The content of their character
This from the redoubtable Heather Mac Donald in City Journal tells us what “even playing field” means to some people — equal results, across the board:
As part of its plan to comply with a federal desegregation order now decades old, Tucson’s school district adopted racial quotas in school discipline this summer.
Schools that suspend or expel Hispanic and black students at higher rates than white students will now get a visit from a district “Equity Team” and will be expected to remedy those disparities by reducing their minority discipline rates.
In Oak Park discipline rates are regularly discussed with a view to disparity of punishment. Objectors to how more often blacks are punished even brought in elected officials from outside Oak Park. But nothing like this has happened. No one has called from a quota that I know of.
As for the language abuse embodied in that “playing field” stuff, it’s been lambasted best by George Orwell in his “Politics and the English Language,” in which he notes the role of language in stultifying our processes:
[Our language] becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.
The ebullient, even bombastic Ezra Pound was even more condemnatory in “A Problem of (Specifically) Style” in 1934:
[A] tolerance for slipshod expression in whatever department of writing gradually leads to chaos . . . and a progressive rottenness of spirit.
In Tucson the pattern seems clear enough:
Tucson’s administrators explain their disciplinary quota pressure on the ground that students removed from class lose valuable learning time, exacerbating the already great ethnic academic achievement gap.
Such thinking ignores the students who are not disrupting class or threatening teachers and who also lose valuable learning time when unruly or violent students remain in the classroom.
Mac Donald adds:
Surely those students have a greater claim to “equity” in school resources than gang members do.
Schools are to look for “root causes” in bad behavior. Mac Donald:
I can save them some time: the root cause of disparate rates of suspension is disparate rates of bad behavior.
“Single parenting” is the biggest one.
If the Tucson school board wants to publicize the essential role of fathers in raising law-abiding children, it might start solving the problem of disciplinary imbalance.
But until then, it should let schools resolve their discipline problems in a color-blind fashion, without worrying about a visit from an “Equity Team.”
It’s “the content of their character,” as Martin Luther King said in his “I have a dream” speech.
Rev. Jesse Jackson wants no part of that. He calls invoking King in this context is “intellectual terrorism.” Orwellian, right?
Prominent Wheeling Jesuit alum slams Giulietti firing
A contributor and volunteer fund-raiser for Wheeling Jesuit University has withdrawn his promised support amounting to $650,000 in cash and property bequests in protest of the firing in August of Rev. Julio Giulietti, SJ, as president.
The firing was “the most cowardly, deceitful and morally perverse action that I have ever witnessed,” said Stephen E. Haid in an Oct. 18 letter to interim President J. Davitt McAteer. Blithe Spirit has obtained a copy of the letter.
Haid, a 1963 graduate of Wheeling Jesuit and longtime teacher at West Virginia University until becoming a teachers union lobbyist and then campaign chairman and later cabinet member in Gov. Gaston Caperton’s administration, blames the firing on three people or groups:
* Bishop Michael Bransfield of Wheeling, who “wanted to slap [Giulietti] down” because Giulietti “sought to acquire the [adjacent] Mount de Chantal property for Wheeling Jesuit.”
* “An element on the Board of Directors . . . who want to micromanage the University, who want any president to be an errand boy.”
* The three Jesuit trustees who “in an irregular night session” voted to fire Giulietti.
Haid was named last March by Guilietti as one of two Special Assistants to the President for Advancement to work on planned giving, endowment development and alumni partnerships, with an office on campus.
It was a continuation of his working “very closely” with Guilietti “for at least a year,” he said in his letter.
Among Haid’s other activities is to serve with Bishop Bransfield on the board of the West Virginia KIDS COUNT Fund, founded in 1989 by Gov. Caperton, who later became president of The College Board.
Haid has also served on the board of governors of Marshall University, in Huntington, WV — at one time as a member of its executive committee.
RC bishops backing off
The RC bishops have cut off two more organizations — ACORN being already tossed under the prelatial bus — from Catholic Campaign for Human Development funding.
