The surprise resignation announcement by county school
superintendent Terry McAteer this week ought to raise a little
curiosity. His public statement talks about how pleased he is to
leave his elected position to be a full-time classroom teacher
in a public high school for half the pay. The GV Union
reported it as though it were a routine career move, but a
couple of hints were buried at the end of the story. McAteer is
quoted saying that he "could not be effective" as
superintendent. He also talked about wanting to have a
"private life" which he couldn’t do as
superintendent. Actually, McAteer himself has made it a high
profile job, because he’s just a high profile kind of guy, so
it’s hard to see him just fading into a classroom.
He’s been the superintendent for 13 years and been elected
four times without opposition. So I’m wishing some reporter
will figure out the obvious question: Why does he think he can’t
be effective? When someone wins elective office, it constitutes
a contract with the voters to serve for the specified term.
Anytime an elected official quits mid-term, you have to assume
that the old song about spending more time with the family isn’t
the real motivation.
At times in the past, we’ve heard talk about eliminating
the superintendent’s office, the reasoning being that it doesn’t
do much except dole out the money that comes along from the
state. Combine that kind of talk with declining enrollment, and
you could conjure up some possible motivation, but a sudden,
mid-term exit suggests something more immediate. Just asking.
* * *
This would be a good time to revisit a couple of big topics
we haven’t discussed in a while, and one is local. Around
these parts, when we talk about a BIG residential real estate
development, we might be talking about 50-60 units, but right
across the county’s western border we’re talking over 5000
new homes. It’s called Yuba Highlands, and the developers see
it as kind of a leapfrog suburb of the Marysville/Yuba City area
and an answer about resistence to residential growth in the
flood plains around that area. Several Nevada County groups are
active in opposing it for a variety of reasons, including
potential air pollution. The story is topical again because the
proposal has recently moved a little closer to approval. The
Yuba County planning commission has approved it, and the Board
of Supervisors approved the environmental report, despite
receiving an opinion from the state attorney general that the
environmental report wouldn’t hold up in court. That set the
stage for a hearing before the board on the merits of the
proposal, but one board member says he’ll ask the board to let
the voters have the final say.
Right now, it looks like the board would approve the proposal
on a 3-2 vote. If that happens, expect the opponents to head for
the courts. Just imagine driving down
Highway 20 toward Marysville, looking to your left and
instead of that rolling grassland, you see a suburb with a
population of about 15,000 people and 10,000 cars.
* * *
Immigration is the other topic that needs our attention right
now, because a bill is floating around in the US Senate that’s
supposed to represent a grand compromise between the liberal and
conservative sides of the issue. People at both ends of the
political spectrum are complaining about it, so it must be some
kind of compromise. As usual, the issues don’t run in a line
from conservative to liberal; they run in circles all around the
topic. You can view it economically, politically, socially,
culturally, racially or ignorantly.
The so-called compromise bill creates what amounts to yet
another amnesty program, but the hoops through which an illegal
resident would have to jump to become legal probably are more
difficult than sneaking across the Mexican border and staying
under the radar, and that’s the popular image of an illegal–a
Mexican who works in the fields–but it’s a lot more than
that. Illegals come from all around the world and many come with
high level skills in their resumes. As a result, many
capitalists who might vote for candidates who call themselves
"conservatives" find themselves painted rather liberal
on immigration, and labor unions tend to buy the simple idea
that illegals are taking their jobs away. People with seats in
the US Senate, however, and people running for President have to
weigh all those social, cultural and racial considerations which
have been stirred up by conservative demagogues in politics and
religion. To appease those people, the compromise bill includes
throwing a lot more money at the preposterous idea that you
actually can seal the Mexican border.
Cutting to the chase, immigration is a smokescreen issue that’s
quickly becoming the focus of presidential politics at a time
when the candidates ought to be talking a lot more about war and
peace and the economy. Whether we get a new immigration bill
this year or any year won’t make much difference, anyway. The
corporations which write the checks in Washington exploit
immigrant labor and they plan to keep doing it. The US economy
supports a steady level of unemployment, the poverty and social
problems that go with it, because it fosters a steady supply of
labor. It supports illegal immigration with the same problems
for the same reason.
* * *
A couple of disc jockeys in San Francisco were suspended from
their programs recently for being a little too raunchy in
speculating about violence that might be directed at the
Secretary of State. The news in this is that the trash talkers
were broadcasting on a satellite station, a medium that is
thriving behind unregulated provocative programming. Wherever
free speech flourishes, there always will be someone looking for
the opportunity to say, "Shut up!" The real bad news
is that the only two satellite providers in the country are
planning to merge.
And Jimmy Carter says the Bush gang’s foreign policy is the
worst in history. Some pundits are saying that Carter is just
hoping to get off the hook.
