The Texas Miracle, The Florida Miracle, and Rush
You saw the front page of Friday’s Times? The Texas education miracle touted during the 2000 campaign appears now to have been slightly less miraculous. An audit of 16Houston schools for the school year 2000-2001 recommended reclassifying 14 of them from ‘best’ to . . . well . . . there’s no easy way to put a good face on this . . . ‘worst.’ It seems that – for example – one school that had reported no drop-outs for the year had . . . well . . . 462 drop-outs. Stuff like that.
Is it possible we were misled?
It reminds one of the other Governor Bush – the one in Florida – who slashed the budget for drug treatment programs by 85% but claimed in a televised gubernatorial debate to have raised funding by 60%. He accomplished this miracle by shifting employees – who continued to do precisely what they had been doing before – from one accounting category to another. Honest, compassionate conservatism.
I know one risks being branded unpatriotic for suggesting it, but one almost senses the possibility the Bushes are not entirely honest with their followers.
We were told President Bush barely even knew Ken Lay, and thought of him as an Ann Richards supporter. We were told that the secret energy policy discussions – with a long list of industry executives not even a lawsuit by the General Accounting Office could pry loose – were designed to benefit the public. We were told that California‘s