When Enron imploded, the Astros took down the big ‘E’ that marked Enron Field and put up new signage for the newly christened Minute Maid Park. A friend of Karen’s affectionately refers to it as Juice Box Park.
Now, WorldCom has imploded. WorldCom owns MCI, and MCI owns the rights to D.C.’s basketball/hockey/concert arena, the MCI Center. Will it be renamed as well? Capri-Sun Center has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?
Thankfully, I didn’t even have the chance to see this tragedy unfold on my television set.
Competition; namely, competition with me. One of the beauties of writing for a monopoly paper like the Chronicle is that if you’re coverage an event or issue is mediocre, at least there’s nothing better for readers to compare it to. Sure, they might think, “This stinks,” but you really can’t appreciate how truly blase a story is until you compare it with another, better written story about the same subject.
The same goes for writers. Which is why, when I wrote a story about a truck bringing steel from the World Trade Center through town, I was very depressed to read a much, much better story about the same event in the Washington Post the next day. I won’t go into all the ways in which Ylan Q. Mui’s story sends my story whimpering away with its tail between its legs, especially since I don’t have a link to my story to provide you with. But I assure you, it does. [Update: here’s my story.]
In tennis, it’s said, that you only get better if you play against someone who’s better than you are. I don’t know about that. I always got discouraged and stopped chasing after the ball. By the way, I see Mui at the event — we both interviewed one of the organizers after the ceremony described in the story, and I strongly doubt she’s out of her mid-20s. Which makes me feel a little bit like the 32-year-old guy hitting .250 in the minor leagues, still hoping for a chance at the big time. Sometimes you’ve got to know when to pack it in.
Fortunately, I don’t need to be good enough to write for the Post. I only need to be good enough to write for the Sun. And I’m learning. Yes, I’m learning. I just can’t stop learning something new every day, damn these brain cells of mine.
While the Supreme Court decision on vouchers was a great achievement, there’s still a long way to go. I covered a Pew Forum panel discussion on the impact of the court’s decision Friday, and the anti-voucher folks did not just throw up their hands and say, “Well, I guess it’s over then.”
They’re going to fight any voucher plan in the states, arguing that even if it doesn’t violate the U.S. Constitution, it violates the state constitution’s establishment clause. They are going to fight school choice on the merits, grasping at any argument — such as the Edison schools fiasco — to prop up thegovernment-school monopoly.
Chuck Karczag makes an excellent point regarding anti-choice rhetoric:
“Ah!” the critics contend, “but 96.6% of parents send their kids to parochial schools.” Therefore the primary effect of this voucher
scheme is to send fresh bodies to parochial schools, thereby aiding Religion, thereby being unconstitional. What a load of crap. Parents send their children to the religious schools for 2 reasons: 1)Religious schools are more affordable and 2) they do a better job.
Now, here’s the interesting part: if vouchers were provided at funding levels anywhere comparable to the per-student government school funding, then private, non-religious schools would flourish. So, if you’re really concerned about tons of poor kids being brainwashed into religous belief, then you would have to conclude that a higher valued voucher would be constitutional. But should we expect to see voucher opponents switch to a “show me the money” approach, demanding reasonably-valued vouchers as a second-best choice to none at all?
Don’t hold your breath.
An argument I heard advanced on Friday a government-school defender was that public schools were being held to strict standards enforced by the federal government and state governments while private schools provided no “accountability.” Huh? Unlike government schools, private schools are directly accountable to parents, who — with the power of a voucher — can leave at any time. The most dissatisfied public-school parents can do is yell at the school board, transfer their child to a magnet school, or move to a different neighborhood. Notice that in each of those scenarios, the student (and therefore, the money) stays in the public-school system.
Perhaps what’s scariest to voucher opponents is the notion that schools — and the money that funds them — won’t be under their control anymore, but controlled directly by the people most impacted by them: parents and their children.
Anti-choicers complain that vouchers take away money from public schools. Well, the Cleveland program doesn’t, but some might.
But so what? They also take away the students those schools are supposed to be serving as well. If the money follows each student, then losing some students is a good thing –smaller class sizes, for example. But my guess is that most of the per-student money doesn’t actually go to serve the student, but pay for bloated bureaucracy and overpaid, underqualified teachers.
