School Choice - Maybe -

What a beautiful day today - temperatures in the upper 40's and mostly sunny. I should have ridden my bike, road bike that is, but I figured what the heck, seeing that by tomorrow we are in line for two inches of snow, I'll think of something else to do instead of busting my butt.

On top this, I really didn't want to take the time to get into all of those cloths that you have to have when riding in temperatures under fifty degrees. And, what good will one day of outside riding do to help me loose the five pounds that I have put on this winter? Zip! I went to town shopping at Menards.

On my way to town, I listened to a radio personality from Milwaukee, Charley Sykes, who has championed the 'School Choice' program here in Wisconsin, due to the prospect of this program not being extended to cover increased enrollment.

Some local black school students and the editor of a local black newspaper, decided to do something after Sykes made a challenge days earlier to the black community to become involved in this problem, made a devastating commercial attacking the governor for his stand on School Choice. The radio station that Sykes is on, and where the commercial would be broadcast, is the largest in the state.

Our governor, Jim Doyle, is the center piece of this discussion, of course, because he has decided that 'contract schools' and other avenues of choice, do not have enough controls and so accountability and credibility is lacking. Again, this isn't the real reason, but it sounded good when he sang this tune to the choir. The members of the choir all belong to the WEA.

Mr. Doyle has championed the Wisconsin Educational Association in the past for their political support, and this year is no different. This year he even raided the transportation fund of at least 450 million to give to the teachers over and above what the legislature had already given them.

It seems that our good governor is in the pocket of the WEA, among other organizations too numerous to mention now, and has no intention of doing anything to upset the teachers just before an election.

Signing a bill that allows students to go to schools that are not part of the public school system or better than the ones in their neighborhoods, whether they are good for the students doesn't matter, is bad politics. Not signing the bill will force 4500 mostly black kids out of these schools of choice and back into the failed school systems run by the WEA and the State of Wisconsin.

The governor and the Democratic Party are furious with Mr. Sykes for taking this stand and have threatened him with the McCain/Feingold bill that states corporations can't not become involved by name in supporting or opposing a political candidate. ( I believe this is what the law states, but I not positive )

Mr Sykes stated that no money changed hands in making the commercial, and that he challenged the governor to come after him if he thinks he is so sure that he has broken the law. Sykes also stated that he will not back down on this, and will run the commercial repeatedly.

Interestingly enough, the threat from the Democrats never mentioned the black students or their plight of being dumped back out into the street that they had fought so hard to leave behind. A street of no hope for academic excellence and advancement in the larger society.

This situation also begs the question of why do black people continually vote for Democrats when the Democrats don't have their best interests at heart?

Another question is why hasn't this gone national? Maybe it's the media again deciding what is best for us, do ya' think? The puppet masters and the liberal Democrats at their best.


As if this wasn't enough, Wisconsin has just been rated as the worst litigation hell in the whole country by the WallStreet Journal as well as a tax hell - more on this later -