Standing Up for Billionaires Everywhere

That's the mayor's job, of course, as he traipses through the media spotlight demanding mayoral control. It's not primarily the concept of mayoral control that's so objectionable, even though it doesn't help kids, it doesn't help working teachers, and even though this mayor would not dream of sending his own kid to the public schools he sheds those crocodile tears over.

It's the fact that the New York City version allows for no checks or balances on the mayor's power that's so disturbing. Still, it doesn't stop tabloid op-ed boards, tinhorn politicians like Shelly Silver, or even part-time UFT President Randi Weingarten from getting up there in front of God and everybody demanding that it continue.

Now Shelly Silver appears to have been bought off by the mayor, the richest man in New York City, in what, effectively, is one billionaire caving in to help out another:

The former adversaries came together last week to rebuke the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey for its refusal to guarantee billions of dollars in financing for two office towers that the developer Larry A. Silverstein is to build at the trade center site.

After all, unlike you and me, unlike the schools over which Mayor Bloomberg presides, which are subject to massive budget cuts even as they continue with unconscionable overcrowding and the highest class sizes in the state, billionaires can always use a few bucks. We wouldn't know what to do with money if we had it, and neither would schoolchildren. Silver and Bloomberg can always manage to get together and help out a billionaire in need, who will truly appreciate it.

After all, they're doing a bang-up job over at the WTC site. Look at all they've created there in a mere eight years.

And everyone's favorite part-time leader of the biggest teacher local in the country, Ms. Weingarten, is willing to do her part as well. As Governor Paterson and Mayor Bloomberg got up in front of the cameras yesterday to demand a continuation of the effective dictatorship that is mayoral control, she stood to show solidarity. After all, a union boss needs to show solidarity.

Now usually union bosses show solidarity with working people. However, Ms. Weingarten is a new kind of union boss. That's why she rises to show solidarity with billionaires who stand for unlimited power. That's why she's so adored by union-bashers like Rod Paige and the New York Post editorial page.

You gotta admit, there's never been anything like her before. Ironically, in today's New York Post, Ms. Weingarten begs for mayoral control while pointing to the work she did for the CFE lawsuit, the very lawsuit that gave her hero, Mayor Bloomberg, hundreds of millions of dollars to lower class size.

Mayor Bloomberg managed to take that money and raise class size anyway--a neat trick for someone who considers himself so indispensible. Perhaps Ms. Weingarten, blinded by her affection for the mayor, didn't notice.

What Makes Shelly Run?

God bless Democrats. If it weren't for Democrats, we'd have no one to blame but Republicans every time some bonehead went out and did something patently idiotic. Fortunately, we have politicians from both side of the aisle who are equally tone-deaf to the needs of the people. That's why NY Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver supports mayoral control, with a few superfluous revisions that will ultimately mean nothing whatsoever.

Silver's plan, presented along with Assembly Education Committee Chairwoman Catherine Nolan (D-Queens), would not mandate set terms for panel members...

So essentially, if any of his appointees were to disagree with Mayor-for-life Bloomberg, he could fire them before they actually voted. The big change Mr. Silver proposes is that two of the eight members the mayor would choose would have to be parents. Thus, if Mr. Bloomberg were to fire a parent, he'd have to replace that parent with another who agrees with him. Of course, the chancellor would no longer chair the PEP, so someone else would have to wield the rubber stamp.

And, of course, the chancellor would have some very demanding duties:

The schools chancellor...would be required to visit each school district every two years.

Boy, that will really burn the rubber off those limo tires. You mean the chancellor would have to visit the schools he adminsters once every two years? Or at least the districts they're in? Does that mean they can stop for sandwiches or do they actually have to set foot in a school? And what if there are no good sandwich places nearby?

Doubtless the chancellor is quaking in his Florsheims.

A better idea, of course, would be to have people like Mayor Bloomberg themselves compelled to patronize the schools they run--let's dump him and require the next mayor have kids in the schools. Let's require the next chancellor have kids in the schools.

Because until we do that, what we have is very much akin to a billionaire residing in California governing New York. Why should he give a damn about things happening so far away?