Civic Culture Watch: Education

From The Boston Globe:

Over 100 Boston parents, students, and community activists last night attended a community forum to comment on Superintendent Carol Johnson’s plan to turn around 14 academically struggling schools. One community-based group pushed for new leadership at Blackstone Elementary School in the South End, while the principal and some students at the Tobin K-8 School on Mission Hill defended their performance. It was not clear when the School Committee will vote on the superintendent’s plan.

This is why Boston’s move from an elected School Committee to an appointed body was a disaster for accountable education in the City.

Forget for the moment that “over 100” parents, students, and community activists ain’t a hell of a lot of people; forget the total incoherence of the audience.  The issue is this: the School Committee will make its decision secure in the fact that the needs of Boston’s children will remain secondary to the short-term political interests of the Mayor.

Obtuse Progressives and the Stupac Amendment

Talking Points Memo has a post, citing a George Washington University study claiming that the Stupak amendment would eventually  end all access to abortion:

In other words, though the immediate impact of the Stupak amendment will be limited to the millions of women initially insured through a new insurance exchange, over time, as the exchanges grow, the insurance industry will scale down their abortion coverage options until they offer none at all.

Not so.

 One presumes that other insurance companies – possibly even foreign ones – could see the profit potential in issuing riders for reproductive health.  Between progressive, libertarian, and liberal women, the market is there for such specific coverage at a minimal premium cost:  the procedure isn’t that expensive.

While the study attempts to refute this:

Furthermore the study finds that the supposed fallback option for impacted women–a “rider” policy that provides supplemental coverage for abortions only–may not even be allowed under the terms of the law. “In our view, the terms and impact of the Amendment will work to defeat the development of a supplemental coverage market for medically indicated abortions. In any supplemental coverage arrangement, it is essential that the supplemental coverage be administered in conjunction with basic coverage. This intertwined administration approach is barred under Stupak/Pitts because of the prohibition against financial comingling.”

This is easy to rebut in the real world.  Separate policies aren’t “comingling”.  Any halfway competent insurance lawyer can get aroud this and make a bundle for his (or her) client.

Progressives as a class aren’t terribly bright, but they’re profoundly stupid when they panic.

Debt Watch

From Andrew Sullivan: