Lots of small but important stories worth tracking piling up in the in-box.
• We should probably start a DeBlasio Watch, to track the degradation of New York City that is certain to occur under Sandinista Mayor Bill DeBlasio. Heather MacDonald will be on point, especially on the crime front where DeBlasio has dropped a likely successful legal challenge to the idiotic court ruling about “stop and frisk,” but we can chime in, too. For example, DeBlasio has decided to curtail the “gifted and talented” programs in the public schools because of a “lack of diversity.”
A popular gifted program will get the axe after Ditmas Park school officials chose diversity over exclusivity.
Citing a lack of diversity, PS 139 Principal Mary McDonald informed parents in a letter that the Students of Academic Rigor and two other in-house programs would no longer accept applications for incoming kindergartners.
“Our Kindergarten classes will be heterogeneously grouped to reflect the diversity of our student body and the community we live in,” McDonald told parents.
This may be just the beginning of an assault on charter schools, which have been highly successful and popular in NYC. It’s one thing to invite crime back in the mostly minority neighborhoods that don’t have doormen, but another thing to weaken the public schools. For one thing, it may start affecting property values. There’s some evidence that housing prices in neighborhoods with good charter schools enjoy a slight premium to other school districts.
• Did you know there is an academic Journal of Wine Economics? Well, you do now. Looks like important reading. They hold conferences!
• Another Gomer Pyle (“surprise, surprise, surprise!”) moment: “Iowa Carbon Emissions Rise Despite Wind Power.” Duh.
• Al Gore’s latest answer to climate change: “Fertility Management.” It’s quite clear by now that the single best use of a time machine, if one is ever invented, is to go back in time and help out with some “fertility management” by people like Al Gore Sr.
• Meanwhile, another Obama ex-Cabinet official, Ken Salazar, has embraced fracking: “Former Obama Official: Fracking Has Never Been an Environmental Problem.” Why can’t they seem to say these sensible things while they are still in office?
• Why Obi-Wan Kenobi is the real villain of Star Wars.
Now I have to head off to catch an airplane.
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