| « Preckwinkle Definitely In | The Political Game Means Things for People » |
Daley Fri Jan 23 2009
Daily Daley Does It Again
I just want to take a moment to direct you to the Daily Daley, which has had a particularly good few days; it will take a much longer post to discuss this insane assertion by our Elective Majesty:
Mayor Daley is urging President Obama to "think outside the box" according to this Sun-Times story. [Insert joke here] Apparently our bold reformer and Democrat Mayor Daley is in total agreement on this one with the Wall Street Journal story we referenced in yesterday's post:"If they start leasing public assets -- every city, every county, every state and the federal government -- you would not have to raise any taxes whatsoever. You would have more infrastructure money that way than any other way in the nation," Daley said."But, that is thinking outside the box and very few governments ever, ever think outside the box."
Kenzo Shibata
/ January 23, 2009 5:25 PM
I wish the Mayor were this candid when justifying Renaissance 2010. The PR machine behind it plays around with arbitrary statistics and rhetoric to sell it when it's really just about selling off public goods to save money for the city.
It's much cheaper to give a flat sum to charter schools and hope and pray that they can come up with the balance through private funding. Charters have no proven record of giving a higher quality education to the vast array of needs of students.
Eventually, the breakdown of the public education systems in big cities that buy into "school choice" schemes will lead to the next step, vouchers. Vouchers make the task of budgeting for a public manager a much easier endeavor, but at astronomical cost to the students they would supposedly serve.
Waving a magic wand over a problem is also "thinking outside of the box" but is hardly good public policy.