ll make it easier for county commissioners all over Ohio to fear the wrath of voters.
How would we make the transition? In 2010, we elect commissioners to a three-year term. They’d be up for re-election to a four-year term starting in 2013. Likewise, in 2012, we elect commissioners to a three-year term, and they’d be up for re-election to a four-year term in 2015. That would complete the transition.
More than just Cuyahoga County would benefit from this change. 86 other counties (Summit County has home rule charter) would benefit as well. This is a county government reform measure that can be put into place that Jimmy Dimora can’t block from being enacted, as the State of Ohio will be the entity that undertakes the reform, not Cuyahoga County.
Two scoops of Carnival, please
June 18, 2009 — buckeyerinoFor those who love the Carnival of Ohio Politics, Jill Miller Zimon, of Writes Like She Talks, has composed a double-post. Therefore, as you peruse the contents and see that some blogs appear in two separate paragraphs, bear in mind that they aren’t duplications of the same thing, they are, instead, twice as much stuff as usual (lots of reading).
It must have been quite a chore to put all that material together, so I’ll not try to make too big a deal out of the way my post about a “released time” proposal in Willard was incorrectly characterized in the Carnival as a fusion of church and state. But I do have to make something of a deal out of it, because the released time proposal preserves a separation of church and state, and, if pursued along the same veins revealed in my post about School Enterprise Zones, released time can be a benefit for students and parents that can be applied to any supplemental educational pursuit, and need not have any connection at all whatsoever to religion.
Support for Willard Ministerial Association’s “released time from school” proposal
June 15, 2009 — buckeyerinoI don’t know what the Board of Education of Willard City Schools will decide pertaining to a “released time” proposal put forward by the Willard Ministerial Association, but I certainly favor the idea. The Norwalk Reflector recently published an article outlining the proposal.
Under the proposal, students at Willard’s Central Elementary School would be allowed to cross the street to Grace United Methodist Church during their recess period after lunch and receive religious instruction. The volunteers that would act on the WMA’s behalf in escorting the school children across the street and providing the religious instruction would be subject to background checks.
The separation of church and state would be maintained, as the religious instruction would not request any resources whatsoever from the public schools. The only request is that students be permitted, if they and their parents desire, to be excused for recess for a few minutes of Bible study off school grounds, yet adjacent to school grounds.
But even if the Willard School Board decides against “released time,” I would encourage the Willard Ministerial Association to make weekday religious instruction more accessible to schoolkids, perhaps as a before-school activity, and/or as an after-school activity, or perhaps on a “released time” basis to junior high and high school students at locations adjacent to those schools.
Of course, if released time is permitted for those of Central Elementary’s students who want to spend recess on Bible study, released time should also be granted to students who wish to devote their recess to alternative pursuits. In this sense, even parents who wish their children’s education would steer clear of all religious instruction can still benefit from approval of WMA’s proposal, as they can design programs according to their own preferences to be utilized during “released time.” All of this is encapsulated within the concept of “School Enterprise Zones” that I’ve written about here at Buckeye RINO and also here, here, and here at Word of Mouth.
If these proposals are followed, any popular demand for charter schools will be diminished, as parents are able to incorporate public school instruction into a larger educational design for their children. It is the role of the public schools to be a tool in the hands of parents so that the parents can fulfill their responsibilities to educate their children. The public schools should not usurp those parental responsibilities for education. The public schools had better not show themselves to be inflexible and unwieldy tools, as I foresee continued vigorous debate over the future of education in Ohio, and schools had better ally themselves with parents in that debate than make enemies of them.
“Why aren’t more women at the forefront of the GOP?”
June 3, 2009 — buckeyerinoI’ve put the headline in quotes, because it isn’t my question. It’s a question more often posed by those who are left of center. It’s not my question, because I know that Republican women can do whatever they want to do, in the political arena, or otherwise. I’ve met some very capable, perceptive, resourceful, creative, intelligent, skilled, and motivating Republican women. The left-of-center questioners are hoping that Republicans answer in this fashion: “Because the men of the GOP hold them back.” I don’t think that’s the truth.
