The Noise Machine (01/15/10)

Today Rick will perform for you......



Call this Terry Grier vs. the teacher's unions. I've often thought that any new HISD Super needs to come in and immediately stare down Gayle Fallon & Co. It's called institutional control, too many HISD chiefs haven't had it.


HFD Chief Boriskie gets a scolding but who can tell with the calendar shot that ChronBlog has chosen to accompany the story? (Whew!)


Green takes over, sheds staff. This could be "removing one level of management" as he calls it, or it could be clearing out salary for cronies. As is usually the case, the final determinant will be in the quality of staff he hires to fill the audit positions. Right now the two top slots in the office are filled with individuals possessing no audit or accounting experience. (Of course, the biggest lie in politics is that the controller, or comptroller, is a financial position. It's a political position that ostensibly serves an accounting role.)


The County faces a criminal lab funding dilemma. What to do, what to do? (Publicly the main goal is accurate forensics, privately we all know that the job of the crime labs are to not flub up to the point that elected officials get cameras jammed in their faces. {See: Crime Lab, HPD for more})


ChronBlog Caucasian Think-Tank logic: Standardized testing is bad, except when it's good which typically dovetails with accepting federal funds that would force large future increases in spending if accepted. Oh, and if we can ding Gov. Perry that's cool as well. (At least they didn't lecture us on how bad this is going to hurt minority students. Baby steps)


Meet the candidates for Governor you don't know...and won't see much more of, after reading this story. (The irony is that most of these people got in the race to "prove" something about the common man & politics. What they proved is that the common man has no chance of winning a political race in today's pay-to-play two-party system.)


And finally.....


Joel Kotkin on the decidedly non-populist views of today's neo-liberals progressives. Specifically the Democratic Party but also the Greens. (After all, when you view yourself to be the smartest people in the room the only thing left to do is save the mouth-breathers from themselves. Drills a gaping hole in the 'friend to the working man' argument, but who can concern themselves with that when there's a proletariat to save?)