So the executed official embarassed the ChiComs and in an effort to save face, they decide... well, let's kill him! Rather than haul in the drug companies' owners or sales guys who bribed him. If they wanted to save face, they would've given him and the drug companies a trial, with sentencing or fines. And where were those anti-capital punishment activists - what, Commies get a free pass on killing because that's what they do?

It was explained to me as just that. It's their culture.

The same would be true if we looked into the Bureaucrats in your local school district.

They are as corrupt as any Chinese apparatchik, just less honest.

That's what Commies do. Gulag Archepelago had 3 volumes and about 1200 pages of this sort of thing.

The victims of the Gulag weren't corrupt.

Bruno:

You could argue their competency, though the education attained by American students refutes you. They're hardly corrupt though.

oj you can't really believe that kids are getting educated in places away from Dartmouth and the other upscale college and university towns dotted across the landscape?

OJ,

I can't speak for NH, though I have my suspicions, but here in Illinois, they are as corrupt as the day is long.

[Note that I define corruption beyond mere "legal" definitions. If you have been able to secure legal protections from what should be prosecutable offenses, that is corrupt.

Large end-of-career bonuses that create actuarially impossible pensions is corrupt.

Frankly, the political protection the Education System receives through it involuntarilly extracted campaign contirbutions makes the entire industry corrupt]

Even using the more restrained definition, papers here report on about 1/20th of the crap that goes on in IL districts, and there is an article every day or so in the dailys, and every week in the weeklies.

For those who are interested, they can read Armand Fusco's "School Corruption."

We could educate this nation's children far better for about 1/2 the cost, and getting rid of the utterly useless "Superintendent" position across the nation would be a good place to start.
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My nephew from Germany just completed his Jr. year here at lauded Oak Park/River Forest highschool. He entered an "honors history" (complete with Che Guevarra posters) encountering 1/2 of his rich white counterparts unable to find Germany on a map.

Arguing that our education system is "good" because 10% of the very rich are able to use their socio-economic status and healthy dollops of tutoring and "hooked on phonics" to "supplement" an over priced indoctrination system is a fool's errand, OJ.

We may agree that the inner city is good place to start. 100 KIPP academies putting out poor black kids that run circles around their 'slacker nation' suburban counter parts MAY wake up the dingbat soccer mom and her emasculated husband.

But one doubts it. Just look at the number of white parents in Silicon Valley who are pulling their kids out of those competitive schools because those mean Asians are skewing the curve upward. (recent WSJ story)

Bruno probably throws out a few babies, but his view is surely more accurate than Orrin's.

Just because middle-class parents are "happy" with a suburban school campus doesn't mean the kids are being taught (much less educated).

Over 20 years ago, I lived in one of the three upper middle-class school districts in the Pittsbugh suburbs. It was OK, but I always wondered why we didn't have final exams, and why we were reading such weak stuff in supposedly honors courses. When I began working at a summer camp in the Laurel Valley, and met friends from the other two school top school districts in the area, I was surprised, but I knew. They were going to better colleges, and were generally better prepared than the average kid from my high school. Now, I had an excellent Chemistry teacher, and excellent German teacher, and an excellent senior English teacher, but that was it. I learned more about math in my first year at Penn State than I ever did in 4 years of high school.

Now, is it more likely that my school district has improved, or that the others have regressed? (I do happen to know the answer here).

However, the real responsibility lies with the parents, who must be more involved in teaching their children themselves. If they tolerate the mediocrity, then I guess they are "happy". But if they force the schools to hire gung-ho principals, good things follow.

The kids in the poorer districts have almost no hope, which is a tragedy.

Regarding corruption: Chirac is about to prosecuted by the city of Paris. Was he corrupt before he became President, and suddenly was clean, and now is dirty again? Or was he always 'corrupt'? Dan Rostenkowski draws a pension of about $130,000 a year - is he still 'corrupt'? Does Jim McGreevey draw a pension? Does Bob Packwood? Ray Nagin and Kathleen Blanco certainly will. What about Gray Davis? Duke Cunningham? Bob Taft? Bob Torricelli? And there must be thousands below the national radar, going on and on.

Personal ignorance is not systemic failure.

Ah, if corruption doesn't mean corruption then you are, of course, correct. They're also Venusians, if we don't mean Venusian.

erp:

Indeed, American kids are not just well educated but overeducated.

Corrupt
Adjective
1. guilty of dishonest practices, as bribery; lacking integrity; crooked: a corrupt judge.
2. debased in character; depraved; perverted; wicked; evil: a corrupt society.
3. made inferior by errors or alterations, as a text.
4. infected; tainted.
5. decayed; putrid.
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verb (used with object)

6. to destroy the integrity of; cause to be dishonest, disloyal, etc., esp. by bribery.
7. to lower morally; pervert: to corrupt youth.
8. to alter (a language, text, etc.) for the worse; debase.
9. to mar; spoil.
10. to infect; taint.
11. to make putrid or putrescent.
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That covers much more than an "indictable offense," and I believe I am clearly in the bounds of this definition.

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http://www.friedmanfoundation.org/friedman/downloadFile.do?id=248

“The Coming Crisis in Suburban Schooling” reveals that the financial stability of public schools in expensive suburbs will soon be threatened by a combination of factors: the rebellion against high property taxes by homeowners without children in public schools, the growing popularity of school choice, the declining academic performance of all public schools, and the increasing incidence of school corruption.

Merely accepting a pension does not fit any definition of corruption but it's what you required in order to make them seem so.

I guess we need to define our terms. We obviously aren't talking about the same thing.

Overeducated, yes, but underqualified (undertrained). And certainly undertaught.

Who is more corrupt: Duke Cunningham, Dianne Feinstein, or Mayor Villagairosa?

What about John Murtha, Alan Mollohan, and Ted Stevens? Their level of swill seems about even to me. Are they corrupt?

Moving on, how about someone like Ron Brown - was he corrupt? Or just opportunistic? A governmental entrepreneur, as it were?

Is Hillary corrupt? Was Nixon?

What about Sharpe James (who was just indicted today on 33 counts of 'corruption')? The counts are quite serious, involving bogus land deals (and pricey resales) and $58,000 he ran up on a city credit card (with his honey) at luxury hotels. Is he corrupt?

Politicians are people. But some are more so than others, no?

jim:

I didn't even realize they were local school administrators and school boardsmen.