So why aren’t more women at the forefront of the GOP?
One of the factors might be how such women are treated by the left. Think especially about how the left treated Sarah Palin last year. She was courageous enough to follow through, and so was her family, despite being maliciously slimed with rumor, innuendo, fabrications, and outright lies. Other courageous women are up to the challenge of leading within the GOP, also. But . . . there are other women . . . who might be rightfully apprehensive about charging into the fray and taking a leadership stance in the GOP. I welcome them to take that chance, and if I can do something to help defend them against the merciless onslaught, I’m willing to help.
But if you thought the left’s treatment of Sarah Palin was an aberration not to be repeated again, you’re wrong. Check out this article by Vicki McClure Davidson at Frugal Cafe Blog Zone. The main target of a lefty troll, who wrote a frighteningly vicious magazine article, is one of my favorite conservative bloggers, Michelle Malkin, who had some reflections of her own. That lefty troll has a lot of company, too. I don’t know if you’ve noticed or not, but the number of left-of-center blogs listed in my blogroll is a fairly small number, and the main reason why some don’t make it to my blogroll is because some of them are overly coarse, vicious, vulgar, mean-spirited, and potty-mouthed.
If you have enough hours in the week, Carnival 168
June 3, 2009 — buckeyerinoThis week was my turn in the rotation, so I’ve compiled and posted installment number 168 of the Carnival of Ohio Politics. Contributing blogs this week were Bizzy Blog, Writes Like She Talks, Roland Hansen Commentary, Just Blowing Smoke, Keeler Political Report, The Ohio Republic, Spinelli on Assignment, The Cincinnati Beacon, and The Boring Made Dull. You’ve got 168 hours in a week, and at least one of them can be used to search through the great blogging represented at the Carnival.
Supplemental learning opportunities: School Enterprise Zones
June 2, 2009 — buckeyerinoIn my recent post expressing my opposition to charter schools, I had this to say about my own education in the public schools:
My parents are aware that sometimes values are taught in public school that run counter to their own values. My parents are aware that some values are totally missing from the public schools. Knowing such things, but also knowing that they bore the ultimate responsibility for our education, they supplemented my public school learning with other opportunities for learning.
Parents can (and ought) to supplement their children’s education in order to customize and tailor the learning experience to fit their children’s unique personalities, and align that education with a parent’s values and priorities. This follows from the assertion that parents (not the schools, not the government) are the ones who are ultimately responsible for a child’s education. The government provides schools, but parents should view them as merely a tool to help them fulfill their own responsibility for seeing that their children are educated. Parents should not feel tempted (yet they often are) to abdicate their responsibilities to educate their children and lay that burden, instead, upon the school.
Furthermore, for families who like charter schools because they have champagne taste and want a private school experience for their children, but they are only willing or able to set aside a beer budget to obtain it (with unvoted, confiscated tax dollars used as subsidies), supplemental learning opportunities make it possible to make the public school experience more like a private school experience without breaking the bank.
My own parents had limited time and limited funds, and they had 10 children. That’s the main reason they opted for public schools. However, public schools were only one item on the learning menu that they selected for us. How much nutrition can you get if your meal only consists of one dish? How much easier is it to optimize your nutrition if the main entree is a smaller portion of the meal and side dishes are added? So, think of public school as an entree that delivers on a few of the educational nutrition needs, but think about the learning activities that should be offered as side dishes to add nutrients that the entree is missing. If, after doing all this, your parental priorities and values aren’t reflected in what appears on your children’s educational dinner plate, don’t blame the schools. Go look in the mirror. Blame the person you see reflected in the mirror.
