@kausfiles--Guaranteed 51% Good News!

@kausfiles--Guaranteed 51% Good News!

@kausfiles--Guaranteed 51% Good News!

A mostly political weblog.
Oct. 12 2009 1:01 AM

@kausfiles--Guaranteed 51% Good News!

Items I twittered , or wished I had:   

Best News of the Week: According to RiShawn Biddle, Obama and his Education Secretary Arne Duncan really are using the leverage provided by federal stimulus money to force states to allow more charter schools . The teachers' unions "feel betrayed." Hope that's not just for show. ... P.S.: This unashamedly  pro-Obama article runs in ... The American Spectator . ... P.P.S.: Biddle also says the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has helped create a "counterweight" to the NEA and AFT. Won't make up for Vista! But it's a start. ... P.P.P.S.: If there are well over a million students in charter schools now, and the federal government is pushing them to grow like Topsy, at what point does a vicious circle set in, with public schools losing their even moderately motivated students, causing them to decline even further, causing even more students to leave, etc.? Not that this public school death spiral would be such a bad thing. We should just be prepared for it. The way we should have been prepared for GM. ... 11:27 P.M.

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Neiman Marcus is stealing The Atlantic 's business model   ... OK, to really emulate The Atlantic you'd have to throw in David Axelrod, and maybe sub Marc Ambinder for Nora Ephron. ...  And then sell the thing to ExxonMobil. ... 11:26 P.M.

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51 is the Wussiest Number: Ryan Lizza reports that, in the White House debate over whether to bail out Chrysler, Obama asked his advisers, "What do you think the percentage likelihood is that , if we give this deal a chance, it will succeed?" Then-auto czarito Steven Rattner answered, "Fifty-one percent." ... What do you think the percentage likelihood is that Rattner's answer was sincere? I hope, for his sake, it's close to zero. There was substantially less than a 51% chance the Chrysler bailout would succeed (if "success" means a viable company). There still is. ... Not being a sophisticated investment banker, I would translate Rattner's answer as : "I know you'd like to approve this deal, and I'm not one to buck the tide, so I'll give you the minimum necessary reassurance, while covering my ass as much as possible (in the 80% likelihood that it fails)." ... P.S.: Lizza's piece is generally encouraging--the country could be in worse hands. But it's vaguely discouraging if for Obama and his brain trust  the issue actually turned on whether or not the deal would succeed , which seems a less sophisticated question than whether or not it was worth trying to soften the blow to the Midwest by postponing Chrysler's inevitable failure. Could the whole debate have been Kabuki?  ... 11:25 P.M.

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Where's Crossfire When You Need It? Jon Klein's Triumph! CNN now in 4th place , losing to FOX, MSNBC, and itself (HLN)!  Somewhere Tucker Carlson is smiling. ... 11:24 P.M.

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