By Chris Powell
Democrats in Connecticut and throughout the country are seeking laughs by asserting that the political noise being made by zillionaire Elon Musk shows that he is not just an adviser to President-elect Donald Trump but the de-facto president-elect.
Musk is an odd duck in some respects. But he seems to have gotten rich at least in part by adding value to the world, and his space exploration business lately seems more successful than the government’s own. The people who mock Musk and the president-elect’s other super-rich pal, Vivek Ramaswamy, for being the president-elect’s choices to lead a Department of Government Efficiency are perfectly happy with government bloat.
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Since Trump is careless and prone to go off on crazy tangents — like the supposed necessity for the United States to acquire Greenland — the new administration is likely to provide plenty of material for ridicule.
Yet Trump isn’t back in the Oval Office yet. Joe Biden remains there, at least when he’s not resting at home in Delaware, and the people guffawing about whether Trump or Musk will run the government seem not to have noticed the Wall Street Journal’s lengthy Dec. 19 report showing that Biden didn’t come down with senility just before his disastrous debate with Trump in June.
The Journal reported that Biden was senile almost from the moment he took office four years ago, with his staff and his party’s members of Congress concealing it, making excuses for his inability to handle regular business meetings, and, with the cooperation of most national news organizations, lying about his incompetence. According to the Journal, for years nearly everyone in close contact with the White House knew that the president wasn’t well.
So who has been de-facto president for the last for years? Who is de-facto president today? The president’s wife, “Doctor” Jill Biden? Vice President Kamala Harris? Secretary of State Anthony Blinken? The president’s influence-peddling son and bag man, Hunter Biden? A cabal of shadowy aides?
Democrats questioning the power dynamic between Trump and Musk while ignoring the mysterious power dynamic of their own administration are complicit with the fraud.
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Bridgeport’s school system has just lost its fifth superintendent in 10 years, as the city’s Board of Education has agreed to pay Carmela Levy-David $140,000 to go away. While Levy-David had repeatedly declared that she planned to stay in Bridgeport for 10 years, she lasted 16 months.
Levy-David leaves the school system with a $39 million deficit, which the board hopes to close by laying off dozens of administrators.
Meanwhile architects hired by the board say the school system’s old buildings will need as much as $700 million in repairs and improvements over the next decade.
The city’s population remains overwhelmingly poor, and so of course student performance remains terrible.
The state Education Department has taken notice. It has summoned the board’s chairman and acting superintendent to come to Hartford next month to discuss the big deficit, conflict among board members, and — oh, yes — student performance.
It’s hard to imagine how this meeting will accomplish much. The chaos in Bridgeport’s schools is longstanding and arises from the city’s poverty and low capacity for self-government, a problem shared with other cities in the state.
School administration is also chaotic in Hartford and New Haven. Hartford has just been shown to have passed an illiterate girl through 12 grades through high school graduation, and surely there are others like her, while New Haven’s schools have the state’s highest rate of chronic student absenteeism, 37%.
What does the state board expect the Bridgeport school officials to say at next month’s meeting? That another $100 million or so in state aid to the city’s schools every year will turn them around when the city itself will remain so dysfunctional?
Where is the evidence of any substantial improvement in Connecticut’s city school systems in the last decade?
It is long past time for state government to take control of the worst city school systems and sweep aside all impediments to administration in the public interest.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)
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Chris Powell column 
“Democrats questioning the power dynamic between Trump and Musk while ignoring the mysterious power dynamic of their own administration are complicit with the fraud.” There it is in black and white: the part that nobody says out loud,.
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“It is long past time for state government to take control of the worst city school systems and sweep aside all impediments to administration in the public interest.”
Wouldn’t it be the same education administrators wearing different hats with a whole new layer of bureaucracy — same clowns driving a new clown car?
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