When I was in high school, I was involved in some extra-curricular activities, such as the cross-country team, the track team, the school play, the school choir, and a number of student clubs. I also had a lot of responsibility at home, as the oldest of the 10 kids that my parents had, and those household responsibilities were learning opportunities. Our family attended church together on Sundays. I had occasional access to the YMCA. I had ready access to the local library. My parents had an excellent selection of reference books at home. Our family had a very large yard for outdoor activities. I met each school-day morning, before school started, for Bible study with other students who attended both my school and my church. I also participated in 4-H and Boy Scouts. When I was younger, I had piano lessons (I discontinued the lessons by my own choice–I was never any good at piano, but it did teach me how to read music, so it wasn’t a total waste) and swimming lessons. As you can see, school was just an entree. There were many side dishes.
I am mindful that supplementing a child’s learning might be inconvenient. It’s hard to think of oneself as a parent when one is relegated to the role of taxi driver, shuttling this kid here for this activity by this time, and that kid there for that activity by that time, and then picking them up afterward. Wouldn’t it be so much better if a wide array of supplemental learning opportunities were available in one location? Wouldn’t it be better yet if that location were adjacent to the school? A parent wouldn’t have to feel like a lowly taxi driver for their children, if such were the case.
I propose that we add another facet to regional and urban planning. I call it the “School Enterprise Zone.” This is a concept I’ve been publicly touting since the days of my first state rep campaign back in 2002. When I was a contributor to Word of Mouth blog, before the launch of Buckeye RINO, I wrote a three-part piece about the concept, which you can find here, here, and here. It’s a land-use designation that Ohio communities could add to their options when they contemplate zoning ordinances. What it’s designed to do is make it easier for properties adjacent to schools to transition from residential/commercial/industrial property to property where supplemental learning opportunities are available for children. The key mechanisms to make it work are removing impediments to entrepreneurial providers of supplemental learning opportunities.
Let’s say I’m a martial arts instructor, or a piano teacher, or a youth minister of a church, or a fencing instructor, or an arts and crafts workshop leader, or a ballet teacher, or a Brownie Scout leader, or . . . somebody that has some programs designed to involve kids, and I buy a house within a School Enterprise Zone that surrounds the school. Let’s face it, I’m not going to become fabulously rich by offering after-school lessons to kids. I just want to at least scrape by, or at least supplement some other household income with teaching or coaching or mentoring kids on the side, or maybe I’m just a volunteer, like the Brownie Scout leader, and I don’t want a lot of government-imposed red tape, regulations, and fees to get in the way of providing programs for kids. A School Enterprise Zone could make the task less daunting.
Here are some examples of what a School Enterprise Zone designation could facilitate:
Example 1: Schools are often located in residential zones. Often, residentially zoned properties are prohibited from being sites of commercial activity. The School Enterprise Zone would relax those restrictions to allow commercial activities that provide programming for kids.
Example 2: Ohio laws don’t allow certain adult-oriented businesses, such as bars, within a certain distance of a school. Also, registered sex offenders are required to reside beyond a certain distance of a school. By creating a School Enterprise Zone, the boundaries of the “safety envelope” would be expanded.
Example 3: In converting a house within a School Enterprise Zone from strictly residential to a house where some of the space is reserved for private living space and some of the space is used for commercial activity related to programming for children, only a portion of the public space would be required to be handicap-accessible, not the entire facility, thus negating the need for expensive remodeling projects.
Example 4: Tax exemptions could be offered to qualifying entities within the School Enterprise Zone to help keep overhead expenses low so that these enterprises can keep afloat.
Example 5: Instead of parents being an after school taxi service, they may send a note to school signaling that their child is to be released to an agent of the after-school program when school is dismissed for the day. The parents then don’t have to pick up, drop off, and pick up again. They just have to pick up.
Example 6: If the School Board allows it, some of the school facilities may be rented out to after-school program providers. A ballet instructor may require more performance space than a residential setting may allow, and converting enough space for performance space on private property may be too costly. Instead, the instructor’s property within the school enterprise zone may contain just the business office for the ballet instructor while she rents performance space at the school.
Example 7: If school district budget cuts cause them to no longer offer some extracurricular activities, it may create an opportunity for a new program offering within the School Enterprise Zone. For example, if the junior high no longer has a football team, perhaps an enterprising would-be football coach would set up office in the coach’s home within the School Enterprise Zone and rent the school’s athletic field so that kids can continue to play football.