When one anti-choice panelist (who argued that vouchers were just a plot to resegregate schools) talked Friday about how he sent his children to private school for several years but felt the obligation to pay for it himself, a distinguished-looking gray-haired black lady in the third row spoke up. I paraphrase:
“Well, you could afford it,” she said. “Excuse me. I have to say something. I am a parent and grandparent raising three children by myself. You see this girl?” she asked, pointing to a cute 7-year-old girl in a floral-print summer dress whose straps were kissed by her shoulder-length, curly black hair.
“When she was 4 years old, she begged me to go to school. Now she’s going into the second grade, and she says she doesn’t want to go anymore. She’s totally turned off by school. And I don’t have the money to take her out and send her someplace else. I cannot wait for schools in the District to get better. My child needs a choice.”
I don’t think I need to add anything to that.
As he so often does, Steve Chapman looks beyond the superficial inconsistencies of the court rulings on vouchers and the Pledge of Allegiance to see an underlying logic. He writes:
The two courts were not only both right but were acting on behalf of the same sound constitutional principle.The principle can be summed up in two words: official neutrality. It stipulates that in dealing with religion, the government should be neither ally nor adversary. The 1st Amendment not only protects freedom of religion but forbids government support of religion.
He concludes:
How can we bar public schools from encouraging students to pay homage to God while allowing public money to go to schools whose whole purpose is to pay homage to God? By leaving decisions involving faith to individual conscience. A crazy idea, but it just might work.
Next up, Chapman tries to explain how allowing schools to drug-test marching band members fits into the picture.
A front-page story by Mary Jordan in today’s Washington Post reminds us how well off women in the United States are, relative to many other parts of the world. “In Mexico, an unpunished crime” examines the astonishingly low rates of prosecution, conviction and punishment for rapists in that country. To wit:
Although the law calls for tough penalties for rape — up to 20 years in prison — only rarely is there an investigation into even the most barbaric of sexual violence. Women’s groups estimate that perhaps 1 percent of rapes are ever punished.
In the pueblos, it gets worse:
Town elders who act as judges in local criminal matters are invariably men. In one village in Guerrero state, elders were recently asked how they punish rape. The six men looked confused, as if they did not know what the term meant. When it was explained to them, they all laughed and said it sounded more like a courting ritual than a crime.
When they stopped laughing, they said a rapist would probably get a few hours in the local jail, or he might have to pay the victim’s family a $10 or $20 fine, but that all would be forgotten if he and the victim got married.
In the case of a cow thief, they said, the robber would be jailed. And, unlike the rapist, a cow thief would be brought before the elders for a lecture about the severity of the crime.
Once again, what could I add?
So says Sally Jenkins of Pete Sampras, and she’s right. Like other greats such as Larry Bird and Ryne Sandberg, Pete Sampras didn’t have a lot to say, but he respected the game he played and in that way gave us the best he could. That said, it’s time for him to retire. I hope he makes one last run at the U.S. Open, but he should go home now and enjoy his money. He left a great legacy: it’s called the entire decade of the 1990s in men’s tennis.
In case you didn’t know, Bob Dylan is starring in an upcoming theatrical release called “Masked & Anonymous,” about a “wandering troubadour brought out of prison for one last charity concert.” Luke Wilson, Angela Bassett and Jeff Bridges also star. It’s supposed to go into production in July. Let’s just hope it’s as good as “Hearts of Fire.”
WASHINGTON — Thursday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling on school vouchers is only the beginning of a broader legal and political debate, according to both opponents and advocates of vouchers.
"This case was not about whether there should be vouchers, but whether there could be vouchers," said Judith French, the former Ohio attorney general who successfully argued before the Supreme Court that Cleveland’s school choice program for low-income students passed constitutional muster.
French participated in one of two panel discussions Friday hosted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
"I believe this decision allows us to experiment with vouchers," French said. "But that’s what it is — an experiment, not a mandate."
In the case, Zelman vs. Simmons-Harris, justices voted 5-4 that Cleveland’s program does not violate the First Amendment’s establishment clause by allowing parents to choose to send their children to private religious schools.
Of the 4,400 low-income Cleveland students receiving vouchers of up to $2,250, 96 percent attend religious schools.
