Unfortunately, the strong-mayor proposal on the table does not resemble any of the systems that have worked … except perhaps, Chicago.

Emulating Chicago-style politics, replete with the Daley family monarchy, is hopefully not what Johnson had in mind when he supported the strong-mayor concept. However, one need not look much further than his ambitious political advisers, supporters and "Kitchen Cabinet" members for complicity. Developers and hopeful city contractors will have to cater only to the mayor, not all nine council members. Johnson's friends, groupies, consultants and advisers looking for future appointments will have plenty of jobs to consider – Chicago-style.

According to Johnson's strong-mayor proposal, the mayor would have the power to hire and fire the city manager, city treasurer, city clerk, city attorney and many layers of subordinate staff – up to 800 city employees.

Under this scenario, the City Council would be powerless to stop the removal of city employees.

The strong-mayor proposal would give the mayor veto power over council decisions.

The strong-mayor proposal would give the mayor the ability to introduce a budget that would automatically become law unless the City Council voids it in a specified period of time.

The lack of an ethics commission or term limits is troublesome as well. Claiming that voters can vote a bad mayor out of office is disingenuous, with the multiple layers of mayor- appointed positions and staff.

Johnson's strong-mayor proposal lacks key ingredients pertinent to a healthy, constitutional checks-and-balances mayoral system. Specific areas of concern include:

• The immediate transition time after the election is unrealistic and potentially dangerous. The successful strong-mayor cities that were researched took, at minimum, one year to transition.

• Other cities have found that an ethics committee was needed to monitor and review strong-mayor governments for areas of conflicts of interest with elected officials, appointees and lobbyists. These committees also investigate complaints regarding possible ethics violations and campaign financing abuses.

• Johnson's strong-mayor proposal allows for the mayor to appoint city charter officers (city attorney, city manager, city treasurer, city clerk) and department heads. The mayor will control who works for the city, and has hiring and firing power over most of the city staff. This is acceptable in private business, but an open and transparent government should not be run CEO-style, as it begs for pay-to-play practices.

• In City Attorney Eileen Teichert's analysis of Johnson's proposal, she concluded that the proposed measure creates an imbalance of power among the city's elected officials, lacks vital checks and balances, and "blurs the lines of authority and accountability" adopted by other strong-mayor cities. She is correct.

• Term limits should only be a last resort, if all other checks and balances are not in place. Term limits are at least one way to somewhat balance an all-powerful executive mayor.

Much of the criticism heaped on Johnson for his strong-mayor proposal has been that his proposal is all about him. Critics accused him of being too impatient to even learn how to be mayor, when he introduced the proposal before he'd even warmed his office chair. Johnson has made no secret of the fact that as a voting council member, minutiae is not where he envisions spending his time and talents. Johnson is less of a detail guy and more of a big-picture, rainmaker style of mayor – the exact opposite of former Mayor Heather Fargo, who was known for her administrative acumen.

Somewhere in the middle lies the answer for Sacramento. Business as usual is not acceptable or realistic. While Sacramento has grown up and out, it still seems to be run using a town-council, neighborhood-activist mentality. Sacramento has a difficult time attracting big businesses, and officials still complain about not having a major-league arena.

Sacramento sits on two undeveloped rivers and has two railyards that have remained blighted, polluted, vacant and undeveloped for decades. Many people believe that the current City Council wastes precious time on the little things, while progress on the big-picture issues and long-term planning continues to elude Sacramento.

The Arizona Republic: While school districts cutting crucial educational programs claiming lack of funding, school officials have been ahrd at work creating their own pet programs proving that the education system is not about teaching anymore. 

It has been a busy summer for our friends running the Tucson Unified School District.

As always, the annual Institute for Transformative Education summer seminar, hosted by TUSD's amply funded Mexican/American raza-studies program, was fun. So much racial bitterness to obsess over.

Tim Wise, the ultra-angry Tulane University poli-sci grad who has made a great living finding racism under every doormat, was the featured speaker. Everyone was wowed.
In a year in which hundreds of district teachers received pink slips, meanwhile, TUSD spent thousands on recruiting teachers from out of state.

You can argue the efficacy of such issues legitimately, certainly.

On a certain emotional level, it is a good thing for a minority student with few incentives to achieve much academically to see others who have.