Example 8: Parents and kids could buy the supplies and equipment they need directly from the after-school program within the School Enterprise Zone instead of having to make a trip to the mall. I propose that such purchases within the School Enterprise Zone be made exempt from sales tax to make the after school activities less expensive for parents. But even without a tax exemption, there is added convenience when one can buy what supplies are needed on-site rather than having to taxi kids to far-flung shopping centers to procure the supplies.
Parents, of course, would foot the bill for whatever after-school programs they enroll their children in, and since funds may not be able to stretch far and since chidren are a precious commodity, the motivation behind creating School Enterprise Zones would be to conveniently locate an array of low-cost, low-risk supplemental learning opportunities.
Ohio Carnival 167 . . . with Washington
May 28, 2009 — buckeyerinoI did a double-take upon seeing installment 167 of the Carnival of Ohio Politics. Lisa Renee, of Glass City Jungle, used a Washington state route marker as an illustration for the latest Carnival. I did a double-take because I’ve actually driven on that very road. Nevertheless, though the road sign is from Washington, the posts are all about Ohio and its politics. Great reading. You know the drill. Get over there and click on those links.
My opposition to charter schools
May 27, 2009 — buckeyerinoI oppose charter schools.
I’ve been called a RINO because of it. Conservatives might say I’m a moderate, or might even say I’m from the liberal wing of the Republican Party because of it. I think they’re wrong. I think I’m more conservative than the supporters of charter schools (despite what this graph says). I think backers of charter schools are the ones who are in the middle of the road, trying to have their cake and eat it too.
I guess I’m not a compassionate conservative, you know, the kind that grows government spending on corporate welfare while hiding the corporate welfare part by thumping the Bible and using compassionate conservative code words such as “faith-based initiatives,” and “school choice.”
So I guess if I wish to describe myself as a conservative, I’ll have to delineate that I’m not a compassionate conservative. I guess that makes me an insensitive, uncaring, arrogant, and heartless conservative.
But I’m not liberal. I’ll explain.
I firmly believe that parents are the ones ultimately responsible for educating their children. I believe that schools should be used as tools in the hands of the parents to help the parents fulfill their responsibility of educating their kids, and that, ultimately, if kids aren’t prepared for adulthood by the time they finish school, it’s not the schools that failed the kids, it’s the parents and the kids that failed the kids. Doesn’t that sound conservative to you?
Along that vein, parents have three choices: Home schooling, public schools, and private (including parochial) schools. I leave it to the parents to decide which of these tools to use. I’m OK with whatever they choose from that menu.
If I were a liberal, I would scrub home schooling from the list, because liberals don’t believe that parents are competent teachers unless they are actually licensed as such by the state, and even then, they’d only be competent to teach the grade levels and subject matter indicated on the license. Liberals would also be concerned that home schooling isn’t sufficiently multicultural. I leave it to the parents for them to decide whether they have the competence. In areas where they feel less competent to teach, they can always supplement instruction with tools from other sources. Parents can make home schooling as multicultural as they like. There aren’t limits on how multicultural they can make the home schooling experience. Again, I would empower parents with that kind of discretion.
Looking back over the centuries, home schooling took the form of apprenticing your children in your own trade. Before the industrial revolution, nearly everyone worked their business out of their own homes. Stay-at-home housewives? Yeah, and stay-at-home househusbands, too. What do you do to take care of the kids at the house while you do the work that sustains the family? Have them learn the work with you, of course. Some families might send some kids to be apprenticed elsewhere. Some families might send some kids to the military, or to a convent, or to a monastery, or to a university. In these cases, the parents worked out some form of monetary agreement to make those other opportunities possible. The parents, in some form or another, footed the bill.
