Nanny Bloomberg Unmasked

The Witch Who Eats Children

Nanny Bloomberg, when he was mayor of  New York, was always hectoring folk to make them healthy, wealthy and wise.  Nanny passed lots of laws banning things like sugar–all in the effort to prevent people from living in ways that Nanny did not approve.  “It was for their own good,” he said, as he departed for fresh pastures and campaigns.

Most New Yorkers, who love the Nanny State, thought that Bloomie was an all-round good guy.  He cared, that’s why he passed all these laws telling us when to eat and drink and what profile our noses should assume as we breath the no-longer-free air.  He loves us. 

Except that now Nanny Bloomberg’s mask has been stripped off.  He is exposed as an evil witch who kills and eats children.  Eric Garner was choked to death by the New York police whilst being arrested.  For what was he arrested, you ask?  For breaking one of Nanny Bloomberg’s laws.  He was selling cigarettes on the street, free of Bloomberg’s onerous, prohibitive taxes.  He was a criminal, said the police.  He had a record.  He had been arrested previously 31 times.  For what?  Murder?  Rape? Theft?  No.  He had been arrested 31 times for selling “illegal” cigarettes.  For that he deserved to die. 

you will never see fascism like a liberal trying to collect taxes.

May we suggest that instead of a criminal, Mr Garner was–in some senses–a patriot.  Here is Douglas Wilson’s take on the matter:

When Eric Garner was stopped by cops, he was being stopped by representatives of an officious and busy-pants nanny state, doing exactly what cops ought not to be doing. This is the same kind of thing that could have happened to someone being arrested for selling illegal Big Gulps.

I know why theft is against the law. Why is it against the law to sell cigarettes this way? When you multiply petty laws you are simply multiplying opportunities for contempt for the law to grow. And the more you multiply petty laws, the more the leeches in charge will feel like they have the right to “crack down on” those scofflaws who have managed to hang on to some of their own money.

And, here’s Ann Coulter‘s:

This is a tax case. It was Bloomberg that insists on, We’re going to deploy the police to collect taxes because they need to pay the pensions of their public sector union buddies. Bloomberg starts arresting all these people. . . . Everyone who has seen that tape of Eric Garner says, Oh, my gosh, they have five cops for untaxed cigarettes? . . . . (T)he Garner case is almost everything the left falsely said about Mike Brown (who was shot in Ferguson for attacking a police officer).  He really does seem to be a gentle giant. Oh, he had 31 arrests. Yes, they’re all for selling untaxed cigarettes! Notice that the left wing — you will never see fascism like a liberal trying to collect taxes!

There’s Blood on the Streets

Gangs of New York

New York is a happening place–provided  you enjoy watching internecine warfare.  The newly elected Mayor, Bill de Blasio is an automaton of extreme left wing progressivism.  The overwhelmingly progressive city is becoming uncomfortably discombobulated.  It a “progressivism, but not as we know it” kind of reaction.

One of the friction points is a battle between the previously burgeoning charter school movement and the teacher unions.  Big Bill favours shutting charter schools down in favour of bog standard government schools because everyone should get the same.  Egalitarian folly, but its what leftist ideology adoringly celebrates, until it experiences it.

The Wall Street Journal recently provided some colour.

Firstly, charter schools have been going ahead in leaps and bounds in New York, against a backdrop of under performing, failing government schools districts.

Half the kids in Harlem today attend charters, among them KIPP, Democracy Prep and Harlem Children’s Zone. Across New York, 70,000 students go to a charter.  The other night, at a private loft in Tribeca, Ms. Moskowitz was speaking before a roomful of donors and supporters. The mood was somber. Ms. Moskowitz said that Success Academy’s soon-to-be 10,000-strong student network makes it one of the 10 largest school districts in New York state. At the current rate of growth, in seven or eight years, “we’d be the 15th largest school district in America,” she said. “But that’s obviously highly in doubt.”

That is consistent with what is happening across the United States.

The schools are also mushrooming nationwide. Nearly half the public schools in Washington, D.C., and virtually all in New Orleans are charters. One reason the friction in New York is especially bad comes from the city’s practice during the Bloomberg years of having charters share space with regular schools. The charters then often proceeded, embarrassingly, to outperform the other schools.

