On April 5, 1792, U.S. President George Washington exercised his authority to veto a bill, the first time this power was used in the United States.
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Our First Veto
Michigan’s governor just signed a $49 million emergency funding bill, designed by legislators to keep Detroit’s public schools open.
Open for what?
Will any of that dough actually make it to the classroom, where children might possibly be educated?
Or, as I inquired at Townhall yesterday, is it merely another opening for . . . graft?
Less than a week after the rescue bill, U. S. Attorney Barbara McQuade brought criminal charges against more than a dozen DPS principals and administrators, as well as a vendor of school supplies. Their kickback scheme was simple: school officials received big, fat bribes from the vendor for school supplies that, as the Detroit Free Press put it, “were rarely ever delivered.”
The scam involved at least twelve separate Detroit schools over as long as 13 years. During that time, more than $900,000 was paid in bribes to DPS officials.
The newspaper highlighted how “shocked” teachers were that their principals had been indicted. “It’s pitiful that they’re going after principals who are probably just doing what they need to do even if it might be a little bit unethical in order to provide the students in their schools with the supplies and materials that they need that district and the state should be providing us,” was the excuse one teacher offered.
“A little bit unethical”?
Frankly, the fraud didn’t deliver, but deny “supplies and materials” to students — supplies taxpayers had sacrificed to provide.
This same teacher added that her indicted principal is “always putting students’ interests first. It’s not just rhetoric with her. It’s actual practice.”
Except for the graft.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Rose Wilder Lane
Life is a thin narrowness of taken-for-granted, a plank over a canyon in a fog. There is something under our feet, the taken-for-granted. A table is a table, food is food, we are we — because we don’t question these things. And science is the enemy because it is the questioner. Faith saves our souls alive by giving us a universe of the taken-for-granted.
Rose Wilder Lane, journal entry (1923), as quoted in The Ghost in the Little House, ch. 7, by William V. Holtz (1993).
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Tippecanoe (and, sadly, MLK, too)
On April 4, 1841, William Henry Harrison died of pneumonia, becoming the first President of the United States to die in office and the one with the shortest term served (he died on his 32nd day as president). Renowned Indian killer (having risen to fame for his part in 1811’s Battle of Tippecanoe), a proponent of the expansion of slavery into Northwest Territories, and a Whig, Harrison won the presidency in part by turning the Democrats’ “log cabin and hard cider” aspersions on his character as the basic symbols of the campaign.
Though hardly a “limited government man,” some limited government history buffs proclaim him the Greatest President, on the ostensibly droll and possibly cynical grounds that he spent so little time in office.
On a sadder note, Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated on this day in 1968.
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Townhall: The ABCs of Corruption
If you needed money, you could get money.
Kenyetta Wilbourn Snapp, 40, in a series of exclusive interviews.
The children are not the focus, money is the focus. And what happens to the money no one knows because the money does not reach the classroom.
Beverly Jones, former New Jersey teacher of the year,
from the movie The Cartel
Another big scandal in the City of Corruption, Detroit. Click on over to Townhall.com for this week’s column-length foray into Common Sense. Then come back here for more information.
- Detroit Free Press: 12 Detroit principals stole $1M in kickback scheme
- Ex-EAA principal pleads guilty: I betrayed public trust
- Motion Picture Institute: The Cartel (Trailer)
- The Cartel: A Telling Revelation of the Corrupt Educational System in the “Best Country in the World”
- Cato: Corruption in the Public Schools: The Market Is the Answer
- Common Sense: A Public Fraud in the Midwest
- Common Sense: Cheaters Never Prosper
- Los Angeles Times: FBI seizes LAUSD records related to troubled iPad program
- Times-Picayune: ‘Will this ever stop?’ New Orleans school corruption charge distresses readers
- Baltimore Sun: Lawmakers concerned and angry about city schools enrollment woes
- Texas Watchdog: Houston ISD trustee alleges ‘corruption,’ ‘contract steering’ in initial hire for Grady Middle School contractor
This week’s image, at top, is a satirical drawing based on a published photo of Ms. Snapp, mentioned in this weekend’s column.
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Mountaintop
On April 3, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech.
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Video: The Super Delegates
The truth about the Democratic Party’s selection method, according to Reason tv:
Note: Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass has credited one Paul Jacob for being among the first to raise the issue of superdelegates — via a Townhall column (and Common Sense):
More than a month ago, libertarian Paul Jacob, writing on TownHall.com, examined how Democratic powerbrokers had rigged the game with superdelegates. It’s too bad that those young millennials feeling the Bern don’t read TownHall.com.
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Camille Paglia
American author, art critic, and commentator Camille Paglia was born April 2, 1947.
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Oscar Wilde
A poet can survive everything but a misprint.
Oscar Wilde, “The Children of the Poets,” The Pall Mall Gazette (October 14, 1886).
Limited government sports several rationales. The need for it pertains on many levels. One such level we don’t think about enough? This: Not every rights violation warrants calling in the law.
Take the strange case of Breana Evans, 12-year-old assailant, charged with misdemeanor battery.
What did she do?
She pinched the gluteal posterior of a boy she did not know.
Now, pinching the butt-end of strangers is a breach not only of decorum (to the extent that this standard we call “decorum” even exists any more), but of a pinchee’s rights.
Yet it was a mere pinch.
And the boy did not press charges.
The school’s “resource deputy” did not arrest her; she was merely suspended from school.
It would have remained a minor matter (so to speak) had not the boy’s mother “insisted to police that he was the victim of battery, and so they had no choice but to arrest Breana,” as Robby Soave explained over at Reason. “She was Mirandized and put in a patrol car. They took her mugshot and booked her into juvenile detention.”
The escalation of the dispute over carnal rites and personal rights into a matter fit for the police is, it seems to me, a grave result of a sort of cultural hysteria about all sorts of things. The willingness of some adults to push children through our harsh, bureaucratic, and often ruthless criminal justice system is sad to behold.
It is more indecent than a pinch.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Common Sense Needs Your Help!
Also, please consider showing your appreciation by dropping something in our tip jar (this link will take you to the Citizens in Charge donation page… and your contribution will go to the support of the Common Sense website). Maintaining this site takes time and money.
Your help in spreading the message of common sense and liberty is very much appreciated!