Posted on 01/17/2005 7:34:45 PM PST by Pikamax
RELEASE: FRIDAY, JANUARY 14, 2005, AND THEREAFTER
If you're wondering why the Democratic Party is in trouble, you need look no further than Sacramento, Calif., where for the first time since the new governor took office, Democratic legislators have rejected a Schwarzenegger appointee.
Who, you might ask, was this terrible right-winger who earned this dishonorable distinction?
What horrible position did he take to deserve such a public humiliation?
Here's the surprise: He was no right-winger at all. He wasn't even a Republican.
Democrats rejected one of their own. The governor was trying to reappoint a Democrat. And not one of those token Democrats, either. No Zell Miller, not by a long shot.
Reed Hastings is one of the leading Democrats in Silicon Valley and one of its strongest supporters of public schools. He was a major donor to Democrat Gray Davis, who first appointed him, and to fellow Democrats.
"I'm ashamed today to be a Democrat, to have to come up here to convince Democrats that this is a good thing," my friend Steve Barr, the president of Green Dot Public Schools, one of the most successful charter school groups in California, said. Steve was one of the founders of Rock-the-Vote and has worked at the highest levels of Democratic politics for 20 years. He went to Sacramento to testify for Reed. It didn't matter. The Democrats had already decided at their caucus to oppose him. First, they delayed confirmation hearings. Then, yesterday, the Rules committee voted along party lines to kill the nomination.
I met Hastings a few years ago at an event of Steve's and was immediately impressed. He is the gazillionaire founder of Netflix, the DVD-by-mail system. But unlike much of Silicon Valley, he is a passionate Democrat, and his issue is public education. He has twice served as president of the State Board of Education. The idea that Democrats could reject him had me checking the local headlines this morning twice, to make sure that this wasn't some joke edition. Have these people lost their minds? This is the most talented guy on the team, not to mention that he's responsible for about $15 million to Democratic campaigns in the last couple of cycles.
Then I got it. Cut to the chase.
This isn't about qualifications or performance. So what if he killed himself for the last five years working on the Board of Education, running all over the state encouraging charter schools, using his own money when necessary to help provide start-up funds, while running a multimillion dollar business as his day job?
He failed the bilingual education litmus test.
He thinks children in bilingual education classes in public schools should be taught at least two-and-a-half hours a day in English.
That's why he wasn't confirmed.
Imagine: demanding that children whose parents can't speak English get at least two-and-a-half hours in a day where they are spoken to in the language they will need to survive in the country they live in, in some cases were born in, in many cases are citizens of. Talk to the parents of these children, and you'll find out that, just like my parents and grandparents, they're desperate for their children to learn English.
Reed had actually opposed Proposition 227, enacted in 1998, which limited bilingual education, but he changed his mind when he saw the scores of the children in the English-only schools soared. The number of schools where bilingual classes are taught has dwindled, but Hastings and the board had taken the position that even in such schools, kids deserved at least two-and-a-half hours in English, and they used the carrot and stick of federal reading funds to get schools to teach English.
Ultimately, the policy was overturned in court, but yesterday, Democrats attacked Hastings for overstepping his authority in trying to force schools to teach English. Earlier, in a closed-door meeting of the 25-member Democratic caucus, it was clear that the Hastings nomination would not win confirmation.
"I'm not disappointed for myself. I'm disappointed for the 100,000 students who are in bilingual education and get less than two-and-a-half hours in English," Reed said after the vote. "They will have a hard time catching up ..." He's right. And when they do, my guess is they'll vote Republican. You can't blame them.
To find out more about Susan Estrich, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.
Susan Estrogen has been awful quiet since election night, where she went out on a limb and had to eat crow. :)
A Democrat who wants children taught English was too much too bear for the La Raza Left. I'm no fan of Reed Hastings' being the front man behind the 55% Prop. 39 bonds initiative. At the same time, I have to chortle at the way the Dems stick a knife in the back of one their own. You can't make this one up.
Wow, when even Democrats like Estrich are aghast at California Democrat antics, it says something.
I guess the same is showing in CA at the state level.
Even the super-liberal Sac Bee daily has taken to being critical of the democrats.
The party caucus here is way to the Left of most Californians. 60% of the people of this state voted to ban bilingual education. And the Democrat establishment in Sacramento thinks teaching Hispanic kids English is "racist." Wow - good politics!
I have never met a parent(in California)of a child who did not want their child to learn english.
Estrich was truely awful on election night (and the one time I had to turn off some news channel to avoid hearing her blather on in the aftermath), but this piece suggests that she may actually be engaging in the sort of introspection the demonRATs have supposedly been engaging in since the election.
Too little, too late: the rest of her party is running down the same path as the idiots in the CA leglislature she decries.
Hastings was a LIBERAL Democrat. He's no Zell Miller - in fact he's a tax and spend Lefty. The reason he got in trouble was he committed the unforgivable heresy of crossing the bilingual crowd in the Democratic Party. You can't teach kids English, ever.
Its like we're seeing a different Susan Estrich. Some days she's on her meds and writes in sane and clear English. I look upon it as a blessing we can't say the same about her party. Then I'd be terrified.
Could it be that some Democrats are realizing that the Education lobby doesn't give a hoot about educating children, and is actively working to hold them back?
If that's the level of the DIM zealotry out there, you guys have your hands full.
I've got to ask.
If it is a bilingual school and one of the languages being taught is not English, then what, pray tell, is the second language? Russian? Arabic? Martian?
Or was this "bilingual school" actually "unilingual"...?
A few. Which is why Hastings got shown the door. Democrats better not come up with ways to improve education in California and make sure kids actually learn.
If only we could figure out a way to throw some gas on this fire.
It's nearly as if Mexico has a shadow state of California. It won't be long before there are polling booths in California for Mexican elections, if there aren't already. The surrender is astounding.
And I'm not one who cares how many hispanics come here legally.
Good question. I don't agree with Hastings' politics but between you and me, what was it he did wrong? People in this country, except for a handful of bilingual nuts, want their kids to be taught in English! It speaks volumes about the Democratic Party the one thing missing from it most today is common sense.
There is a momentous shift going on right now, and I don't know what to make of it. Are Rats waking up? Are they getting the courage to start jettisoning the flakes in their party? Estrich has always been the epitomy of the liberal, California, any idea, so long as it's flakey Democrat. Has she finally realized that even she's marginalized in the new, flakier Rat party? Or, is she repositioning herself as a moderate?
While I find the article interesting, it's more interesting that she wrote it.
They must have some kind of manchurian candidate huh?
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