Public education is a fairly newfangled contraption. Especially after the industrial revolution drastically altered family life, compulsory education in one form or another was deemed desirable by society, so we, the people, agreed to means by which the government became a provider of schooling. It’s a shared cost arrangement. Parents still foot the bill by way of taxes, but so do non-parents. Anyone may send their child to a public school without having to pay extra tuition for it. Children who go to public schools vastly outnumber the children who are home schooled and the children who go to private schools.
My parents sent me to public schools. After all, they were already paying the taxes that are used to support the public schools. They could have sent me to a private school, but that would have cost them a lot more. They realized that they didn’t want to be saddled with the burden of private school tuition costs, especially since I was the oldest of 10 children. If they had chosen private school for all of us, the cost would have been prohibitive. They didn’t home school us. My dad was a die maker at Ford Motor Company who often worked overtime to support our very large family. Mom was often either pregnant or nursing. Thus, home schooling would have been too time-intensive for my parents. Still, my parents understood their responsibility to educate us. They tell me I knew my alphabet when I was one year old. I knew how to read before I was age three. When I got to kindergarten, I was one of a small handful of kindergarteners who could already read who spent a segment of each school day in the first grade reading room with a first grade teacher (we readers had to miss milk and cookies, which is what the other kindergartners did in our absence). I was adequately prepared for school as a preschooler by my parents.
My parents are aware that sometimes values are taught in public school that run counter to their own values. My parents are aware that some values are totally missing from the public schools. Knowing such things, but also knowing that they bore the ultimate responsibility for our education, they supplemented my public school learning with other opportunities for learning. Much of the learning took place in the home. Some of the learning took place at church. Some of the learning happened through friends and relatives of the family. Some of the learning occurred through extra-curricular activities at school. Some of the learning occurred in clubs and organizations that had nothing to do with school. My parents truly sought to adequately prepare us for adulthood. They made mistakes, of course, but one isn’t spared from mistakes no matter what form the schooling takes. One other thing my parents did when the public schools were found lacking in one respect or another, was that they were advocates when they felt they needed to be. They would make their voice heard at a parent-teacher conference. They would have a discussion with a principal or a superintendent. They would state their case at a meeting of the school board. It is critical that public schools remain under local control and it is imperative that they are responsive and accountable to local parents and local taxpayers.
I guess compassionate conservatives, however, who don’t feel up to the rigors of providing home schooling would rather place the blame for failing kids upon the schools, as if the schools are ultimately responsible for the education of their kids. What? Pass the buck to big government? That doesn’t sound conservative. And if the public school isn’t satisfactory, do they take it upon themselves to supplement the child’s learning, as my parents did? Apparently they’re too lazy for that. OK, so send the kids to a private school. Nope. They don’t want to pay for that. OK, so they’re too cheap to send their kids to private school and too lazy to supplement the public school instruction, so what do they do? They come up with charter schools.
I believe that in being ultimately responsible for children’s education, the parents should foot the bill, unless others agree, by way of a vote of the people, to chip in, as well, and help foot the parents’ educational bills.
For home schooling, the onus is on the parents to make it all happen. For private schooling, the parents have to foot the bill. For public schools, the parents and the rest of the community pay taxes to foot the bill. The taxpayers of Ohio have had many direct votes on the funding of public schools.
Charter schools, however, want to charge tuition AND squeeze the taxpayer, and maybe even make a profit. The taxpayers of Ohio have never had a direct vote on whether they want to also fund charter schools. Oops, there I go, sounding like a conservative again–a heartless conservative. Conservatives more compassionate than I orchestrated the charter school movement in the state legislature. To me, it’s just more government spending on corporate welfare. Essentially, the charter school organizers didn’t want to try to compete with private schools in the open marketplace. They were too averse to taking such a financial risk. Therefore, they found a way to open a school with a private agenda, like a private school does, but they found a way to pay for it from government coffers, like a public school does, and no one ever gets to vote on a tax levy of any sort to determine whether the public really supports the private agenda of the charter school.
Charter schools represent some kind of utopia for compassionate conservative parents who will only set aside a beer budget for their family’s education, but wish to quench their champagne taste, all with a minimum of effort.