Though the Supreme Court’s decision may settle federal law, state courts could still come down harder on voucher programs, said Elliot Mincberg, co-counsel for voucher opponents in Cleveland and general counsel to People for the American Way, which also opposes vouchers.
"By no means is this the end of the legal road," he said. "The fight with regard to school vouchers has only just begun."
Some states are more restrictive than others on the use of using public funds for religious purposes, said Mark Chopko, general counsel for the pro-vouchers U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. He said 17 states are restrictive, 16 are permissive and 17 are uncertain.
"So you have about a third going in each direction," Chopko said. "This decision does not impact states directly. The ruling sets a constitutional floor, not a ceiling."
The political debate will likely center on whether vouchers take funds from public schools and how to hold private schools accountable to the public. Public schools receive $347 billion at all levels of government.
"This decision is more about the future of the public schools than about the future of the establishment clause," said Marc Egan, director of the Voucher Strategy Center at the National School Boards Association, which opposes school choice.
"With vouchers, there’s no accountability to the public," Egan said. "Vouchers just hand over tax money, no questions asked."
Voucher proponents argue parental choice is what keeps private schools on their toes.
"There is no single test that will determine if a school is successful, just as there’s no single model for a successful education," said William F. Davis, deputy secretary for schools at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. "To say we’re not accountable is ridiculous. We’re accountable to parents every day."
One pro-voucher activist echoed the point.
"The measure of success is not only determined by test scores," said Virginia Walden-Ford, executive director of D.C. Parents for School Choice Inc. "We also want to know that kids are safe, that they’ll graduate and that people in the schools care about them."
Walden-Ford, who is black, sent one of her children to a private school after he repeatedly got into trouble in public school. He graduated from high school with honors and is now in the U.S. Marines. Walden-Ford said she wants other parents, especially low-income blacks in Washington, to have that choice.
"We can’t sit around and wait and sacrifice our kids," she said. "How long can we wait?"
Mincberg rejected that logic.
"Anyone who thinks that vouchers really serve parents is just buying into right-wing propaganda," he said. "Vouchers don’t deal with the real issues the public schools face, like inadequate funding."
The National School Boards Association’s Egan said, "Most public schools in this country are doing just fine. Some are in trouble, but most are just fine."
The political implications of school vouchers are also an open question, according to E.J. Dionne, co-chair of the Pew Forum and a columnist at the Washington Post.
"It will be interesting to see how wide and deep the support for vouchers is in the black community," Dionne said. "If the Republicans can pick up even 10 percent [more] black voters on the voucher issue, that’s a huge plus for them."
Ninety percent of blacks voted for Democrat Al Gore in 2000, with only 9 percent voting for President Bush.
___
© 2002, McClatchy/Tribune Information Services
WASHINGTON — Sixteen tons of steel taken from the ruins of the World Trade Center towers sat idly on the back of a flatbed truck Tuesday, held in place by industrial strength cording.
On Sept. 11, the once straight, solid beams eventually gave way to the stress from the collapsing towers. The only menace the twisted metal beams now posed was as a painful reminder of what happened that day.
The steel is traveling across the country as part of a tour to promote "Freedom’s Flame," a proposed memorial to the 71 law enforcement workers who died in the collapse of the twin towers in New York.
The World Trade Center steel was on display across the street from the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Park during a brief midday ceremony in which organizers placed a wreath next to the inscribed names of the officers who died that day.
The organizers, from Southern California, hope to build a memorial in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., that incorporates the steel and later construct a duplicate memorial to be donated to New York City. They estimate construction of the two memorials will take three years and cost $9 million.
"We could have just taken this metal and shipped it on a train back to California, but that’s not the point," said Chuck Williams, director of the project. "The purpose of Freedom’s Flame is to remind people to never, never, never, never forget. We have too much forgetting in this country."
People nationwide saw the terrorist attacks unfold on their television screens, Williams said, "but when they actually see that twisted steel, they understand the power of what the terrorists did on American soil to the people in those buildings."
The design proposed by architect William Lecky, who was involved in the creation of the Vietnam Veterans and Korean War Veterans memorials, has 30 7-foot figures ascending and descending a staircase that wraps around a giant stainless steel flame.
