by Steve Timmer

Apr 21, 2022, 10:00 AM

Friends close, etc.

One of my regular correspondents received an email from Our Children Minnesota a couple of days ago:

Thank you for supporting the Page Amendment movement to provide quality public education for all Minnesota children! Working together, we can pass the amendment and take tangible strides toward closing education gaps in our state.

It is worth observing that the email is just more question-begging baloney that I describe here. There isn’t a scintilla of evidence that it will do what the email touts. It’s more puerile sloganeering.

But my correspondent’s reply is really good:

I do not support Kashkari’s passion to interfere in things he knows little about. His parents were professionals, sending him to an elite Ohio private high school school. He had all the advantages. He knows jack about poor people, white or otherwise. He did that one week “homeless” stunt while running [for governor] in California, which was a grotesque insult to those really homeless. Why Alan Page allows his name on this attack upon public education is a mystery to me. However, please keep me on your mailing list. Friends close, etc.

The Supreme Court opinion in the Cruz-Guzman case, which I have cited many times, was announced late in July of 2018. The decision had the effect of imperiling the highly-segregated charter school industrial complex. The Page Amendment guts the constitutional language in the Education Clause on which Cruz-Guzman is based.

The “Page” Amendment sprang, fully formed, from the forehead of Neel Kashkari in November of 2018. It is clear from his public calendar that he was the early mover on what became the “Page Amendment.” It should be called the “Kashkari Amendment.”

If it had been named after the former Goldman Sachs executive, it wouldn’t have had nearly the same frisson. It needed a stalking horse.