The Charlotte Capitalist is also reacting to the local Knight Ridder outlet lumping school board member Larry Gauvreau in with Enron, but that reaction is much more rational than mine.
Tommy Tomlinson pulls one low-life, rat-bastard of a stunt identifying Gauvreau with some of the biggest criminals in American history. Enron execs are going to jail, one hopes for many years, for perpetrating an outright fraud. If Tomlinson thinks Gauvreau is a fraud, or that he wants to systematically loot CMS, he needs to give us something on that. Merely disagreeing with Gauvreau’s ideas does not get you there, although it is not clear that Tomlinson understands this.
What’s more, Tomlinson spreads the myth that anyone who dissents in any way from the official CMS line of everything-is-great-just-give-us-more-$$-to-make-things-better is downright evil, a lawbreaker bent on destroying public schools.
To top it off Tomlinson has the nerve to bury his venom in a column calling for some “common sense.” Here’s the common sense Tommy boy: CMS is broken and needs to be fixed. Money will not do that. Vision statements will not do that. Structual reform is needed, some of which is found in the CMS Task Force report which, now that the Powers That Be at CMS and the school board have read it, they are running away from those reforms as fast as possible. That is the story, buddy.
That is what all the fighting is about, Tommy. Not personalities, not meeting in a room together. The Task Force says CMS must change and CMS says no. Your “radical middle” is just trying to ease into that change, in baby-steps. Gauvreau says the time for easing-in is past, and he is probably right. But your readers do not know anything about that, you just told them Larry is Enron, a thief and a liar.
Either you support fundamental reform of CMS right now — outsourcing, decentralization, budget reform, construction innovation — or you are for the status quo. You, evidently, support the status quo.
Guess that makes you King George III, Tommy.
And is it not completely insane — and by insane I mean a psychotic break with reality — to have the local Knight Ridder outlet deploy the Enron comparison on a local pol other than Jim Black? An excuse wrapped in a smear.