One of them is
the Chinese Progressive Association (CPA), which has been funded for the last four years, and was set to receive $30,000 this year. The CPA’s 2008 voters guide (on the BVM website here and here) urged Californians to vote against enshrining the true definition of marriage in the state’s constitution (proposition Eight) and requiring parental notification for minors seeking abortions (proposition 4)
The other:
the Los Angeles Community Action Network (LACAN) . . . which has been funded for the last five years and was to receive $40,000 this year. LACAN has promoted same-sex ‘marriage’ and actively supports contraception and the morning-after pill through a clinic at the Downtown Women’s Center.
They were both fingered by the Bellarmine Veritas Ministry, “a Catholic grass-roots organizing ministry dedicated to truth and action,” which also says this about itself:
Unlike community organizing groups which bring men together to create faceless political power and revolution, we recognize the inherent dignity of each person created by God . . . . We do not strive to create power . . . . Instead, we seek to instill the fearless hope that comes from walking in light and truth.
CCHD director Ralph McCloud announced himself “shocked” at being informed of the un-Catholic proclivities of the two now-defunded organizations. But it’s a claim that Churchmouse Campanologist (“Ringing the bells for Christian traditions and getting our story out there. If we don’t, who will?”) found hard to swallow:
(A) 26-page list on the USCCB website . . . [has] all the hallmarks of organisations no true Catholic would wish to donate to.
It includes multiple references to:
‘Industrial Areas Foundation’ [Alinsky legacy from its beginnings], ‘PICO’ [People Improving Communities through Organizing, mostly by churches], ‘community organisation’? It must follow, therefore, that these groups espouse a leftist philosophy and will support leftist programmes, whether sexual, social or political.
Sounds right to me. RC bishops have been captured?
20 Brit parishes off to Rome
First off the block to join the RC’s:
At the 2009 Assembly of the Traditional Anglican Communion UK, the following resolution was passed:
That this Assembly, representing the Traditional Anglican Communion in Great Britain, offers its joyful thanks to Pope Benedict XVI for his forthcoming Apostolic Constitution allowing the corporate reunion of Anglicans with the Holy See, and requests the Primate and College of Bishops of the Traditional Anglican Communion to take the steps necessary to implement this Constitution.
The Assembly also suggests Bishop Robert Mercer as a possible candidate for Ordinary.
That’s “twenty or so parish communities,” says Fr. Tim Finigan at The Hermeneutic of Continuity.
To the NY 23 victor go the — what?
Yesterday’s loser in NY 23, Doug Hoffman, is in for a hard time as a Republican?
Hoffman’s candidacy generated much talk of a civil war in the GOP. Ironically, it is [the winner, Bill] Owens who is about to learn firsthand what it’s like to belong to a majority that brooks no dissent.
That’s Stephen Spruiell at National Review Online, who has more:
When Blue Dogs voiced their concerns over the speed at which Pelosi was attempting to ram the health-care overhaul through the House, their fellow Democrats responded with contemptuous sneers.
Rep. Maxine Waters, the liberal lawmaker from California, criticized Rahm Emanuel’s strategy of recruiting conservative Democrats to run in right-leaning districts, saying that Emanuel’s “chickens have come home to roost.” Former DNC chief Howard Dean warned of primary challenges for Blue Dogs if they didn’t support the public option.
And those will be his seatmates and/or fellows in politics between now and the next election in less than a year?
Park National double-crossed?
Today’s Trib reports a letter from banker Michael Kelly to Oak Park-based FBOP employees that more or less blames FDIC for its going under — rules change did them in, he says.
Kelly, who lives in next-door-to-Oak Park River Forest (IL), has been quite a financial supporter of Christ the King Jesuit College Prep on the West Side, on the former Resurrection parish school property.
Don Harmon on the move
Not sure what this means. On the surface, it seems that Harmon is making his move, Davis is dithering and losing out — as he is bound to, being so obviously left-wing and an unreliable campaigner to boot.
Sen. Don Harmon has filed for 7th District State Central Committeeman against Congressman Danny Davis. Davis has filed for Congress and Cook County Board President. He has until next Monday to decide which office to seek.
