crime and punishment

Former Atlanta schools superintendent Beverly Hall and 34 other school employees, including high-level administrators, principals and teachers, were recently booked in Atlanta’s Fulton County Jail after being indicted on 65 criminal counts. The charges included racketeering, theft, conspiracy, making false statements and witness tampering.

Just four years ago, Hall was the National Superintendent of the Year. Now, she faces 45 years in prison for having allegedly snagged almost $600,000 in bonus income for higher test scores achieved through fraudulently changing students’ test answers.

And this, the nation’s largest-ever cheating scandal, may prove only the highest shard of a proverbial large floating mass of frozen water.

But instead of condemnation, some of the nation’s leading “education experts” seem bent on excusing the cheaters.

“What we do know,” Washington Post education writer Valerie Strauss pointed out, “is that these cheating scandals have been a result of test-obsessed school reform.”

Dr. Christopher Emdin of Columbia University Teachers College reminded readers at the end of a recent Huffington Post column, “I am not saying that educators and school officials who cheat on tests or conspire to cover up cheating should not be reprimanded.”

Just “reprimanded”?

Award-winning teacher Steven Lin explained  that “environments such as that alleged in Atlanta present the classic sociological phenomenon of ‘diffusion of responsibility,’ along with a host of other flaws regarding the compartmentalization of job descriptions within bureaucracies.”

You mean they suffer from “peer pressure”?

Nevertheless, I still think it’s more than sorta bad to cheat.

And I agree wholeheartedly with the “controversial” remark by George Washington University Dean Michael Feuer: “It’s not the test that made them cheat.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Prior to identifying the Boston Marathon bombers, upstanding members of the inane wing of the left intelligentsia fell all over themselves to express their earnest hope that the malefactors would turn out to be male right-wingers.

When the bombers turned out to be a couple of American lads who just happened to hail from Chechnya by way of Dagestan, and were Muslim, to boot, the disappointment was palpable. The burning desire to demonize white male tax protestors (read “Tea Party”/”militia” types) morphed into a defense of Islam and Muslim Americans at large . . . which is good, but why the defense of one set, but hatred for the other?

Now the “moral” conversation has switched to debating whether the surviving malefactor (the elder of the two brothers was killed in a shootout Thursday night), whose first name is Dzhokhar, should have been Mirandized (he was not) or even Guantanamoed (he hasn’t been so far).

Such is the state of ethical debate, today.

The story has overwhelmingly dominated the news. Why? Folks in general, including those on the inane left, like to hate bad guys. We’re fascinated by the story — more so, say, than the Texas fertilizer plant explosion that occurred the same week — because of the human element, the intent.

The malign intent.

But what the exact intention of these malefactors was, I don’t really know. What did they hope to accomplish? What could they achieve for Chechnya by killing Americans near a marathon finish line?

Once again folly and evil find intimate connection.

Maybe in some of our reactions, too.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Uniting together to form mutual aid groups is a very old idea. Workers do it; professionals, too — even consumers. It’s usually a great idea, contributing a lot to human welfare.

But what we call “labor unions” have a problem: They tend to be, well . . . violent.

Why?

One of the main practices of unions has been (though it need not be) the monopolization of labor into a union-run pool, disallowing non-union workers from taking jobs in targeted plants, businesses, industries, what-have-you. Labor legislation in America and elsewhere generally shores up and regulates that power — which, by definition, is thuggish.

So we’ve come to expect thuggishness from existing unions. Members of unions feel they have the right to exclude non-union workers, and they will intimidate, threaten, and attack both “scabs” (competing workers) and “evil businesses.”

Which now includes a Quaker meeting place expansion project.

In one of the best-titled stories of recent times, “Union Workers *Probably* Torched a Quaker Meetinghouse Over Christmas,” we learn that an under-construction building was torched this holiday season, and that the culprits were “almost certainly” union members.

To call them “disgruntled” would be to euphemize. To attack a Quaker meetinghouse takes quite a bit of . . . well, you fill in the blank.

In one sense, unions are doing nothing different than hundreds of other organizations do, seeking special privileges from government. But unions continue to use the basic tactics of force when the “rule of law” fails them.

That they would do so even against another group known for the heritage of peace and non-aggression and even non-retaliation is breathtaking in its . . . honesty?

I’ll let you pick your own word.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Wearing his I’m-Not-Partisan-No-Not-Me hat, President Obama has again declared war on partisanship, telling congressional Republicans to “peel off the partisan war paint.”

To be partisan in a bad way is not merely to belong to a political party and more or less support its program. It is to cling to party at the expense of Doing the Right Thing.

Unless, that is, it’s about opposing the program of a president determined to be partisan at the expense of Doing the Right Thing.

I often disagree with both parties. But let’s say that a representative of one party is marginally more reluctant to destroy our wealth and freedom than a representative of another party. Then I prefer the slightly more responsible stance of the former — and wish it were tougher and more consistent — even when the latter engages in name-calling and abuse of the former.

Demanding “perspective,” President Obama declares that he and the Congress should “not put ourselves through some sort of self-inflicted crisis every six months.” And I wholeheartedly agree. These crises happen because their spending programs always go up and up and up, even when a few “cuts” get made.

But the president doesn’t stop there. He explains they must “allow ourselves time to focus on things like preventing the tragedy in Newtown from happening again, focus on issues like energy and immigration reform. . . .”

Um, sir, please do not suggest that an unimpeded path to fiscal ruin is the only way to prevent fiscal ruin, or can somehow enable policymakers to prevent crazy gunmen from killing people. Please.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

In 1993, I was in Russia to witness Boris Yeltsin’s first referendums, which was perhaps the high point of Russian democracy.

Along with the sweep of history, I also remember boarding a midnight train from Moscow to St. Petersburg and being accosted by some kind of Russian gendarme. This fellow berated me in words none of which I understood. I could tell he wanted something from me (money, probably). So I stood there looking bewildered and playing dumb — my specialty — until the guy finally lapsed into frustrated silence and I could walk away. Another Russian later told me that it was indeed a shakedown attempt.

The incident came to mind when I heard about a recent attempted robbery down in Tampa. Three masked thugs spilled into a Chinese restaurant and demanded the contents of the cash register. According to a brief report, the trio “left empty-handed after the restaurant workers who only spoke Cantonese couldn’t understand what the English-speaking suspects were saying.” At one point, a gun went off when the would-be robbers banged the cash register with it.

The report states that the “botched robbery” was caused by a “failure to understand English.” Well, maybe the workers knew little English. But they knew what the robbers wanted. The workers played dumb. More basically, they refused to cooperate.

Risky. I’m not saying you should try this at home. But sometimes being too dumb to be victimized is the smartest thing you can do.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.