To be attacked by Eric Cantor is a good thing

Eric Cantor's ratings in the dumper.

Cantor's attack shows that Mayor de Blasio is on the right track. The wing-nut House Majority Leader is simply going to bat for his hedge-fund school reformer friends in N.Y. who have been riding high and raking in public dough under Mayor Bloomberg.

Cantor fancies himself a r-r-revolutionary storming the anti-government barricades in the name of privatization of all public space. He obviously wishes he was old enough to have experienced the '60s.

“America is in the midst of an education revolution," he tells the Brookings Institute, referring to the unfettered growth of privately-run charter schools and school vouchers going to private and church-run schools.The real irony has this self-proclaimed anti-Washington, anti-gummint, local-control advocate trying to bully a city mayor and a local school district.

He's really upset about BdB's promise to make charter operators pay rent for use of public school space. "This move could devastate the growth of education opportunity in such a competitive real estate market like New York City,” he moans.
Cantor appears to have suddenly joined the war on poverty. While working to block every piece of anti-poverty legislation in Congress over the past 6 years, Cantor now claims that,

 "School choice is the surest way to break this vicious cycle of poverty and we must act fast before it is too late for too many.”

He threatens de Blasio:

“Our committees in the House will remain vigilant in their efforts to ensure that no one, no one from the government, stands in the schoolhouse door between any child and a good education.” 

Umm, Cong. Cantor, aren't you "from the government"? What the hell are you doing, coming up from Dixie  telling New Yorkers how to run their schools? You would do better to stay at home in Va. where your party's candidates are currently railing against school desegregation and where your own approval ratings have fallen to 27%. 

And the "schoolhouse door" reference, calling up images of Gov. Wallace really won't fly. Cantor is currently touting the Louisiana Scholarship Program, a school voucher initiative championed by Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) that was the target of a lawsuit by the Justice Department over claims that it impeded desegregation efforts.


BdB has the right answer for Cantor.

“The Republican agenda in Washington doesn’t even scratch the surface of the inequities facing more than a million children in our public schools,” he said in an e-mailed statement. “It’s a dangerous philosophy that turns its back on public education — and it has failed many times before. What public school parents want — and I know because I’m one of them — are real investments that lift up all our kids. That will take big, bold, progressive ideas. And that’s exactly what the people of New York City just voted for.”