CURMUDGUCATION: Context Does Not Absolve Clinton

CURMUDGUCATION: Context Does Not Absolve Clinton:

Context Does Not Absolve Clinton

Well, that was quick.

After the interwebs blew up with Clinton's ill-considered comment about closing below-average schools, Lauren Camera leapt up at US News to say, "Oh, no. Y'all just misunderstood. It was taken out of context."

I had read the original context when I first responded to her comment. It doesn't help.

The context is that she was discussing how Iowa's governor was crushing rural schools by starving them of necessary resources. She was discussing Iowa's wacky laws about not allowing school district deficits. And then she said this:

This school district and these schools throughout Iowa are doing a better than average job. Now I wouldn't keep any school open that wasn't doing a better than average job. If a school is not doing a good job then, you know, that may not be good for the kids, but when you have a district that is doing a good job it seems kind of counterproductive to impose financial burdens on it.

It is true that she did not suggest, as some slightly hyperventilating reports might have implied, that if elected President, she would make it policy to close all below average schools (i.e. slightly more than half the schools in the country). I will give her that much.

However, that doesn't change what was boneheaded about her comment.

Yes, it was an off-the-cuff comment. But if that's the comment that comes off her cuff, I have serious doubts about how well she understands the situation.

Clinton did NOT say, "If there are schools that are performing poorly, then the state should look CURMUDGUCATION: Context Does Not Absolve Clinton:




AZ: Creationist Charterista Now Head of Senate Ed Committee

Arizona Senate President Andy Biggs has named Senator Sylvia Allen to lead the education committee. This is not good news for public education.

Allen has had a colorful career. She is a Senator because a man fell off a horse. Twice.


Before she arrived in the capitol, she held down a number of jobs, including county supervisor. It was in that job that she was slapped for interfering with an investigation into her son-in-law's misbehavior as a detention officer with female inmates. After becoming a senator, she filed a bill to make it harder to investigate detention officers.

But her legislative career has featured other highlights. In a hearing about some uranium legislation, Allen made the observation that the earth has only been here for 6,000 years (and has done great with environmental regulation, so why start now).  That was 2009. In 2013 she hit facebook with a post saying, "Never mind about global warming. What about those chem trails behind planes dropping mind control drugs on all of us."

More recently, Allen offered support for a concealed carry law because the country needs a moral rebirth. Wouldn't it be great, she mused, if we could make church attendance mandatory?  It's an interesting thought from a Mormon who has perhaps forgotten that once upon a time, the US sent soldiers to settle religious differences with Joseph Smith using the barrels of the many guns.

The new head of the education committee never went to college, but she did help found a charter 

AZ: Creationist Charterista Now Head of Senate Ed Committee