Survivors would be shown rushing down the stairs and leaving the scene, while police officers and firefighters rush up the stairs to help others.
The flame and the base would form a sundial charting each tragic event of Sept. 11, from the time the first plane hit to the time the second tower fell. The time of each event would be carved into the base of the memorial.
The stainless steel used to build the memorial would be cast in gray to mimic the ash and smoke that covered Ground Zero. The steel beams currently touring the county would be used in the memorial’s inner structure.
The memorials would also include a fragment of limestone from the Pentagon and "something from Shanksville," Lecky said, referring to Shanksville, Pa., the crash site of the fourth hijacked plane.
Tuesday was the second day of the 11-day cross-country tour that will wind up in Southern California on Independence Day. A charter bus trailing the flatbed truck carried a message in 5-foot-tall white letters on its sides.
The sign read, "Let’s Roll," words said by Todd Beamer of Cranbury, N.J., who with other passengers challenged the hijackers of the airplane that went down near Shanksville. The nation has embraced those words as an expression of determination.
___
© 2002, McClatchy/Tribune Information Services
This is just too much to believe.
R. Kelly has released a new song called “Heaven, I Need A Hug,” in which he pleads, “Is there anybody out there willing to embrace a thug?” It seems it’s his thuggish embraces of underaged girls that got Kelly in trouble in the first place.
Tim Lynch on “Breaking the Vicious Cycle: Preserving Our Liberties While Fighting Terrorism.” An excellent overview of the issues. A companion piece to that is Ted Galen Carpenter’s “Protecting Liberty in a Permanent War.”
Michael Lynch is right on in his “Flying Fat” about Southwest’s policy of charging obese folks (like myself) more for spilling over into the next seat. A common misperception is that you’re only paying to get from point A to point B. But part of the fare is for how much space you take up on the plane. Lynch writes:
Passengers are paying for real estate, a well-defined seat bordered by two armrests that is barely sufficient to provide a tolerably comfortable flight. Overweight people have no right to eat off another person’s plate in a restaurant and they have no general right to occupy part of the seat that another person has purchased on an airplane.
Eventually, as more and more people occupy more territory on planes, we may see larger seats in new plane — or perhaps even a fat section.
So in his column today Howard Kurtz included an item about a fundraising letter Fred Barnes sent out on IPJ’s behalf.
Kurtz incorrectly describes Barnes as director of IPJ (he sits on the Fund for American Studies’ Board of Trustees. But according to Kurtz, Barnes writes in the letter, “We conservative journalists are vastly outnumbered, and we need reinforcements soon!” Of course, those reinforcements are supposed to come in part from IPJ. This was discussed in our ethics class tonight in passing and caused quite a tizzy.
Barnes contradicts himself a little bit. In the letter he says that many of the IPJ students “are bright young conservatives,” but he told Kurtz that in his recent visit, “they didn’t sound like conservatives to me.” And he’s right that there’s no litmus test on IPJ students. The application asks only one very vague essay question.
But it’s no secret that the Fund itself is a conservative organization — heck, I attended an event explicitly intended for young conservatives and libertarians hosted at the Fund’s headquarters — and that IPJ attempts through its classes to impart a conservative point of view. I don’t think it’s an accident that three weeks into classes we’ve yet to hear John Maynard Keynes’ name mentioned in our economics lecture, or for that matter a kind word for government. Take a look at the syllabus for yourself.
Every speaker we’ve had so far has been conservative. All of our speakers, to my knowledge, are conservatives. Our speaker next week is Jessica Gavora, wife of National Review scribe Jonah Goldberg (son of Clinton-hater Lucianne Goldberg) and speechwriter for every civil libertarian‘s favorite whipping boy, Attorney General John Ashcroft.
Now, I’m fine with all of this. I knew that going in. But accusations (that is, accurate descriptions) that IPJ is conservative definitely should not cause a tizzy. I recall asking a couple of non-conservative seeming folks I met my first day here, “Now, you all know this is a right-wing program right?” I received responses I would call equivocal. So I wonder how many people even bothered to check out the program before applying or agreeing to come. I guess since pretty much everyone was accepted regardless, it doesn’t make much of a difference.
kboreilly.com 
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