They call it compassionate conservatism. To me, it’s just corporate welfare. To me, it just sounds like socialism. To me, it sounds like taxation without representation. To me, I hear the grunting and squealing sound of pigs at the government trough. To me, I see charter schools too incompetent to survive as private schools, so they become parasites to survive, feeding off the host government.
Education is something worth working for. It’s something worth earning. It’s something worth a lot of effort. It’s not an entitlement. It’s a responsibility. It’s a prudent preparation for the future.
If I were Ohio governor or member of the General Assembly, I’d give all charter schools an expiration date, with enough time for parents to sort through the educational alternatives. By the time the expiration date arrives, the charter schools would have to do one of the following:
- Become a self-sustaining private school. Not a bad choice, considering that other private schools didn’t have the state government’s help with their startup costs like the charter schools had.
- Get the taxpayers of the community to vote for a tax to support the school independently from the public school. I’d be so surprised if such an effort succeeded, but we do live in a democracy, and if the people voted to sustain the school and its mission with their tax dollars, so be it.
- Become an adjunct, alternative school within a school district. Someone would have to come up with a brilliant sales pitch to persuade the community and the school board to allow the school to operate by different rules than the rest of the schools in the district in order for it to continue its mission.
- Have the school dissolved and all its resources absorbed into the public school district. Investors in the charter school could get some reimbursement for the materials they provided that the school district absorbs, though the reimbursement would be tempered by the calculation that tax funds also helped pay for those resources.
- Shut its doors permanently. Assets and resources could be sold however the charter school organization sees fit, but there might be some reimbursements due to the state according to how tax dollars were expended.
I’m such a moderate. I’m so middle-of-the-road. I’m such a RINO. No. I’m conservative. An insensitive, uncaring, arrogant, heartless conservative, without an ounce of compassion.
North Korea’s underground nuclear test
May 25, 2009 — buckeyerinoOne of the striking features of South Korean foreign affairs during the Roh Moo-Hyun administration was how much South Korea offered to North Korea for so little in return. It’s undeniable that South Koreans would like the entire peninsula to be unified in peace, but being soft with North Korea didn’t work out the way South Korea had hoped.
Then, in the wake of Roh Moo-Hyun’s death, the same Roh Moo-Hyun who was so generous and conciliatory toward the North Koreans, North Korea conducts an underground nuclear test.
It’s like spitting upon his grave.
Let there be no mistaking the character of the rulers of North Korea. They have no love for humanity. They are narcissitic in the extreme.
You’ve heard that all politics are local, and that’s especially true of North Korea. The shameless way in which they conduct themselves is a Herculean effort to maintain a personality cult. The personality cult has allowed the leadership to enjoy a consolidation of power for decades now. With a succession question looming due to Kim Jong-Il’s declining health, we can surmise that top deputies are vying to be the most valiant and daring in continuing the legacy in order to arise as the eventual successor atop the pyramid. Kim Jong-Il, and his father before him, have been shrouded in mythology, and the successor to Kim Jong-Il will certainly want to build a mythology around himself, too, to remain atop the personality cult pyramid.
But we, abroad, all know it’s a mirage. Kim Jong-Il is no Superman, neither was his father, nor will be his successor. They are human like the rest of us. But we haven’t been inclined to demonstrate that the emperor wears no clothes.
Is it any wonder that North Korea and Iran seek nuclear weapons when the United States will never take punitive actions against other members of the nuclear arsenal club? Not only are we inseparable allies with the United Kingdom, France, and Israel, but haven’t we become all too cozy with China? Pakistan and India may be enemies of each other, but the United States has positioned itself as fawning allies of them both. And finally, when Russia runs roughshod all over Georgia, we offer only lip service as condemnation? Defense Secretary Gates said that since the end of World War II, the United States has always sought to avoid military confrontation with Russia and its predecessor, the Soviet Union.