One would have thought that government schools would celebrate the out performance of charters on their premises, and would use it as a reason to adapt, change, reform, and develop.  But no.  Why?  Well, firstly its not egalitarian.  All schools should be as bad as ours.  That’s what egalitarianism means–or at least what it inevitably produces.  Secondly, teacher unions hate charters with a passion.  They are intimidated by merit pay.  They envy their flexibility and want to see it destroyed, rather than they themselves arguing for more liberating flexibility in their own closed shops.

Meanwhile parents, particularly those living in dysfunctional, underperforming state school districts, would do anything to give their kids a shot at a better education.  But Big Brother says, no.  Actually Big Bill is reported to be a rank hypocrite on the subject.

As long as Mr. de Blasio was making it personal, she [charter school proponent, Moskowitz] noted in a New York Post op-ed that his son attends a selective, high-performing public high school. “Most parents don’t have a public school option that’s as good as de Blasio had access to for his son,” Ms. Moskowitz wrote. She added that his message to parents in neighborhoods with bad schools was simple: “Drop dead.”

Apparently the same sauce does not suit the gander, but the geese are going to get it whether they like it or not.

New Zealand is just entering the fray.  Our government schools have a smothering monopoly on  education.  Consequently, teacher unions have had an inordinate influence and in some cases actually control the sector.  Take the deaths of bulk funding, the re-imposition of  school zoning, and the complete stonewalling of the voucher system, for example. All three measures would have rewarded educational excellence and exposed under performance.  All three were viscerally hated because they threatened our mouldering egalitarianism. All three were cut off at the pass.  

Now we have a pilot charter school programme up and running.  For us, the success of charter schools in other jurisdictions like the United States and the United Kingdom is really important.  The more successful charter schools are elsewhere in revitalising and reforming the education sector the more the heat will come upon New Zealand’s education industry.  Particularly if our global rankings continue to slide, and our illiteracy and innumeracy rates–already bad enough–rise. 

Soup Nazis

Ubiquitous Food Police

One of the most famous episodes in Seinfeld is the Soup Nazi. It has probably been watched more than any other.  (In case you have missed it, there is a YouTube highlights version below.) 

As life once again imitates art, years later we find ourselves beset by food Nazis of all kinds, telling us what to eat and, more importantly, what not to eat.  But the matter does not stop at nagging and hectoring.  It is ironic that Seinfeld, which was such an acute insightful commentary upon New York City and New Yorkers, has ended up parodying-in-advance the actual charge by Nanny Mayor Bloomberg to rule and regulate what New Yorkers can and cannot eat.  Bloomberg became the actual incarnation of the Soup Nazi, aspiring to control every part of the human anatomy–for our own good, naturally.  And so it has come to pass that Food Police are now everywhere–yearning and lusting for the reins of power–passing rules, regulating, and controlling, all to protect us from ourselves. Bovine New Yorkers love it.  The rest of us?  Not so much.

We read and hear this sort of thing almost daily:

Imposing a 20 per cent tax on Coke and other fizzy soft drinks could save 67 lives a year by reducing ill-health, a New Zealand study has found.  A high sugar intake is linked to obesity, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. [NZ Herald]

Then comes the fine print:

The study by Auckland and Otago University researchers said the tax would avert or postpone between 60 and 73 deaths a year from cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes – or about 0.2 per cent of deaths from all causes.  Based on economic survey data showing the effect of varying food prices on household buying, they calculated the tax would reduce daily energy consumption by 0.2 per cent.

Oh, so the proposed tax–designed as an implicit penalty for designated evil doing–would only avert or postpone about 0.2 percent of deaths in this country.  Not prevent.  Not grant the gift of eternal life.  Only delay the inevitable–and then only 0.2 percent of deaths in any year. And the ultimate insult to this injury to common sense?  We, the taxpayers, are funding this kind of inanity.  They are taking our money to facilitate their swaddling us into a state of perpetual infancy. 

