reality-based educator

Dan Rather broke the news of that very possibility on The Chris Matthews Show:

Mr. Rather: Michael Bloomberg, mayor of New York, told me that he was not going to run for president. In a direct answer to a direct question, would he run under any circumstances, he danced around a bit and finally said ‘No.’ Furthermore, he said he wasn’t open to even considering running as a vice presidential candidate with anybody, and he wouldn’t take a place in anybody’s cabinet.”

Mr. Matthews: “Is he going to run against Spitzer for governor next time?”

Mr. Rather: “I wouldn’t bet against it.”

This doesn't surprise me, actually.

The mayor, a self-made billionaire, is no dummy.

He's got to know that he doesn't have a shot in hell of winning the White House as an independent candidate, no matter how many billions he throws into his propaganda campaign.

But to take that $1 billion he's got set aside for his ostensible White House run and use it to buy the Governor's Mansion in Albany - that I can see, particularly since the current inhabitant, Eliot Spitzer, has been so weakened by the Bruno scandal.

For you New York City teachers out there, this news, if true, should seem pretty devastating. Here we have already started the countdown to the end of Mayor Moneybags' term at City Hall and now he's threatening to buy the governorship and bring his education reform movement to Albany.

I hope the kids around the state like standardized tests (at least 10 a year in English and math, with more to follow in history and science), uniformly measured bulletin boards, reading rugs (watch out for those reading rug bugs and dust mites!), the small school movement (in which ALL big schools are eventually declared failures, closed and replaced with "smaller schools" inside the very same buildings that used to house the "failed" big schools), manipulated test scores and a public relations education campaign staff that is second to none (though the people actually running the Department of Education don't really know or care much about education.)

Here's hoping Spitzer regains his political strength and deters a Bloomberg run. Spitzer may not be the friendliest of governors to NY teachers, but he sure as hell isn't Moneybags either.