But, as always, TUSD's race-obsessing board of governors is taking racial bean-counting to preposterous extremes.

This summer, the TUSD board adopted a "Post-Unitary Status Plan" that it expects will help the district escape a decades-old federal desegregation order.

The plan includes increasing the number of minority teachers - per the summer hiring spree, which netted 14 special-education teachers and one math-science teacher.

It also includes a vast expansion of the district's controversial Mexican-American studies program.

Despite the budget-enforced closing of school libraries, the shuttering of arts and music programs and the layoff of teachers and counselors in other disciplines, the Post-Unitary Status Plan calls for a vigorous expansion of the program run by TUSD's happy band of unrepentant political leftists.

The board's plan also calls for changes intended (however counterproductive those plans may be) to improving the lot of minority students.

It wants to see more minority students enrolled in advanced-placement programs, for example - a laudable goal, certainly. But consider one significant part of the plan for "improving" the academic status of TUSD's Black and Hispanic students:

The board is calling for a two-tiered form of student discipline. One for Black and Hispanic students; one for everyone else.

With the goal of creating a "restorative school culture and climate" that conveys a "sense of belonging to all students," the board is insisting that its schools reduce its suspensions and/or expulsions of minority students to the point that the data reflect "no ethnic/racial disparities."

From the section of the 52-page plan titled "Restorative School Culture and Climate," subhead, "Discipline":

"School data that show disparities in suspension/expulsion rates will be examined in detail for root causes. Special attention will be dedicated to data regarding African-American and Hispanic students."

The board approved creating an "Equity Team" that will oversee the plan to ensure "a commitment to social justice for all students."

The happy-face edu-speak notwithstanding, what the Tucson Unified School District board of governors has approved this summer is a race-based system of discipline.

Offenses by students will be judged, and penalties meted out, depending on the student's hue.

Certainly, from the point of view of a public-school administrator, such a policy is beyond insane.

TUSD principals and disciplinarians (assuming such creatures still exist) are being asked to set two standards of behavior for their students.

Some behavior will be met with strict penalties; some will not. It all depends on the color of the student's skin.

It is an invitation to chaos.

The students of the Tucson Public School District certainly deserve more.

They deserve a chance to excel academically.

I recently attended the Naval Academy football game against Louisiana Tech at Navy Marine Memorial Stadium in Annapolis, Maryland. During the nationally televised football game, the Navy ran a commercial meant to promote interest in the USNA to high school students and college-aged men and women. However, it was an affirmative action puff piece and grossly misleading. The midshipmen and women in the ad were all minorities; not one Caucasian was represented – male or female and the Navy was selling atypical Navy jobs: Astronaut, Blue Angel pilot, doctor.

The Navy is producing an affirmative action ad that misrepresents what the Naval Academy is really about. Why?

The Naval Academy has made it clear very that they are aggressively pushing Affirmative Action standards: lowering SAT score requirements for minorities, allowing some female Midshipmen to slack off or entirely skip out on their physical requirements, which are already dramatically lower then the men’s physical requirement expectations, and allowing athletes to get out of many of the military requirements of attending the USNA.

The problem with trying to level the playing field or “equalize” qualifications is that lowered expectations equalize only downward.

We see this on nearly every college campus. However, with the military academies, the effect is that they are undermining the very activity they seek to promote. Equalizing the requirements for males and females at military academies was tricky business to begin with. Wanting academy graduates to reflect the enlisted population more closely is not a bad goal either, but lowering requirements to achieve this goal is misguided and detrimental.

Today, the unfortunate result is that by allowing young men and women into the Naval Academy by lowering the high standards for only certain groups, the Navy has undermined itself. Affirmative Action laws and regulations have involved the use of preferential treatment, privilege, and set asides to achieve “workforce diversity,” and now our military leadership has been compromised. They have deemed certain ethnic groups and women unable to compete before they ever get to the Academy.

Affirmative Action has made a mockery of talent and instead, dragged down the very people its supporters claim to assist.

Affirmative Action is not synonymous with “civil rights” or “diversity.” As Ward Connerly so aptly explains, “Every American has the right to expect to be treated equally in the public domain — voting, education, employment, contracting — when that individual interacts with his or her government. Thus, “civil rights” are not just for black people. They are for every American and are basic rights to be applied by every government agency operating with taxpayer funds.”