It is a fundamental principle of civil liberty that everyone has a freedom right to go either to hell in their own way, regardless of how horrific hell may be.  There is no statute of limitations on folly and stupidity.  Folk have a freedom right to be foolish and stupid.  If they don’t, the concept of freedom has no meaning.  We do not object to disclosure when it comes to food and drink–in fact, honesty and integrity and good faith are compelling reasons for its employment.  We do not object to health warnings–provided they are honest, accurate, truthful and not alarmist.  We all have to die of something at the end of the day. 

What we absolutely object to is the Soup Nazi attitude whereby elites and self-appointed authorities  rule, regulate, and attempt to ration what one shall have, when, how, and in what quantities, all for our own good.  Such despotism is an anathema to a human being born free. 

The Soup Nazi is comedy.  The real Food Nazi’s are not so funny.  But, probably the best defence we have is to mock and ridicule them.  If you want to get into training for the grand liberation, watch this episode of Seinfeld a few times.  It is positively, nefariously seditious.

Socialism Its Own Worst Enemy

New York Household Idols To Fall Out of Favour

One of the best cures for a people wedded to the naive ideals and faux justice of socialism is to experience more of it.  New York has long been a “progressive” city: that is, it has a strong proclivity towards big interventionist governments.  The departing Mayor Bloomberg fitted the stereotype really well.  He was nanny state personified, passing rules, regulations, and wowser laws to try and regulate every part of the human anatomy and human behaviour.  New Yorkers grumbled a bit, but basically they loved it.  They loved being bossed and nannied by Sharkey.  It made them feel that all is right with the world. 

Now the electorate has doubled down, electing as mayor a chap who is not just a nannying Big Brother but a dyed in the wool, old-school, long term socialist radical.  De Blasio ticks all their boxes.  So the voters ticked his ballot paper.  New Yorkers are about to get a dose of good old fashioned ideological socialism.  It may help cure them of their folly–at least for a while. 

One thing de Blasio opposes (and campaigned against) is charter schools.
  He is ideologically opposed.  The state always does it better, don’t you know.  Except there is a growing body of hard evidence that charter schools have done extremely well and that all the socialist saws and slurs about them being just another form of class oppression of the poor are ideological claptrap. 

Nina Rees, a charter school advocate,  writing in USA Today summarises the state of play.

New York¹s public charter schools are upending old assumptions about urban education. And they can help even more students if New York¹s incoming mayor lets them.

Earlier this year, Stanford¹s Center for Research on Educational Outcomes (CREDO) revealed that in just one school year, the typical New York City charter school student gained about five additional months of learning in math and one additional month of learning in reading compared with students in traditional public schools.

These gains, repeated year after year, are helping to erase achievement gaps between urban and suburban students. A rigorous 2009 study from Stanford professor Caroline Hoxby found that students who attend New York City¹s charter schools from Kindergarten through 8th grade will make up 86% of the suburban-urban achievement gap in math and 66% of the gap in English.

These are serious advances.  But it is amongst the poor areas (aka ghettoes) that charter schools are achieving their most impressive results.

What makes these results so impressive is that charter schools are not elite private schools. They are tuition-free public schools, funded by taxpayers and open to any student.  New York has roughly 70,000 students enrolled in public charter schools, and the numbers are on the rise. This school year alone, 14,000 new students in the city enrolled in charter schools ­ with the vast majority in low-income neighborhoods.

Remarkably, several charter schools in low-income neighborhoods are showing some of the most impressive achievement gains. For instance, while just 30% of students citywide passed New York¹s new Common Core math exam, 97% of students passed the exam at Bronx Success Academy 2. The passage rate was 80% at Leadership Prep Ocean Hill in Brownsville, a community that has suffered academic failure for generations.

Charter schooling is not magical pixie dust.  Some charter schools are better than others.  Let’s face it: some charter schools fail miserably.  But here is the rub.  In the government run, union controlled schools, miserable failure becomes institutionalised to perpetuity because the state, by definition, cannot fail.  Failing schools demand and always “deserve” more money, more resources, higher pay for teachers–all ostensibly to make the school do better, but in reality, the outcome is a perpetuation of  sub-standard education.  Why?  Socialists are ideologically unable to admit failure or incompetence of state run and controlled activities.  At the bottom line it is state institutions which must succeed–and success is defined as perpetuation, not competence.  It has to be that way because socialist ideology requires it to be so. Voters who ticked De Blasio deserve it all.  Pity about the poor kids who represent collateral damage along the way. 

