[snip] Earth to Washington, D.C.: welfare reform has failed. Reduced caseloads in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program don’t mean success, notes the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in an October 7 press release–not when the Census Bureau reports that there was a marked rise in child poverty in 2003 and that “poverty and joblessness among single mothers increased significantly between 2000 and 2003.”
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[snip] Torture surrogates. You wouldn’t know it from reading the Tribune, but the intelligence-overhaul bill passed by Congress on October 8 includes provisions authorizing “extraordinary rendition,” which the American Bar Association believes would allow the government to “secretly [transfer] terrorist suspects to foreign countries known to use torture in interrogating prisoners.” The ABA’s president condemned the idea in a September 30 press release, saying “it not only violates all basic humanitarian and human rights standards, but violates U.S. treaty obligations which make clear that the U.S. government cannot avoid its obligations under international law by having other nations conduct unlawful interrogations in its stead.”
[snip] “This president does genuinely care a great deal about education,” Andrew Rotherham, a Democrat in charge of education at the Progressive Policy Institute, writes in the “Education Gadfly” (September 2). “But now that the NCLB [No Child Left Behind] framework is in place, improving education for disadvantaged youngsters requires sustained and intensive attention to making it work. Instead, the Bush Administration’s attention to education policy making has been episodic and inconsistent.” He cites three blunders in particular: the administration overregulated and wouldn’t listen “to even reasonable calls for change,” it failed to issue “quick guidance about key parts of NCLB and help states and school districts understand its complicated provisions,” and it didn’t fund the act adequately. “Had the president’s budget requests been passed as submitted, federal funding for NCLB would be almost $7 billion less than it is now.”