That is, I don’t know if it’s a surprise or what it represents by way of guard-changing.
Wimp city
Dennis Byrne finds much to complain about in Illinois and Chicago corruption:
Chicago is wimp city. A city full of obsequious voters, businesses and civic groups that have been repeatedly swindled, scammed and hosed by local politicians. Yet, with each betrayal, the serfs continue to grovel before such liege lords as Mayor Richard M. Daley and House Speaker Michael Madigan and beg for more of the same. Nothing is egregious enough to inspire insurrection by the city and state’s vassals.
Overstated? Take plastics, into which The Graduate was urged to go on his big day:
Daley now is fighting to keep a huge national plastics industry convention from fleeing Chicago, its 40-year home. The show brought in $95.3 million last June, but it appears the exhibitors are fed up with the extravagant costs they must pay to riggers, tradesmen and other organized workers at McCormick Place. As the trade publication Plastics News reported, Daley met Wednesday in his office with convention officials to plead with them to stay.
Won’t you stay here, Bill Plastics, won’t you stay here?
As trade show exhibitor Tim Hanrahan explained in the publication, it cost $345 to get four cases of Pepsi to his booth. “The invoice breaks down to $254 for the four cases of Pepsi, a 21 percent service charge, and a 10.25 percent Illinois state sales tax, a 3 percent Chicago soft drink tax, a tax on the service charge and a food and beverage tax. Government taxes totaled $38.06, which is more than the legitimate retail price of the soft drinks,” he said. “I could go on. A $640 TV stand rental is another good example,” he said. “But you get the point.”
Taxes, we got taxes. Like California:
In America’s federal system, some states, such as California, offer residents a “package deal” that bundles numerous and ambitious public benefits with the high taxes needed to pay for them. Other states, such as Texas, offer packages combining modest benefits and low taxes. These alternatives, of course, define the basic argument between liberals and conservatives over what it means to get the size and scope of government right.
Thus spake William Voegeli in LA Times, in a shortened version of a City Journal article.
[T]here’s an intense debate over which model is more admirable and sustainable. What is surprising is the growing evidence that the low-benefit/low-tax package not only succeeds on its own terms but also according to the criteria used to defend its opposite. In other words, the superior public goods that supposedly justify the high taxes just aren’t being delivered.
Take California, where taxes are high and things aren’t working, vs. Texas, where they are low and things are. Take Chicago, where a $95.3 million convention is considering saying adieu, my friends, adieu, can no longer stay with you, and the big news is budget crunch and threatened services. Please?
Laura W: Let chips fall
It was amazing. The Nov. 2 column by Laura Washington left me speechless, which since I’m a gabby fellow does not often happen. [See LW’s lede for model here.]
It’s about this bunch of Chi Trib retirees getting together to do so-called public service reporting — all white, almost all male of a certain age.
So what? It’s their nickel, their time, requiring no federal money. Let ‘em go, forget about it. That’s my advice. They will succeed or they won’t. In this day there are no news monopolies, so the market will decide.
As for so-called diversity, which is Laura’s requirement, please. In lieu of fast-disappearing professionalism, the only diversity that matters is political. Socio-political-economic, I suppose. O’Shea and friends are not likely to supply that, especially if NYTimes is their anchor buyer.
Time out at Wheeling Jesuit
Wheeling Jesuit U. can’t find enough candidates for the president’s job and is regrouping.
“They need time,” said a spokeswoman.
The search committee had its first meeting Aug. 31 (to replace Rev. Julio Giulietti SJ, who’d been fired Aug. 5 after two years on the job).
The board chairman, William Fisher, had predicted finding someone by Jan. 1. They began with 35 applicants, none of them Jesuit, chose seven for interviews, picked two of these to visit campus and meet staff and students.
Not enough, said the spokeswoman. “They want to re-evaluate their next step.”
“The process . . . takes time,” said Fisher, who works for the bishop of Wheeling as financial officer. “We want to . . . do this right.”
They are halting the search, apparently surprised at how hard it is. “The difficulties hiring somebody at that level are enormous,” said the spokeswoman.