Like traditional public schools, some charters do under-perform, and the charter school movement is working hard to improve quality at every school. But study after study shows that high-quality charter schools are putting high school graduation and college within reach for many New York City students who once had bleak educational prospects.

Unfortunately, this opportunity could be imperiled. Incoming mayor Bill de Blasio has taken an aggressive anti-charter stance. His main point of contention is that the city¹s charter schools often share buildings with traditional public schools without paying rent.

Mayor Bloomberg introduced “co-location” as a way to turn unused classrooms into productive learning environments. Sharing space also tests the hypothesis that environmental factors make it difficult for children in certain neighborhoods to succeed in school. Charters quickly proved that theory wrong. For example, 88% of third and fourth graders at Success Academy Harlem 5 passed the state math exam. The traditional public school located in the same building only managed to attain a pass rate of 6%.

De Blasio opposes such things on ideological grounds.  Charter schools are not state schools–and therefore are sub-standard in the sense of being evilly unjust.  New Yorkers love him.  We predict they are going to end up hating him.  But for our money the dumb voters who bow, scrape, and genuflect before their statist household idols, and who, therefore, ticked de Blasio, deserve what’s coming down the pike. 

Mayor-elect de Blasio views this space-sharing arrangement as an improper subsidy for charter schools. But the crucial fact here is that charter schools are public schools.  Traditional public schools in New York City don¹t pay rent for their classrooms, and they already receive more funding per student than charter schools do.

Charter schools start with a public-funding disadvantage, and now Mayor-elect de Blasio could put them deeper in the hole­ to the tune of another $3,000 per student ­ by forcing them to pay rent in the city with the highest real-estate costs in the nation.  If he succeeds, it¹s difficult to see any other outcome than fewer charter schools and fewer options for parents desperate to get their children into good schools ­ a tragedy for the 50,000 families who are on charter school wait lists in New York City.

Fifty thousand families on wait lists for charter schools in New York!  Herein lies a tale.  It is a generally true postulate that parents, (not state bureaucrats, unions, and politicians) have a much better grasp and deeper commitment to their children’s educational success.  It is also true that they tend to make far, far better choices in the matter.  But to the ideological socialists such nostrums represent extreme heresy. 

Across the country, charter schools have produced particular academic gains among students in poverty, minority students and students still learning English. The same CREDO study that revealed impressive learning gains among New York City¹s charter school students also showed that, nationwide, black students in poverty who attend charter schools gained the equivalent of 29 extra days of learning in reading each year, and 36 extra days in math, compared to their traditional public schools peers.

Mayor-elect de Blasio made narrowing inequality a central theme of his successful campaign. In his election night victory remarks, he called inequality “the defining challenge of our time,” and said, “we are all at our best when every child, every parent, every New Yorker has a shot.”

What better way to give every child a shot at success than to let schools that are doing a great job educating kids serve even more? As he begins his tenure as New York¹s mayor, those of us in the charter school community wish Bill de Blasio the very best, and ask him to join with us to help give every child in New York City a first-rate education.

Nina Rees is the president and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

Slogans about inequality are standard socialist claptrap.  Socialists always have a certain kind of equality in mind when they thus harangue.  It is an equality deeply rooted in covetousness and envy.  De Blasio reckons that “we are all at our best when every child, every parent, every New Yorker has a shot”.  Ok.  What does that mean? 

Does it mean that every parent should have a shot at getting their children into a school of their preference and choice?  Absolutely not.  That’s not the equality de Blasio has in mind.  He means an equality created by the state, enforced by the state, and promulgated through state institutions.  To the socialist soul, better to have all schools as state schools and everyone in the muck together, equally, than to have some succeeding in non-state controlled education.  Everyone has a right to experience state controlled sub-standard outcomes or failure.  That’s the socialist vision: everyone is better off when all New Yorkers go down the tubes together.  That’s when the city is at de Blasio’s best. 

Welcome to the wonderful world of progressive socialism.  It will likely be instructive to many souls.  It will also likely end in a few household idols being crushed up, ground down, and thrown out.  For the sake of those parents wanting better for their children, let’s hope so.