And I think that’s the crux of the matter, right there. There’s no upside to being a party to a non-proliferation treaty. As long as countries agree to forego nukes, they run the risk that they will be meddled with by foreign powers. Once a country has nukes, then outside interference ends. That’s the lesson learned by the North Koreans and the Iranians. It’s debatable whether North Korea has designs on its neighbors or not, but those at the pinnacle of power of the personality cult certainly don’t want to risk any outside interference in messing up their domestic hold on power.
The brinksmanship games that North Korea plays only feed the mythology propagated throughout the North Korean populace. The six-party talks are characterized in such a way that renowned nations such as South Korea, Japan, China, Russia, and the United States, all come crawling to North Korea on hands and knees begging for some small concessions. Sometimes the North Koreans indulge the petty requests of those beggars, and sometimes not. See how the current methods of dealing with North Korea only enable them?
And the lesson from the Russian invasion of Georgia is that North Korea can continue the games of brinksmanship and certainly ought to continue the course toward a nuclear arsenal. Iran has learned the same lesson.
When former President George W. Bush spoke of an axis of evil that ran through Baghdad, Tehran, and Pyongyang, he might’ve been right about two of the three. And just maybe, he left out Moscow.
I don’t think that Ronald Reagan would have the same take on American foreign policy that Secretary Gates does. I don’t think that Ronald Reagan thought that we should back down from teaching Russia a lesson. I don’t think Ronald Reagan would have permitted this charade with Iran to go on as long as it has. I think if Ronald Reagan were told that we don’t have the military capability of keeping Russia in check, then Reagan would say “Then lets acquire that capability, pronto.”
And then, if Russia can’t do whatsoever it pleases, even though it’s in the nuclear arsenal club, because the United States interdicts, then all of a sudden, nuclear weapons aren’t the ultimate answer, and maybe it is OK to be party to a nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
In the meantime, if we can’t get Vladimir Putin to mind his manners, then we aren’t going to get Iran and North Korea to mind theirs, either. What we’re hoping for, on the Iranian front, is that internal dissent will grow until there is a change of the regime in power. But on the North Korean front, internal dissent has been totally absent, and we’re playing a wait-and-see game with the question of succession. Don’t hold your breath.
Shellshocked by suicide of Roh Moo-Hyun
May 23, 2009 — buckeyerinoWell, I don’t know what to think, at this point. The news of the suicide death of the former leader of South Korea, Roh Moo-Hyun, is just washing over me in waves.
He was South Korea’s president when I resided and worked in South Korea, so he embodies the South Korea that I knew.
An apparent suicide note indicates that Roh Moo-Hyun felt sorrowful about news accounts that were investigating alleged bribes flowing from corporate interests to bank accounts of his family members.
I’ve had lengthy discussions with a few citizens of South Korea about their national politics. It is widely understood that national-level politicians of all political persuasions are greatly influenced by bribes from corporations. Rather than the “peasants with pitchforks” we see in the USA that would vow to purge the political ranks of such graft, voters in South Korea often felt like “What can we do? We can vote for other politicians to replace the current ones, but they will be just as susceptible to bribes as the ones we just voted out.” Political candidacy, in practice (as opposed to theory), can be pursued only by insiders. Thus, the electorate never got their hopes up about cleaning up the political system.
But the media were more idealistic. To their credit, they felt as though greater transparency would shake things up. And it seems to be working, at least in small increments. It’s unfortunate that suicide of a former national leader would become part of the fabric of the story. I feel crestfallen, sorrowful about his untimely death.
One simple thing I might recommend to South Korea to improve their democracy would be to accelerate social studies instruction in schools. When the politically connected wish to insulate themselves and maintain their status as an elite, exclusive club, they won’t give much of a road map to the rest of society who might want to break into the political ranks. This has certainly been the case in South Korea. While American public schools are not competitive with those in other developed nations, particularly in math, science, technology, and foreign language instruction, we Americans do get a head start on South Korea in the area of social studies. I think that’s because, at our core, we know that our nation relies on its people to set the standards for our government.
