Letter: Right wing 'reporter' slanders public school teachers, unions
May 26, 2008
Well, Jordan certainly has made a splash recently in the community and at a critical juncture for public education. Judging by an apparent lack of previous experience young Jordan is the prototypical cub reporter — sort of what Jimmy Olsen was to The Daily Planet in Superman lore. Miami SunPost readers must take him as an idealistic wide-eyed new generation muckraker, a regular Westbrook Pegler, ready to root out corruption in high places and make the community safe for the kids. And oh, how Jordan must love the kids! Why else would an aspiring journalist risk a life of poverty and conflict of interest charges by taking a part-time job in the Miami-Dade Public Schools. Honestly, who is Jordan Melnick? He seems almost too good to be true. One thing we know is that he is not Fred Grimm, or Ana Menendez, or Leonard Pitts, or even the SunPost’s Rebecca Wakefield. That is, Jordan is not a reporter or columnist with any record of community involvement.
We must take it as an article of faith that Caxton Newspapers Inc. hired Jordan Melnick in pursuit of the objective truth and then put him to report on public schools and the teachers union. Caxton owns the SunPost and interestingly, one of the many other Caxton companies around the country sells wholesale school supplies, forensic science teaching equipment, and electronics teaching supplies. So it seems Caxton companies both employ young Mr. Melnick to write about the public schools and have a stake in the education business, too. Fully knowing Jordan Melnick might involve knowing the Caxton holdings around the country. Caxton Associates, L.L.C., was founded in 1983 by Bruce Stanley Kovner. Now Mr. Kovner is a billionaire and chairman of the board of trustees of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), this nation’s top neoconservative think tank. In fact, New York Magazine describes Kovner thus, “He’s a neoconservative godfather. He is among the backers of the Manhattan Institute and the fledgling right-wing daily the New York Sun.” Kovner seems to like “Sun” in his newspapers monikers. As he floats in neoconservative circles, Bruce Kovner works with like-minded friends. He is reportedly close to Vice President Dick Cheney and former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton — and then there is that prominent Florida neocon and signatory to the AEI-generated Project for a New American Century blueprint for world domination—Jeb Bush. So for a deeper insight into Jordan Melnick, maybe a closer look at Jeb Bush’s relentless campaign to undermine the public schools might be helpful. Certainly, men like Bruce Kovner and Jeb Bush are too busy to know that an, as of yet, undistinguished foot soldier in their movement even exists. You only really get to a low level functionary through the public school bashing organizations they have set up to do their dirty work — like The James Madison Institute. Allies of Jeb Bush are charged with the effective execution of institute policy. The board of directors is dominated by the likes of Tampa venture capitalist John F. Kirkley. When Jeb Bush was holding his rallies in Tallahassee for school vouchers, Kirkley would pay for the buses that brought the school children and their parents, almost all of them African-American. He paid for their meals on the trip and for the colorful pro-voucher T-shirts they all wore as they cheered the governor. Probably the guiding principle of The James Madison Institute was mouthed by its Founding Chairman J. Stanley Marshall. Marshall has said, “For the past several years, I have believed and stated publicly many times that teachers unions are such an impediment to school reform that we should work to abolish them, or at least discourage teachers from joining.” Maybe to get behind the outward appearance of our intrepid new reporter it would be helpful to consider the top objective of The James Madison Institute. The institute has stated in its internal documents that there is fertile ground to sow public confusion and cripple the teachers unions by making an issue of “taxpayer subsidies” and by this they mean the system of leave from the classroom that allows teachers to run their own union. Every major teachers union local in the country demanded this provision in their first contracts and so did the United Teachers of Dade in 1974. The practice is older than Jordan Melnick. The James Madison Institute twists this essential contract provision into a “subsidy to the teachers unions by absorbing the costs of various union operations” and dictates that their lackeys on school boards across Florida “should not directly or indirectly provide release time with pay for service as union representatives to conduct union business.” In his reporting, Jordan Melnick has shown a stunning disregard for the truth to promote this union busting canard masquerading as a real issue. His sourcing comes exclusively from school board members reading from the James Madison Institute playbook and failed candidates for the very union offices at issue and established right-wing Republican operatives with a long history of working for the decertification of the UTD. All the players in this tragicomedy are pretty much known quantities — except one. So we return to the place we started—back to that new kid on the block. Who is Jordan Melnick? Grow up here in Miami? Go to a public school here? Study journalism in college? Miss the class on ethics in journalism? Member of the Young Republicans? Plan to make a career of the Miami-Dade County Schools — or is your mission hit-and-run? Moving on when the mission is completed? Paul A. Moore
Teacher, Miami Carol City High School
Pmoore1953