Race and gender preferences have no place at our military academies. However, it is sneakier than that. A black candidate with B and C grades, having no particular leadership qualities, and 500 on both portions of the SAT, is virtually guaranteed admittance. A white student, who’s not an athlete, with similar scores is deemed not qualified. Many black and minority students are admitted to the Naval Academy through remedial training at the Naval Academy Preparatory School (NAPS) in Newport, R.I., which is a one-year post-secondary school. Finishing the year with a 2.0 GPA, a C average, almost guarantees admission to the academy. And sometimes, when students don’t make the 2.0 GPA target, the target is “renegotiated” downward. Minority applicants with SAT scores down to the 300s and with Cs and Ds grades (and no particular leadership or athletics) are also admitted after a remedial year at the Naval Academy Preparatory School.

Bruce Fleming, an English Professor at the Naval Academy for more than two decades and formerly on the Admissions Board, has been an outspoken opponent of the dumbing-down of Naval Academy midshipmen through the Affirmative Action racial and gender preferences process. He has charged that the academy will go to great lengths to retain minority students. When professor Fleming charged a black student with plagiarism, he was not properly informed of the hearing and subsequently the student’s peer group found him not guilty. Honor violations by black students are usually “remediated.”

What has resulted is that scholarly minority students are resentful that they are lumped into the same group as the Affirmative Action class, and white students are resentful that they are held to a higher standard on admissions policies as well as retention policies. They do not dare complain about minority students and the unequal treatment, lest they be labeled “racists” and risk expulsion. Diversity policies are dividing.

By admitting poorly prepared minority and female students to military academies, the American government is behind the re-igniting of racial unrest as well as carrying-on the farcical public education and lack of preparedness that so many of our youth are subjected to, and relegating them to a life of mediocrity.

California Conference Committee on Water Charged with Solving States Water Woes
With only a matter of days left in the 2009 legislative year, lawmakers have formed a Legislative Conference Committee on Water. The conference committee is charged with creating a series of reforms that help reform and shape California’s antiquated water system and lead to a reliable supply of water for the state's water users.

California Insurance Commissioner and Gubernatorial candidate Steve Poizner is making the media circuit right now. He’s getting peppered with questions about his evolving positions and political ideology.

 Is it ideological change or political expediency?

 Poizner is not making the political shift from Democrat to Republican; he is merely changing hard-core moderate positions to political positions more palatable to Conservatives:

• Pro tax on rich
• Moderate social, centrist Republican
• Anti-oil drilling
• Centrist married to a Democrat
• Large Donations to democrat candidates and the DNC

 He’s always played down the large donations to Al Gore and the Gore/Lieberman campaign and perhaps it’s merely because he can. Most people do not have the financial resources Poizner has; consequently we cannot play both sides of the aisle – the way nearly all of the very rich do.

 Poizner has explained that his wife wanted to attend a $10,000 Gore fundraiser; the reason for the largest donation. Most men will not only bow to their wife’s wishes, but will escort their wives in public. Is this so unusual?

 Has Poizner been over handled? As evidenced by the McCain/Palin campaign, handlers often do not have the stomach for strong positions and always steer the candidate right into wishy washy, moderation.

 We see this behavior in nearly all political newbies.

 Poizner has become increasingly staunch on conservative positions as he becomes experienced, yet still is reticent to take firm positions on offshore oil drilling, abortion, and taxing.

 His record with Proposition 39 and “Taxpayers for Accountability and Better Schools” and the subsequent hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations, raised taxes on millions of Californians – an attempt to solve an educational problem, but a naïve mistake.

Poizner has changed his “No offshore drilling” position to the answer to the state’s energy, economic end employment needs. What are we to make of this huge shift? And if he is so supportive of offshore drilling, what about other energy resources such as nuclear power? He claims to support nuclear power, but what will he do about it?

 With candidate Steve Poizner, there are more questions than answers at this juncture.

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http://www.sacramentocitizen.com/index.cfm

Political elites are an interesting breed of animal. They claim to be in the know, cerebral, think-tankers, but are proved wrong time and time again.

Mayor Kevin Johnson is fighting the Sacramento City Council on when Sacramento residents will be able to vote for the Strong Mayor Proposal.