With all its imperfections, America is still the nation most likely to have the people set the standards for its government, rather than the other way around, where the government sets standards for its people. Even other developed nations, from Australia to the UK, from Japan to Sweden, are not governments of the people, by the people, and for the people the way America is. We have our politicians on a much shorter leash, and if we have to throw the bums out, and we don’t know where else to turn to for an alternative political leadership, we, ourselves, are able to step forward and declare ourselves a political candidate. We have a road map (or, at least, we can get our hands on one in pretty short order). In America, we can be the government. That’s just not so in other parts of the globe, South Korea being one example of that.
Nevertheless, there’s still a long way to go toward fully staffing South Korea’s government offices with the most honest and highly ethical people. (We could say that about America, too, but we have much stronger mechanisms for correction.) But the starting point has to be that ordinary citizens have at least an understanding of the political process, and I think that type of information is too closely guarded.
Despite the glaring deficiencies exposed by this latest tragedy, South Korea has made absolutely huge strides in moving from 3rd world country to developed nation in a very short span of time. Thus, I remember the nation led by Roh Moo-Hyun in glowing images of advanced technology, advanced convenience, advanced modernity, advanced infrastructure, advanced primary and secondary education, advanced fashion, advanced arts, and great expectations for the future.
I’d like to share a few South Korean vistas with you.
I’m not sure why Itaewon, pictured above, attracts American visitors. It’s actually one of the seedier sections of Seoul.
New private academies with modern classrooms are sprouting up constantly as parents very much want their children to be well versed in everything.
This is the Gang-Nam bus terminal on the south side of Seoul. It’s so easy to get to anywhere you want to go on the mainland by bus.
I’ve already expressed my affinity for the Seoul subway.
One of my favorite weekend destinations was the Coex Mall beneath the Coex Tower in Seoul.
My apartment was rather small, but it was easy to maintain.
I lived and worked in Cheongju. Here’s a section of the downtown lit up at night.
South Korea, on the end of a peninsula, does have offshore islands. This is the ferry terminal in Pohang that is the jumping off point for the island of Ulleungdo and the Dokdo Islands.
Pohang also has an extensive beach.
Here’s a clifftop view of the harbor town of Do-dong along a rocky inlet on the island of Ulleungdo, accessible by ferry service from Pohang.
South Korea has strongly asserted themselves as having dominion over the Dokdo Islands, though Shimane Prefecture in Japan alleges otherwise.
Weddings are often held in wedding halls, buildings constructed for the very purpose of hosting weddings. I have no idea what the price tag is for renting one of these.
And to conclude, here’s yours truly, on the left in the foreground, frolicking in the countryside with classmates from my Korean language classes, sponsored by the YMCA in Cheongju.
Carnival CLXVI
May 22, 2009 — buckeyerinoThat headline is supposed to indicate Installment 166 of the Carnival of Ohio Politics, but the author of The Boring Made Dull is whimsically turning the number system on its head. There are a number of other whimsical anomalies contained within this newest carnival, like the Grand Canyon of slippery slopes, political candidates with pro-crime platforms, where to place Hessians on the rating scale of mercenaries, and shaving yellow light time. Click the links and enjoy.
Where is Sandusky’s City Manager?
May 21, 2009 — buckeyerinoIf you happened to read my post titled “Smackdown on women in Sandusky,” then you are fully prepared to appreciate the humor behind this video from the Sandusky Register website. What’s not good for the goose seems to be good for the gander. Have a gander.
(ROFL!)
Brushing up on the English language
May 15, 2009 — buckeyerinoFor those of us to the right-of-center, we may have found ourselves engaged in conversations with those to the left-of-center where we thought we knew the meanings of words, but to our puzzlement, found that we must not be talking the same language.
Luckily, I happened across a blog titled “Conservative Northwest” that purports to be “The Right Side of the Left Coast” that has endeavored to cut through the confusion by offering up a more up-to-date glossary on what words REALLY mean in a post titled “The Lexicon of Liberalism.” Conservatives should print it out and insert it as a leaflet in the dictionary so that they don’t find themselves perplexed the next time they talk to liberals.
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