CLINTON'S CONTRACTORS DIS CONGRESS
Clinton's Contractors Pis Congress If anything is clear in the murky debate about national education testing, it's that Congress doesn't want the Clinton administration to continue in the course...
...Robert pitofsky, the FTC chairman, was quoted last week in the Wall Street Journal discussing his agency's study of the proposed tobacco deal, which would require an exemption from the antitrust laws that the FTC administers...
...The main thing is to keep the tobacco companies from earning excess profits, public health be damned...
...and spurned (or is it scorned...
...But the administration is getting cocky...
...This, after all, is why they all set up racially discriminatory admissions programs, except where judges and voters have forbidden the practice...
...What went on here is a complete betrayal of everything we stood for...
...Clinton's Contractors Pis Congress If anything is clear in the murky debate about national education testing, it's that Congress doesn't want the Clinton administration to continue in the course it's been on: constructing tests of fuzzy math and whole language with the help of committees and contractors picked by the Education Department from the heart of the public school establishment...
...Lawyer Donna Harrison was writing about her decision to switch her children from private back into public schools...
...Latino Democrats like Fernando Vega, meantime, are signing on to the anti-bilingual crusade...
...Actually, as The Scrapbook pointed out last week, Graglia's "gaffe," for which he has in any case made public amends, was to tell a painful truth—namely, that all too often at elite universities, blacks and Hispanics "are not academically competitive with whites...
...The same story quoted Republican Assembly leader Bill Leonard saying, "I recommend that the party do nothing...
...But apparently not too high...
...This astonishing posture by a party that backed previous ballot measures ending racial preferences and benefits for illegal immigrants infuriated maverick Republican Ron Unz, who is spearheading the "English for the Children" ballot measure and who is pro-immigration and opposed 1994's anti-immigration Prop 187...
...Clintonism of the Week Ron Carey on the illegal fund-raising efforts on behalf of his campaign for the presidency of the Teamsters union: "If there is a victim here, I certainly am the victim...
...Someone as deft at education politics as William Jefferson Clinton might be expected to know better...
...Now the AJC says that Graglia's case "mirrors closely [sic] that of Jeffries...
...But of course the whole purpose of the tobacco deal is precisely to restrain trade...
...This kind of writing ought to be quashed (or is it squashed...
...Vega, who put up several "English for the Children" campaign signs in the front yard of his Redwood City home, reports a stream of Spanish-speaking mothers from the neighborhood knocking on the door to sign up their children for what they assume are English classes taught by him...
...She described her disappointed hopes "that the curriculum standards endorsed by the Schools Chancellor, Rudy Crew, were vigorous...
...In any case, Latino parents seem more willing to take on the liberal education establishment than much of the California GOP Are Puns Tortious...
...Piling On In the guise of fighting bigotry, the American Jewish Committee has issued a pandering press release deploring "the racially insensitive remarks made recently by Lino Graglia, a University of Texas law professor, whose statements suggested that whites are superior to others...
...If it is a choice between more kids getting lung cancer and the tobacco companies making more money, the FTC knows exactly where it stands: The kids will just have to cough and like it...
...Congress is scared to fight back...
...Or does the New York City Public Schools have some Strength Through Joy program that we ought to know about...
...Atortuous (or is it torturous...
...They're also foolish, and look silly, as well...
...Smith's Folly, as some Hill-dwellers term the testing scheme, continues at flank speed...
...And we foot the bill...
...In recent weeks, the Senate voted 87-13 to reassign the testing venture to an independent board, while the House voted 295-120 to call a halt to the whole thing...
...You might suppose the White House— which says salvaging this ill-begun venture is its top priority and is threatening vetoes if Congress kills it—would at least put its contractors on hold while it seeks to work with Congress...
...As they say of verbal precision: If you've got it, flout it...
...But no...
...Last week, Georgetown's posh Four Seasons Hotel hosted a two-day meeting of test developers and several dozen "advisers" convened by the Council for Basic Education, which stands to earn a tidy sum for its part in the $13 million contract now in force...
...The AJC's only other excuse for dragging Graglia's name through the mud seems to be that it once, rightly, denounced the notorious racist and anti-Semitic crank Leonard Jeffries, who taught students at CCNY that blacks ("sun people") were indeed superior to whites ("ice people...
...This, of course, is the stated view of admissions officers at Graglia's university, as revealed in court documents from the Hopwood case, and the whispered view at practically every other American institution of higher education...
...The contractors are getting paid...
...The exemption, pitofsky feared, "would allow the tobacco companies to coordinate their behavior and raise prices far in excess of levels necessary to cover the annual payments and keep the extra profits for themselves.'" In other words, the FTC chairman is concerned lest the tobacco agreement raise cigarette prices too much...
...But Graglia said nothing of racial "superiority," a word that came straight from the imagination of the publicists at the AJC, who are apparently eager to use this episode to flog a favorite house publication of theirs called "Bigotry on Campus...
...Clueless Republicans_ California Republicans are proving gutless on the issue of ending bilingual education in the state, fearing that they will be accused of Hispanic-bashing...
...When nervous participants asked the Education Department if maybe the meeting ought not be deferred until Congress makes up its mind, Deputy Secretary Marshall Smith (who picked all these folks) said: Nothing doing...
...Unz called the party leadership "cowardly" in a Washington Times story last week...
...presumably, that would be "in restraint of trade," to use the quaint language of the Sherman Act...
...solecism was committed in the lead op-ed piece of the New York Times last Wednesday, right next to William Safire, he of "On Language...
...They complain that their children aren't learning enough English at school...
...No, it doesn't, and the AJC owes Graglia an apology for the breathtakingly unfair comparison...
...Indeed, the federal strategy is to reduce smoking, especially teen-age smoking, by raising the price of cigarettes...
...Restraint of Logic Those who suspect that large parts of the federal government are essentially lunatic in their orientation now have the proof, at least as far as the Federal Trade Commission is concerned...
...The hotel welcomes the business...
...Does she mean rigorous...
...They're sticking their fingers in our eyes," complains a House staffer...
Vol. 3 • October 1997 • No. 4
